From potential reach to applause rate, there are dozens of social media metrics you could track to help you measure progress towards your campaign goals. This video will explore some of the most common social media metrics, how they fit into the social media marketing funnel, and why it's helpful to track them. To review, a metric is a quantifiable measurement that is used to track and assess a business objective. Your social media goal will determine which metrics you focus on and work to optimize. As we discussed earlier in this course, you'll set goals when you develop your social media strategy. You'll select these goals based on the goals of the larger marketing campaign you're working on, which is often determined by the goals of your business. Each goal of your social media marketing campaign will be geared at guiding people through the stages of the social media marketing funnel: awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty. Consequently, each goal will have related metrics that will help you measure progress towards that goal. Let's discuss some common metrics related to goals in each of the stages of the marketing funnel. To review, the first stage of the marketing funnel is awareness, which is when your goal is to capture your audience's attention. At this stage, you'll track metrics related to brand awareness. When you measure brand awareness, you analyze the attention your brand receives across all of your social media platforms during a reporting period, such as a week, month, or quarter. Metrics related to brand awareness include the number of shares, mentions, links to your content, and impressions your brand has received in a given time period. An impression is when a piece of content is displayed to your target audience. Another common awareness-related metric is potential reach, which measures how many people have potentially seen a post since you published it. For example, if a person Retweets a post on Twitter, then you can assume that potentially a certain percentage of their followers will also see the post. These metrics helps you assess your progress towards expanding your social media audience. Once your potential customers are aware of your brand, they enter into the next stage in the marketing funnel: consideration. this is when your customers are thinking about doing business with you. At this point, you can start to measure engagement metrics like applause rate, which is the number of approval actions such as likes, mentions, Retweets, or favorites that a post receives relative to your total number of followers. A high applause rate shows that your audience finds that piece of content valuable. It indicates a level of interest in your brand, which could lead to making a purchase. Additionally, knowing what kind of content your audience engages with can help you decide what content to create next. Once potential customers have decided to make a purchase, they'll enter the conversion stage. At this point, you can measure things like referrals, which indicate how someone was guided to your website. You can track how many people were referred to your website from all your social media platforms and measure the referrals you receive on specific platforms. You can also measure conversions, which refer to the completion of an activity that contributes to the success of a business. These activities can include anything from clicking on a link to buying something. Social conversions are actions a person takes on your website because of having seen your social media campaigns recently. After someone becomes a customer, your goal is to build their loyalty. In this stage of the funnel, you might measure things like the number of customer testimonials you receive. A customer testimonial is any customer review, assessment, comment, endorsement, or interview relating to your brand. When people are enthusiastic about your brand, they are more likely to share their positive feelings with others. Customer testimonials on social media can help build trust and credibility in your brand while boosting your brand's social media presence. You can also measure customer loyalty with a specific metric called a Net Promoter Score. A Net Promoter Score, or NPS, helps predict future customer engagement by asking customers: How likely is it that you would recommend our product to a friend? Customers respond on a scale of 1 to 10. Depending on the number they choose, they are considered either unhappy customers, satisfied but unenthusiastic customers, or loyal enthusiasts. Reviewing NPS can help you measure customer satisfaction and predict potential future sales. Metrics are important because they show whether your social media strategy is successful over time. By studying different metrics from each stage of the marketing funnel, you can better understand your brand's social media performance. As you adjust your social media strategy, you can track additional metrics that are relevant to your business.