The vanity metrics are those basic data related to social media such as the number of likes, comments, and interactions.
Why are they called vanity metrics? Very simple, because they are the kind of data that provide satisfaction to the less experienced social media managers.
Indeed, mere sharing data, number of likes and comments, do not complete an analysis of a business profile.
Vanity metrics, therefore, are those indicators that actually feed the ego of the recipient and develop in the innate will and desire to stand out among users.
Other data beyond vanity metrics: how to analyze social media
There are therefore clearer and more specific data beyond vanity metrics, let's analyze some:
Click through rate, is the indicator that analyzes the percentage of users who view content.
Referral and social traffic: to understand the effectiveness of a social profile, it is important to comprehend the sources of traffic from and to the reference social media. In Analytics, for example, there is a specific section called referral where data from socials that obviously refer back to your site are included.
Mention and share of voice: being mentioned in posts is a fundamental resource as it increases our relevance in that sector. The share of voice, calculates exactly the percentage of relevance that one has in a certain sector, also analyzing the number and quality of mentions received.
Conversation rate: comments are the most important vanity metric but alone are not enough. Instead, they are very useful when associated with conversation rate. This data is broader in scope and analyzes the percentage of comments relative to the number of followers or total number of likes on the page (to obtain this data, multiply the result by one hundred).
Amplification rate: This metric calculates the number of times a post is reshared, relative to the total number of followers or likes.
Applause rate: The applause rate is the expansion of the individual number of likes again based on the followers or likes of the page.Vanity metrics alone are not useful in understanding the performance of a company page but, when placed within a broader context and combined with all other percentage-based indicators related to the fan base that we have analyzed, then a complete overview is obtained and adjustments can be made as needed.
