2024 has arrived, and we’re officially in our reflect and refresh era. For the team here at Battenhall, that means spending the next few weeks reviewing our clients’ 2023 social media performance, and using those learnings to update their strategies for the year ahead. 

While our monthly reports usually include normal key performance indicators - such as engagement rate, average post impressions and audience growth - we like to dig a little deeper at this time of year. Read on to discover the five key things we recommend measuring to kick-start your 2024 planning.

1. Competitor benchmarking

Okay,  this technically isn’t one metric, but a few. I could talk for hours and hours about the importance of industry benchmarking, but, in a nutshell: if you don’t measure your competitors’ performance, you’ll never know how your brand stacks up. Tracking against key KPIs - like total followers and post cadence - is the easiest way to identify your ranking, while deeper analysis of your peers’ content will also allow you to learn from their successes and weaknesses (we love working on these projects, so get in touch if you’d like a hand!)

- Keri Hudson, Senior Consultant

2. Deep engagement rate

Engagement rate is a gold standard metric, and one I use in almost all of my monthly reports. However, sometimes a particular type of interaction - like comments or clicks - will be more important to a strategy than others. To hone in on specific engagement metrics, you can calculate a post’s deep engagement rate (i.e. the percentage of impressions that resulted in the specific interaction). This will allow you to pinpoint the content that has been most successful in driving that intended action, and use that insight to inform future creative development.

- Millie O’Connor, Senior Account Manager

3. Channel usage vs. performance

When conducting audits for new clients, I often find that there’s an imbalance in the amount of time and effort put into a channel vs. its ROI. This is often caused by teams sticking with familiar, tried-and-tested ways of working, instead of renewing activity based on new platform trends. To identify how your brand’s channels balance, measure post frequency against average post engagement/post impressions. Then, use those learnings to make informed decisions about where to invest your efforts – moving away from underperforming platforms (I’m looking at you, X), towards those that are paying dividends (hello, TikTok) to boost your social media impact.

- Delia Howe, Consultant

4. Influencer earned media

When activating influencer campaigns, the most important element for Battenhall is being able to clearly demonstrate that we’ve achieved the objectives of the campaign and delivered a strong ROI for our client. The key metrics to measure vary depending on the campaign, but, by using our specialist tools, we’re able to measure the EMV (earned media value) of influencer content – which is something our clients really value. This is especially useful when hosting an event with a high volume of content going live at once, measuring the impact of organic content and demonstrating clear ROI.

- Leah Domenet, Senior Account Director

5. Performance over time

Often, when reporting on a monthly basis, we’ll compare how activity has performed vs. the previous month, or previous campaign. However, measuring performance over an extended period of time - say six months - allows you to identify longer term trends that may not be immediately apparent in those shorter windows. For example, you may have seen an ongoing rise in engagement rates month-on-month, but realise that that growth is actually slowing when you look at the metric over time. Or, you might see that UGC featuring a particular product has been steadily growing over the past few months, and develop a new influencer campaign to tap into that.

- Moyca Disini, Senior Account Executive

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Keen to conduct a deep dive review of your brand’s performance, or kick off a strategy refresh for 2024? Email insights@battenhall.com to find out more.