Social Media Analytics
Every platform hands you more numbers than you'll ever need. A handful of them tell you whether your content is reaching new people, holding their attention and leading to inquiries. This guide shows where to find those few and how to use them in a short monthly review.
On This Page
Where the Numbers Live
- Meta Business Suite Insights for both the Facebook Page and the connected Instagram account, including reach, content performance, audience and messages.
- Instagram professional dashboard Per-post and account insights inside the Instagram app, including reach, watch time, sends and profile activity.
- TikTok analytics Views, watch time, completion, traffic sources and follower data for business and creator accounts.
- Your website analytics Visits from each platform, identified by referral source and UTM tags.
Metrics That Matter
| Metric | What it tells you | Act when |
|---|---|---|
| Reach and the share from non-followers | Whether content is being recommended to new people | Non-follower reach falls for several weeks in a row |
| Average watch time and completion rate | Whether videos hold attention after the opening | Most viewers leave in the first few seconds |
| Sends and shares per reach | Whether people find content worth passing on | Shares stay near zero across many posts |
| Saves | Whether content is useful enough to keep | Educational posts earn few saves |
| Profile visits and link taps | Whether interest turns into curiosity about the business | Reach rises but visits and taps stay flat |
| DMs, calls and bookings from social | Whether social media produces customers | This is the result every other metric should support |
Follower count and likes are worth tracking, but they rarely explain results on their own. In January 2025 Instagram head Adam Mosseri advised watching average watch time, likes per reach and sends per reach when you review insights.
Rates Over Totals
Totals rise and fall with how much you post. Rates, such as shares per reach or link taps per profile visit, show whether your content is getting better. Compare a post with your own recent posts in the same format rather than with other businesses, because audiences and industries differ widely.
A Monthly Review
- List your top five and bottom five posts by reach and by watch time.
- Note what the winners have in common, such as topic, opening, length or format.
- Check profile visits, link taps and DMs against the previous month.
- Match inquiries and bookings from social media in your booking system or CRM.
- Pick one change to test next month.
In Practice
Say an independent bookstore's monthly review shows staff-pick Reels reach three times more non-followers than new-arrival photos, while event posts bring in most of the link taps. The plan for next month is more staff-pick Reels for reach, each one ending with a pointer to the events page in the profile.
Metric names and definitions change, and they differ between platforms. Check the sources below before you compare numbers.
Key Terms
- Insights
- The analytics section of a Facebook Page or Instagram professional account.
- Completion rate
- The share of viewers who watch a video to the end.
- Non-follower reach
- People reached who don't follow the account.
- Link taps
- Taps on profile or Story links.
- Rate metric
- A metric divided by reach or views, so posts can be compared fairly.
Sources
- Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, video posts on ranking signals (January 2025) www.instagram.com
- Instagram Ranking Explained, Instagram about.instagram.com
- Meta Business Suite business.facebook.com
- TikTok Support support.tiktok.com
- URL builders, collect campaign data with custom URLs, Google Analytics Help support.google.com
Have Our Team Handle This
Our team runs this every day. Request a free proposal and we will plan it for your business, or see the Social Media service.