How to Create Social Media Benchmarks

If you are a new company looking to improve your brand’s social media performance, the process can be overwhelming. It requires asking questions and performing the analysis you likely have not tried before. How do you know what counts as an improvement? How do you compare yourself with competitors? What data should you be looking at? What tools are available to help?

One way to ensure you are improving your social media game is to create social media benchmarks you can compare your progress to. Not only does this allow you to see for yourself how your company is doing, but it also helps you determine what you can do to improve performance.

At Performance First Marketing, we can assist you in setting social media benchmarks that you can meet and expand upon. Our team has the expertise and the experience necessary to determine which industry benchmarks your firm needs to implement your social media strategy and gain the right followers. This article details how creating useful social media benchmarks will help you bring your social media A-game.

What is a social media benchmark?

A benchmark is a standard by which companies use to weigh performance. In social media, this means comparing your process for creating posts and sharing content, as well as the metrics used to judge performance to industry best practices. Benchmarking is important as it allows you to measure your performance and compare it against your competitors. By checking your social media strategy against industry benchmarks on a regular basis, you can improve your content strategy, get the one-up on your competitor’s strategy, as well get better at planning your social media budget.

Steps to create useful social media benchmarks

There are numerous ways in which you can start creating social media benchmarks and execute your social media strategy. As always, a few first steps are necessary, these include:

1. Determine your social media needs – Before setting benchmarks by which to measure your progress, you need to understand why you need social media benchmarks. Do you want to which social media channels are the best for engagement? Or the best for sharing videos? Knowing what you are creating a benchmark is a critical first step.
2. Decide which social media networks to analyze – Once you know what you need to create benchmarks for, then you need to know which platforms to analyze as part of your analysis. Find out which networks where your audience is most active. Then, decide which of those networks will be the most effective for sharing the content you wish to create.
3. Choose your metrics – Once you know what your needs are and which networks to analyze, you then need to know what stats matter most to your social media strategy. These include total engagement, average engagement, total impressions, post frequency, and followers gained. You can begin by choosing the metrics that are most relevant to growth, and then move on to metrics like frequency or total engagement.

Knowing how to build social media benchmarks is crucial for the success of your social media strategy. Performance First Marketing has the capability to guide you in implementing strategies to meet your goals in growing your firm. Call us at (818) 949-2618 or contact us online in order to learn more about what we can do for your firm.