Is your property’s social media strategy designed to work hard or work smart? Social media is an inherently trackable marketing initiative, and each platform produces metrics that can help shape your strategy. At the same time, there are plenty of metrics that can be misleading if you don’t fully understand what they’re telling you.

Social media can help keep residents engaged, inform potential renters about apartment availability and grow your presence in the surrounding community. Below, we’ll tell you about a few common social media metrics and how you can use them to adjust your property’s marketing strategies. Whether you’re tracking your social media metrics on individual platforms or through a social media reporting tool like SOCi, your property’s marketing will benefit from the understanding of what each number signifies.

The Difference Between Reach and Impressions

Impressions are the number of times your post was displayed in front of a user, but the stat is a little misleading because users can see one post multiple times. Reach, on the other hand, only accounts for unique views. Reach tells you the total number of people who saw your post — impressions tell you the total number of times the post was seen. Reach can apply to organic content, paid content or the total between the two. If you Boost a post, you’ll be able to see how much reach that post got on its own, how much reach it got after being boosted, and the total amount of reach; the sum of the organic and paid reach.

If your goal is to build brand awareness, you’ll want to pay attention to the reach your posts receive. By analyzing your organic reach and comparing it to your paid reach, you can see whether it’s worth spending more to increase your impressions and reach.

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Comparing Low-Value and High-Value Engagements

Engagement tells you how many people directly interacted with your post by clicking, liking, reacting, favoriting, commenting, replying, viewing a video or sharing the post.

It’s always beneficial to track the percentage of people who engaged with your posts compared to how many total people saw your post. This should tell you whether or not you’re creating content that’s engaging and relevant.

Of course, some types of engagement are more meaningful than others. High-value engagement comes in the form of comments, reviews, and shares — actions that take a bit of effort on the part of the audience. Simple actions like clicks and video views take less effort and are classified as low-value engagement. Facebook is limiting the reach of posts that receive low-value engagement, which is why it’s so important to double down on content that results in high-value engagement.

The Meaning of Fans and Followers

On Facebook, people who like your page are called fans. People can also choose to follow your page by clicking a separate button. That follow button has a drop-down menu, which gives the user options like, “turn on notifications for this page’s posts,” and “see this page’s posts first.” On Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, your audience is simply referred to as followers. With reporting technology like SOCi, you can keep track of your total number of followers/fans, new followers/fans and week-to-week follower/fan growth.  

Having a lot of fans and followers is preferable, but a high number doesn’t necessarily lead to future growth. According to recent research, people who like Facebook business pages don’t start spending more or changing their buying habits. Also, someone liking a page doesn’t make their friends or family more likely to sign a lease at your property.

If someone likes your property’s page on Facebook, it’s likely that they’re an existing resident. Your follower/fan numbers tell you how popular your community is, and how many loyal, engaged renters you have, but there’s no guarantee that a high number will lead to more signed leases. The way you’ll reach potential renters through social is through proper spending and targeting for Boosted posts or social advertising.

In the competitive world of property management, social media metrics will show you exactly where your community stands. A powerful, nimble social media strategy will take these metrics into account and enable you to adjust accordingly. A flexible social media tool like SOCi will provide you with the metrics that matter for your property, so you can see what is working and where you can improve.

Find out how SOCi can power your property’s local social media marketing.