How do you know if a social media post has been successful? 

Is there a ‘formula’ you can use to rate how well your social media post has performed? 

Which ‘metrics’ should you be looking at e.g. likes, views/reach, comments?

Find out in this short podcast of the Courageous Content Podcast (just 10 mins).

Useful Links

Do you have the courage to be a beginner? (podcast)

Are you a risk taker? (podcast)

Will you ever be good enough? (when comparisonitis strikes) (podcast)

Janet Murray’s Courageous Content Planner

Janet Murray’s website

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IMPORTANT: THIS TRANSCRIPT IS AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED. WE GIVE IT A QUICK CHECK THROUGH BUT WE DON’T CORRECT EVERYTHING AS IT’S INTENDED TO HELP YOU FIND PARTS YOU WANT TO LISTEN TO AGAIN - NOT AS AN EXACT TRANSCRIPT. SO THERE MIGHT BE A FEW QUIRKY WORDS/PHRASES HERE!

How do you know if your social media posts has been successful? Is there a formula you can use, for example, the number of likes and shares divided by how many followers you have something that will tell you if yours is a good post I'm Janet Murray, one of the UKs leading content marketing experts. And in this short podcast episode, I'm going to answer that question because it's one,

I get asked a lot. How do you know if a piece of content you've created has been successful? Well, the rather unsatisfactory answer is it depends, but the question I always come back to is did it achieve its objective? So when you were creating that piece of content, you almost certainly has an outcome in mind, or at least the hope you did.

Did it help you to achieve that goal? So this can be quite easy when your objective is sales related. So for example, if you're looking to generate leads and sales for a specific product or service, you can look at whether that piece of content did generate any leads or sales for that particular product or service easy. Or if you're building your email list and your post is about encouraging people to download your free lead magnet,

you can look at how many downloads you've got as a result of that piece of content. It's also possible to set content objectives. So for example, hits on your website or downloads of your podcast, it can sometimes be difficult to pinpoint exactly what's worked and what hasn't, because you're often juggling so many different factors. But to give you an example, we've just introduced something near on the messenger bot that I use on Instagram and Facebook.

And when we're promoting a podcast episode, we say in the post, if you're interested in listening to this episode type, whatever the episode number is in the comments. So we can certainly track the number of requests we get for that podcast episode. And we can also then look at how podcasts downloads increase or decrease. Hopefully that won't happen over a number of months or years.

As I say, there's often lots of factors involved in it can be quite difficult to pinpoint exactly what worked and what didn't, but you can certainly always identify trends. If you have an objective and you don't need to be as sophisticated as that, I'm speaking as somebody who's been in online business now for about seven plus years slightly, you don't have a messenger bot that can do that for you at the moment,

but you don't need the fancy tools. You can literally write this data on the back of an envelope or maybe on a spreadsheet, but what if you're not at that stage? So what if you're at the stage where you're building your audience, you're building your community online and you're just trying to get more of the right people. So more of your ideal customers and clients to follow you and to engage with your content,

what do you measure then? Well, you certainly shouldn't be looking at things like the number of views on your posts or the reach. And I not even convinced you should be looking at likes. I mean, it's easy to tap the like button and it takes a fraction of a second. I know. I like things. I don't even like that much sometimes.

And I'm sure you're the same new follows are a stronger indication of intense. I don't know about you, but I follow people. I would never have any intention of buying from for all sorts of reasons. And I also noticed that I often save quite a few pieces of content from a particular content creator before I even recognize that it's the same person. Do you do that too?

I'm sure you probably do. And then only then do I hit the follow button and there's social media algorithms on most platforms will really support there. So if you spend a bit of time looking at a particular content creators posts, if you save a few of their posts, if you leave a comment or you just spend a bit of time looking at it,

you will notice that you start getting shown more of that creators content because social media platforms, they want to keep us on the platform and how do they do that? They do that by showing us what they think we like. So for me, going to the trouble of saving or sharing a piece of content, that's what suggests real intent, not views,

not reach, not likes. So for example, on tick-tock I save songs. I want to learn it'll tutorials theory, songwriting tips, I should say, at this point, I've got to tick tock accounts. I've got one for business and one for my music stuff. And I might also say things that are entertaining because I want to share them with my daughter.

So that's why I see a lot of cat videos in my feed. So when I'm looking at the success of my own content, I'm much more interested in saved than views. So for example, a recent post on my Instagram grid. So this was an Instagram carousel. I looked at the stats about 12 hours after I'd pasted it. And this was the post actually that I also created as a podcast.

And I will link to both the podcast and this post in the show notes. So it was called, or it is called, I should say Instagram grid, real or story. How to decide what to post, where about 12 hours after me posting that piece of content. It had 44 likes, which is not very much. I've got 17,000 followers on Instagram,

and this is the important bit. It had 48 saves. So more people had saved that carousel and had liked it for me, that is an indicator of success. If somebody thinks that your piece of content is so valuable, also entertaining that they want to save it either. So they can look at it again later, or because they don't have time to have a look at it now,

but know that they will want to look at it later. That for me suggests real intent as does sharing. So if you think about your own behavior as a content consumer, when you hit that share button, you are generally sharing things that you find valuable things that connect with you, emotionally, things that make you laugh, things sometimes that upset you,

but saving and sharing shows real intent comments due to. So again, when I'm looking at my own content, I'm not looking at the number of fees. So for example, I have Instagram real, sometimes that get maybe 2000 beers, but they get loads of comments, people asking follow up questions or asking me to make a reel on something else. Or if I have a real tutorial on another topic that they're interested in that to me shows real intent.

That is somebody who may well become a customer or client in the future. I've had reels that have had over a hundred thousand views, which have been a bit silly and fun, and people have found entertaining. Give me a real with 2000 views, a ton of comments saves and shares any day, because that is the content that will lead to sales.

Now platforms differ in terms of how much information you can get natively. So for example, I think at the moment only Instagram and Tik TOK will give you saves. So if you can't track saves, have a look at shares. There are third party tools that will give you much deeper data. I'm just talking about what you get when you look at the insights on your app.

And if you're listening to this in the future, things may well have changed, but what you really want to be looking at is saves and shares that suggests real intent and real genuine comments. Questions. What about this? Could you make something on that? Or could you cover this topic? Do you have any content on this that shows real interest in 10 engagement,

that person, well, there's a likelihood they might become a customer or client in the future. So what does it mean if you are getting lots of saves and shares on your content, or if you get lots of saving shares on a particular piece of content? Well, it usually means make more like it. However, do proceed with caution, me getting lots of saves and shares on an educational piece of content that leads towards the products and services that I sell.

That's definitely assigned to make more of that content, me getting loads of likes and shares on. And I'm thinking of a real example here. I did an Instagram reel where I dressed up in a greatest showman outfit and it made people smile and laugh, although it was fun. And it was great for building that engagement. I don't think I should be doing that kind of content and my relationship with my audience.

I wouldn't create that kind of content every day, even though I find it really fun and really enjoy it because I know ultimately what's going to generate leads and sales. My business is the more practical, how to tutorials the tips, the tactics, the inspiration, the practical stuff that people can actually go away and implement and say, well, I had a result with that.

What else have you got? So what does it mean if your saves and shares are low or existent, and you're not getting many comments on your content? Well, this is not nice to hear, but it probably means that your content isn't really resonating with your ideal customers. Clients, if the content you're posting is not inspiring them to take action by saving,

sharing, or leaving a genuine comment, asking a question, asking if you have any content on a related topic, it's not hitting the spot, which means they're not going to follow you. And if they're not moved to follow, they're definitely not going to buy, which can be tough to hear, but at least you can do something about it. If that's the case for you,

if you're posting content that isn't getting any saves shares, it's not getting any comments. And by the way, when you first start out, you're not going to be getting 48 saves on your posts, but you might do. But most people, you might start to get one or two shares and saves. You might post a few things that get a ton of comments,

but for most people, it's just those little sparks of light. You'll just start to see little sparks of interest. One, save one, share. It's probably not all going to come at once, but if you're saying nothing, no comments, no shares, no saves. And it's continuing week after week after week, then, well, if you carry on doing the same things and doing things that aren't working,

you're going to get the same results. So you've got to roll your sleeves up. You've got to try and figure out what your ideal customers or clients will engage with. It's nothing to do with the algorithm. You get the algorithm to work in your favor by creating, engaging content. So do some research, look at what your competitors are doing. Look at what people in the space who are getting great engagement on the content.

What are they doing? And how does it differ to what you're doing? If you need to ask somebody, ask a friend or a colleague to look at it objectively and tell you if you're in my co-writers club, be brave, come and post in the group and tell us that your content isn't getting engagement. And we'll probably be able to see why,

but like I say, do something about it. Because if you carry on doing things that aren't working, you will continue to get the same disappointing results. So I hope you found that useful as ever. I do love hearing from you. If you want to connect with me on social media, I'm at Jan Murray UK.