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Measuring Website and Social Media Engagement

Knowing how well your online marketing is performing requires the strategic and methodical use of analytic data. This article covers approaches to data use and common website and social media analytic data and their use.

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Updated:

December 16, 2025

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A version of this article first appeared in Aquaculture Magazine April-May 2022. Vol. 48, No. 2. Pp. 74-76 under the title 'Improve Online Marketing Using Website and Social Analytics.'

You may be familiar with the saying, "you cannot manage what you don’t measure." As with all aspects of your business, this applies to your digital marketing activities as well. To measure digital marketing performance and determine its success you must understand analytics. You need to decide whether or not you are meeting your social media, marketing, and business objectives.

In today's digital landscape, there is a plethora of data and tools available to marketers. Much data accompanies or is typically readily available through the platforms you are already using. Therefore, the challenge in analyzing digital marketing performance is not in data availability but rather in the strategic gathering and use of data. Through a survey, web analytics company Hotjar was able to categorize respondents according to their approach to data utilization (Figure 1). The five categories that were defined are:

Ignore: don't collect or report on analytics data
Basic: use data to measure WHAT is happening
Intermediate: use data to measure what is happening + determine WHY
Advanced: use data to measure what is happening + determine why + make One-Off data-informed changes
Elite: use data to measure what is happening + determine why + make Ongoing data-informed changes

Figure 1. Marketer Data Utilization Categories

Ideally, you want to fall into the elite category, that is, using data not just to simply measure what is happening on your website and social accounts, but also to determine why and, finally, make ongoing adjustments to your marketing activities. But whatever category you fall into currently, your goal should be to progress to the next level.

Effectively using web and social media analytic data begins with revisiting the business's overarching goals as well as specific marketing goals and objectives. Many businesses devote significant time to developing clever marketing strategies. Goals and objectives are determined, creative content is developed, and thought is given to the precise timing to post content. This should be followed by identifying the specific data that is needed to determine whether the content and timing of marketing activities are performing as intended. How will you prove to yourself and others that you are achieving the goals that have been set forth?

How can social media engagement be measured?

Measuring social media engagement can be accomplished using analytic data that each social media platform collects and makes available. Major social media platforms offer internal analytic information for business accounts. While there is some variation in the specific data collected and provided by each, for the most part, simple post engagement data and follower information (typically after reaching a minimum threshold number of followers for each platform) is readily available. Analytic data provided by platforms evolve as the functionality and features of those platforms evolve, so it is important to stay fresh on what information is currently available. Links to relevant areas for some social media platforms are provided in the resources section at the end of this article.

Social media analytics is the data that reports on the performance of your social media presence(s) (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, etc.). Initially, social media success is often based on organic quantitative data (Table 1). However, the value of these metrics varies. For example, some of the data is often referred to as vanity metrics. Follower or subscriber numbers and impressions are examples of vanity metrics. Preferably, there should be a focus on actionable metrics or the data that quantify actions taken by social media users: reactions, shares/retweets, link clicks, and event responses, for instance.

Consider the value of 12,000 followers on a Facebook page if only a handful are engaging with your content. Rather, a smaller follower group that is highly engaged by providing feedback to posts or sharing your content with their networks can prove more valuable, and perhaps profitable, for your business.

Inorganic analytic data (Table 1), tied to paid advertising campaigns, is vital for determining whether those campaigns are eliciting the desired responses and actions from the target audience. For example, does an ad generate a high number of clicks, thereby lowering the cost per click and indicating an effective ad?

Table 1. Quantitative Analytic Data

Organic

Impressions
Followers/Subscribers
Reactions/Likes
Shares/Retweets
Comments
Favorites/Pins
Video view length
Link clicks
Event responses

Inorganic

Costs per Click (CPC)
Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM)
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Cost per Conversion
Conversion Rate

Demographic information for followers can help determine whether you're connecting with your targeted audience(s) and also target the timing of your posts when followers are online. However, you should be aware that follower demographic information is what those individuals complete for their profiles and may not always be accurate. This data typically includes:

Gender
Age
Location (city, state, country)
Language

Qualitative data can also be gleaned from social media. Through comments, you can assess sentiments, context, and themes. For example, are you posting content intended to be humorous, yet it's eliciting negative reactions? Or are you publishing content that resonates with your audience and is reflected through positive reactions and comments? Perhaps you can identify themes in the comments or replies. By layering qualitative data on quantitative data for your social media actions, you will better understand your audience and move into the intermediate, advanced, or elite data utilization category. Use this information to guide your future post activity.

How should businesses time their social media outreach?

Upon starting a social media presence on any platform (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.), targeting specific times (day of week or time of day) to post should not be a high priority. Rather, focus on regularly and consistently posting engaging content that showcases your business's value proposition. There are several resources that outline the best times to post on each social media site determined by level of engagement (for example, this resource from SproutSocial: Best Times to Post on Social Media in 2023 [2024]). The information shared in these resources, however, pertains to all users of the individual platform. That is, it is based on the engagement activities of a platform's global users.

Over time, the platform you are using will collect data on when followers of your social media presence are online. This data on "active times" can then be used to schedule posts based on when your followers are active on the social media site. For example, if the greatest number of your followers are on the platform at 5 a.m. on Saturday and at 7:00 p.m. on Sunday, you'll want to publish content at those times.

Image 1. Facebook post scheduling window showing active times for page followers

A drawback, however, is that you do not know the identities of the followers online at any point in time, so you will not know simply from the "active times" data which of your followers are actually online. To address this, you should pay attention to the level and type of engagement that your posts receive, noting when posts were published. For example, how many comments or shares did a post published at 10 a.m. on a Thursday receive? This information can be accessed through your business account. Image 2 shows an example of this from Meta Business Suite for a business Facebook Page.

Image 2. Facebook content analytic data

You can then identify posts that are performing well, select them to see a preview of the post, and by hovering over the reactions and share icons (circled in red in Image 3), you'll be able to note the specific individual or Page that engaged with that post.

Image 3. Facebook post with engagement types highlighted

It's important to keep in mind that Facebook and other social media platforms routinely make changes to the data they provide and how they organize its display, so check platform "Help" resources if you can't find what you're looking for.

How can businesses measure website traffic?

Business website traffic can also be measured through the use of analytic data. Google Analytics is the most well-known and widespread web analytics tool. Website owners simply need to embed code within their web code or insert the code in the appropriate field in their website builder to utilize Google Analytics. Google provides guidance on how to do this on their support page. See the list of resources at the end of this article for links.

What information does Google Analytics provide?

Website analytics is the data that report on the performance of your website, and importantly for direct-to-consumer businesses, the performance of your online store. Important web analytic data include:

Number of visitors – total number of website visitors during a given time period.
Unique visitors – the number of visitors counted just once in a reporting period. For example, a visitor coming to a website multiple times would only be counted as one visitor.
Bounce rate – the ratio of total visitors to those who leave seconds after arriving.
Session duration – length of time a visitor is active on your website.
Visitor location – geographic location of web visitors
Device type – electronic device visitors are using – desktop, mobile, tablet.
Traffic source – places on the web that your visitors came from. For instance, Facebook or a search engine.
E-commerce tracking

Image 4 shows an example of Google Analytics data on acquisition of website visitors, that is, from where did a visitor originate.

Image 4. Example Google Analytics data

These data can help businesses understand the content that web visitors are interested in, how they navigate around the site, pages that they spend more or less time on, and more. If a business is spending money on social marketing campaigns, for instance, understanding who visitors from the social sites are and what they do once they arrive on the website is important for assessing whether the site meets their expectations and needs.

How do businesses know who is visiting their site and how can they optimize it?

Without collecting data (for example, asking website visitors to subscribe to a newsletter or enter an email address to access select content), it is difficult/impossible to know for certainty who is visiting your business's website. Some businesses will have webpages dedicated to information for wholesalers or the media. While not foolproof, using Google Analytics to track the amount of traffic to these pages is one way to determine the number of visitors to a website that fall into those categories.

How should businesses divide their time across media channels?

Time is a valuable resource, so knowing how to most effectively allocate time to website and social media activities is important. For businesses getting started with online marketing, allotting a specific amount of time each day or week to each media channel is one way to ensure that too much time is not spent on any one channel – for it is easy to get pulled down a rabbit hole, particularly on social media.

Businesses experienced with online marketing, but unsure about which platform is the most effective for the business should revisit business goals and the metrics that were identified to be used to measure success. Then, pull that data from website analytics and each social media platform and study it over a period of time. This will allow you identify where you are or are not accomplishing goals or making satisfactory progress. You can then decide whether to continue investing the same time spent on each channel or increase or decrease time.

Maximizing the ROI from your online marketing comes from experimenting with the various aspects of your organic and inorganic presence. It's best to make changes to only a few aspects and then watch the results of your analytics. Did the changes improve or detract? This is a process that could take time and should be methodical. Making too many changes at once will make it difficult, if not impossible, to determine which change had an impact on your analytics. Changes to organic aspects may take much longer to realize (weeks or months) than inorganic changes, such as new ads on Facebook (hours or days). However, following this methodical process will lead you into elite data utilization and ultimately provide the greatest benefit to your online marketing strategy.