These days, video is basically the primary form of content across all social platforms. But if you want your video strategy to succeed, you have to keep an eye on your social video metrics.<\/p>\n
Like other social analytics, video metrics show you what\u2019s working, what isn\u2019t, and any opportunities for future wins. But those might look a little different from the analytics you\u2019re used to.<\/p>\n
Keep reading for a full breakdown of the social video metrics you need to monitor, including platform-specific numbers and how to interpret the data.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Bonus: <\/strong>Get a free social media analytics report template<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>that shows you the most important metrics to track for each network.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Social video metrics, like views, retention rate, and average watch time, allow you to track and improve the performance of your video content.<\/p>\n Like metrics for other types of social posts, video metrics provide insight into whether or not you\u2019re reaching people, if followers are interacting with your videos, and how engaged your audience is.<\/p>\n There are many video metrics to track, from view count to average watch time to follower growth. But to get the most out of your video strategy, the key is to pick the right ones for your brand.<\/p>\n And the \u201cright\u201d ones all depend on your goals. What are you trying to accomplish with your video?<\/p>\n Are you trying to increase awareness<\/strong> around a product launch? In that case, you want to monitor your video reach<\/strong> to make sure people are seeing your content.<\/p>\n Maybe you\u2019re simply trying to increase your audience size<\/strong>. That means you want to keep a close eye on your followers<\/strong> after you release your video.<\/p>\n Does the video tell your viewers to like<\/strong>, comment<\/strong>, and subscribe<\/strong> (a.k.a every single YouTube video ever)? You\u2019ll want to make sure your engagement<\/strong> numbers are up to see if your CTA is working.<\/p>\n To find out which video KPIs are worth tracking, I asked Eileen Kwok, who manages Hootsuite\u2019s social video content, for her insights.<\/p>\n Here are the top social video metrics that can tell you the most about your performance across all channels.<\/p>\n The most important (and obvious) metric to track is your video views<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Each video you post will have a view count. Not only does this metric tell you how many accounts your video reached, but it\u2019s also an indicator of whether or not your video will go \u201cviral,\u201d according to Kwok.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom an awareness standpoint, we care about how widely shared the video is to see if this was something the algorithm favored,\u201d says Kwok.<\/p>\n Plus, Instagram\u2019s recently made views the primary metric for all <\/em>content, not just Reels, so you know it matters to the platforms.<\/p>\n\n If you have a consistent video view rate, you know your videos are regularly reaching people \u2014 congrats! You\u2019re in a pretty good position.<\/p>\n But if your views are all over the place, it\u2019s worth analyzing the ones that have generated the most views<\/a> to figure out what made them stand out.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what counts as a view by platform:<\/p>\n Engagement<\/strong> is a big category, but it\u2019s worth considering as a whole. <\/p>\n Generally, engagement describes how your audience interacts with your content, and people like Instagram\u2019s Adam Mosseri are pretty clear that engagement metrics are among the most important to track.<\/p>\n (Psstt: Adam, thanks for being so transparent about these numbers!)<\/p>\n Video engagement includes likes<\/strong>, comments<\/strong>, shares<\/strong>, and saves<\/strong>, and can indicate how much your video resonated with viewers.<\/p>\n You can review these metrics as a whole in the platforms themselves (like the screenshot above) or you can check out even more information in a social media tool like Hootsuite.<\/p>\n Reviewing your video engagement on its own is useful, but it can be helpful to zoom out a little, too. Check out average engagement rates by industry<\/a> to see where you stand, or use Hootsuite Analytics<\/a> to compare your performance to your top competitors.<\/p>\n With Hootsuite\u2019s social media benchmarking, you can find out how others in your industry are doing on social and compare your results with just a few clicks.<\/p>\n You can set up custom timeframes, switch between networks \u2014 Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and TikTok<\/strong> \u2014 and look up benchmarks for metrics like engagement rate, clicks, shares and more.<\/p>\n You will also find resources to improve your performance<\/strong> right in the summary section:<\/p>\n And, if you need to present your results to your team, boss, or other stakeholders, you can easily download your comparison report as a PDF file.<\/p>\n If your engagement is low, you may need read up on social video best practices<\/a> to improve the quality, format, and overall strategy behind your videos.<\/p>\n Average watch time<\/strong> tells you how long viewers watched your video and when they dropped off. This can be a very telling metric if you want to understand how your video content is performing, says Kwok.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you post a one-minute video and the average watch time is three seconds, it\u2019s an indicator that the start of your video is missing a hook,\u201d she points out. \u201cIf you posted a three-second video and the average watch time is 5 seconds, that means the user watched the video more than once.\u201d<\/p>\n This metric also gives you a better idea of how long your videos should be<\/a> to capture your specific audience.<\/p>\n Here are some platform-specific metrics related to watch time:<\/p>\n Audience growth rate<\/strong> is an essential social media metric<\/a> for every platform and content type. Follower growth measures the total number of new followers you receive in a select time period.<\/p>\n On YouTube, for example, you can find this under Analytics<\/strong>, then Audience<\/strong>.<\/p>\n If one of your video strategy goals is to grow your audience or increase brand awareness, then it\u2019s important to keep an eye on this metric after you post a new video.<\/p>\n Think of your followers (or subscribers) as your fans,\u00a0because that\u2019s what they are. Pay close attention to the content that appeals to your core audience and results in a rise in subscribers. By catering to their needs, you\u2019ll be able to improve all <\/em>of your key social video metrics.<\/p>\n Shares<\/strong> are when viewers send your video to another user through DM or share it on their own page or story. And yes, while shares technically fall under engagement, they\u2019re worth tracking as their own video metric.<\/p>\n Shares indicate that your video resonated with the viewer enough for them to share it with someone else. But shares are also an important metric from a consideration standpoint, according to Kwok.<\/p>\n \u201cShares are a form of word-of-mouth marketing,\u201d she says. \u201cUsers are more likely to pay attention to content that\u2019s shared by their peers.\u201d<\/p>\n Plus, Instagram\u2019s been pretty open about the importance of creating shareable content. If your videos are getting more shares, they\u2019re more like to get priority in the recommendation algorithms.<\/p>\n Saves are technically another engagement metric, but they can tell you a lot about how your audience receives your content.<\/p>\n When someone saves<\/strong> your video, it tells you that the video resonated with them. It\u2019s an extra step to save a video, but it means that they plan on coming back to it and rewatching it.<\/p>\n Taking a closer look at which Reels, TikToks, Shorts and other social videos are saved most often can tell you a lot about what your audience finds most valuable.<\/p>\n Understanding how users are finding your videos is also important to your video strategy. The traffic source<\/strong> metric can tell you where to spend more time and resources distributing your video content.<\/p>\n On YouTube, for example, you can find traffic source types in your analytics dashboard<\/a>. This metric tells you how viewers found your video, both within YouTube and from external sources.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re posting on TikTok, it\u2019s important to see how much traffic comes from the FYP, says Kwok.<\/p>\n \u201cThis indicates that the keywords used in the video were picked up by the TikTok algorithm, and your video was pushed to a wider audience,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Want to take your social videos to the next level? You need to know what your goals are before you figure out which video metrics to track.<\/p>\n It\u2019s likely that your videos are trying to do a combination of a few things \u2014 and that\u2019s great! In those situations, you\u2019ll want a good tool to keep an eye on all those metrics across different platforms.<\/p>\nWhat are social video metrics and what can they tell you?<\/span><\/h2>\n
The top 7 social video metrics to track<\/span><\/h2>\n
1. View count<\/h3>\n
![\"Hootsuite's](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/social-video-metrics-views-edited.png?resize=1072%2C1429&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n\n
2. Engagement<\/h3>\n
![\"Social](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/social-video-metrics-engagement-edited.png?resize=1170%2C877&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/social-video-metrics-benchmarking-analytics-620x170.png?resize=620%2C170&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/industry-benchmarks-620x174.jpeg?resize=620%2C174&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n3. Average watch time<\/h3>\n
![\"social](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/social-video-metrics-average-watch-time-620x66.png?resize=620%2C66&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\nFacebook<\/h4>\n
\n
LinkedIn<\/h4>\n
\n
TikTok<\/h4>\n
\n
YouTube<\/h4>\n
\n
4. Follower growth rate<\/h3>\n
![\"social](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/social-video-metrics-follower-growth-rate-620x154.jpg?resize=620%2C154&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n5. Shares<\/h3>\n
![\"a](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/social-video-metrics-shares-edited.png?resize=1170%2C658&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n6. Saves<\/h3>\n
![\"social](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/social-video-metrics-saves-edited.png?resize=1119%2C629&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n7. Traffic source<\/h3>\n
![\"Social](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/social-video-metrics-video-views-by-section-620x248.png?resize=620%2C248&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\nHow to track and improve video performance using Hootsuite<\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/NEW-Analytics-620x442.png?resize=620%2C442&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n