Why You Should Benchmark Your Performance on Social Media

Social media benchmarking puts context around your performance metrics. It is vital for two main reasons:

1. Determines whether performance is increasing or decreasing over time
2. Enables actionable insights for what to do next

Without performing social media benchmarking you have no way to gauge success on social media or even understand what represents “good” or “bad” performance.

There are two ways to benchmark your social media marketing:

1. Historical benchmarking against yourself over time, i.e.: month on month, week on week
2. Competitor benchmarking against a group of competitors that you determine

Most stakeholders and clients lack a reliable framework for how to evaluate social media marketing (i.e.: what is the return on their investment?). Measuring interactions and growth is fine but without benchmarking, you’re measuring in a silo and unable to tell a coherent narrative of performance over time.

In addition to this, social media benchmarking strengthens the overall business case for social media marketing and may even help you change perceptions in your organization. Perhaps social is viewed internally as an expense but over time you can change that perception so that social is viewed instead as an investment that yields a tangible return.

Finally, social media benchmarking provides important competitor intelligence and helps you understand what kind of content works in your niche or industry. This isn’t about simply copying tactics that work for competitors...