Nowadays, small businesses and social media go hand-in-hand. Marketing your business through various social platforms is the secret sauce to ensuring you get traffic, no matter how small you are.

But besides actually getting a sale, you may be wondering what other metrics are important to your online presence.

In no particular order, allow me to present to you the 5 social media metrics that are important for your small business.

1. Reach

Reach on social media is the pat on the back you need when you’re concerned no one’s looking at your profile.

Your reach is the total audience of a post (or account), and it relates to a lot of other social media metrics. Good reach is indicative that you’re doing something right.

When you’re marketing your business, using hashtags (but not on Facebook!) coupled with attractive product photography significantly increases that reach.

It’s pretty obvious that if your reach declines, that’s bad. But if your reach is stagnant that’s not that great either—since reach is the backbone of a lot of other metrics, to boost them, you’ll have to boost reach first.

2. Impressions

Impressions are actually very similar to reach, but refer to the total number of times your content has been seen, even if it’s seen by the same person several times.

So while your impressions may be higher than your reach, you can interpret that at least a few folks found your content worthy of having a second (or third or fourth!) look-see.

Now, if impressions are so much like reach, why even bother caring about them at all?

Because, if you ever want to boost a post, or run an ad, you’re probably going to pay per impressions. That’s where the term CPM comes from. CPM stands for Cost per Thousand Impressions.

3. Engagement

Ah, engagement.

It’s when all that reach and impressions come together, where people actually interact with your content—likes, comments, and shares galores!

That isn’t to say reach and impressions are bad (I’ve already assured you they’re not) but it means in addition to searching for content related to yours, the people searching are really digging your stuff.

Paul Rand, author of Highly Recommended: Harnessing the Power of Word of Mouth and Social Media to Build Your Brand and Your Business, writes, “Eighty percent of small-business social media activity ought to be about building relationships. You don’t want to be hitting up your fans only when you want them to buy from you.”

Paul, I agree!

4. Conversions

There are several definitions for what a conversion is, but I like this one: the word “conversion” represents any action on your website that is more valuable than someone that visits your site and leaves without doing anything.

In social media, there are no rules (just kidding [only half kidding]), and you can use that definition and apply it to your social profile.

I’m going to reiterate this again: conversions on social media are NOT ALWAYS ABOUT PURCHASES. Yes, making a sale is the end goal, but for your business’s social media, conversions are more like engagement, and if we’re talking what’s “valuable”, that most likely means gaining a follower out of someone who engages.

It’s a little less do-or-die, but because the definition of a conversion is also a bit looser, you can definitely apply it to an action that means more to you.

5. CTR

Click-through rate, or CTR, is more relevant if you have a website or blog for your business, but it’s the golden ticket that indicates all your social media efforts are coming together.

CTR takes the total number of users that view content (so, your reach) and compares it to those who clicked on a link to your website from your respective social platforms.

For a small business that’s just starting out, a rising CTR not only means those aforementioned social media efforts are being pulled off, it means your business’s future is bright and shiny.

Successfully marketing your business is no easy feat, but understanding the metrics that make your presence on social media tick is a great way to get to know your clientele and anticipate their needs.

Social media makes it easier than ever to market your brand, allowing anyone to do it, and you can be confident knowing your business will thrive as you master the inner-workings of your business’s social media.