How to Track Social Media Performance: A Guide for Small UK Businesses

Businesses need to check if social posts actually reach and engage their customers. In fact, industry data shows about 61% of marketers consider social media analytics key to success, and 78% use it to monitor campaigns.

By visualising metrics in dashboards like the example above, you can quickly spot trends. As Blackbird Marketing notes, continuously monitoring social media performance and tweaking strategies helps maximise engagement and ROI. Tracking matters because it ties social media to real business goals.

First, pick 2–3 core objectives (brand awareness, leads, website visits, sales, etc.) that match your business. This ensures you track metrics that relate to those goals. For example, if your goal is sales, focus on link clicks and conversions; if it’s local awareness, focus on reach and follower growth. Avoid getting distracted by vanity metrics (lots of likes or followers) that don’t directly show business outcomes.

Key Metrics to Track

Reach and Impressions

Reach and impressions measure how many people see your content. Reach is the count of unique users who saw a post; impressions count how many times your content was displayed (one person can generate multiple impressions). For a small retail store, high reach means many potential customers saw your promotion. If reach is low, try boosting the post or using local hashtags. However, reach alone doesn’t guarantee success – it must lead to engagement or action.

Pro Tip: Post when your audience is most active. Check Instagram or Facebook Insights for peak user times to improve your reach.

Engagement (Likes, Comments, Shares, Saves)

Engagement metrics show how people interact with your posts. This includes likes, comments, shares, and saves. An engagement rate is often calculated as (total interactions ÷ total reach)×100%, revealing how relevant your content is.

For example, a local café might ask a fun question in its caption to spark comments, or encourage followers to share a recipe post. Shares and comments are particularly valuable because they indicate genuine interest and can expose your brand to more people.

Pro Tip: Ask questions or invite comments in your posts. Encouraging interaction boosts engagement and signals to the platform that your content is worth sharing with more people.

Clicks and Conversions

Ultimately, many small businesses want social posts to drive action: website visits, inquiries, or sales. Link clicks (click-through rate) show how many people clicked a link in your post or bio to visit your site. Conversion metrics measure the actions taken after clicking (newsletter sign-ups, purchases, quote requests). For example, if you share a link to a booking form, track how many people clicked it and how many completed a booking. As Blackbird’s guide explains, set up Google Analytics with UTM tracking to measure social referral traffic and conversions.

Pro Tip: Use UTM parameters on your social links. This way, Google Analytics can show exactly how many visitors and conversions came from each post or campaign.

Using a Social Media Tracker Spreadsheet

A spreadsheet is a simple, powerful way to log your social metrics. For example, the Blackbird Social Analytics Tracker (available on our Digital Marketing Resources page) has sections for each metric category. Include key sections like:

• Overview Dashboard: A summary tab with charts showing month-to-month performance (reach, followers, engagement, etc.) and goal progress.

• Platform Tabs: Separate sheets for each social platform (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.) where you record weekly or monthly metrics.

• Content Analysis: A section to note your top-performing posts by type or topic and the engagement they received.

• Audience Insights: If available, track follower demographics and behaviour trends.

• Conversion Tracking: Log visits, leads or sales generated from each platform (you can pull this from Google Analytics).

Every time you post or run a campaign, enter the latest figures. Over time you’ll see patterns. For instance, you might notice that videos get twice the engagement of images, prompting you to make more videos. Or that traffic from one platform converts better than another, guiding you where to focus.

Keep your tracker updated. Check your metrics daily for any big spikes or drops. Each week, update the core numbers and highlight your top and bottom posts. At the end of the month, fill in the full dashboard, compare results against your targets, and note any insights.

Pro Tip: Set a recurring reminder on your calendar for updating the tracker. Even 10 minutes a week can keep you consistent and reveal important trends.

Turning Data into Action

Collecting numbers is only useful if you act on them. Look for patterns and ask why the numbers changed. For each insight, use a simple approach: note what happened, form a hypothesis, take action, and measure results. For example, one business observed that their Instagram audience was 3× more likely to bounce (leave the site) than LinkedIn visitors. They hypothesised that Instagram followers were at an earlier stage of the buying journey, so they adjusted by using Instagram for fun brand stories and LinkedIn for direct offers, which improved their conversion rate.

You can also run tests. Try one change at a time: post an image vs. a video, or try different posting times for a week. Record the results and compare them in your spreadsheet. Over time, even small tweaks (like moving your post schedule by an hour, or testing different hashtags) can boost results.

Pro Tip: Write a brief note for any metric spike or dip (for example, “promotion ran this week”) in your spreadsheet. That way, you’ll remember the context when reviewing the data later.

The businesses that succeed with social analytics stay consistent and focus on outcomes. Always tie your metrics back to your goals and remember that engagement is a means to an end (like leads or sales), not the end itself.

For more help, visit our Digital Marketing Resources page. There you’ll find the free Social Analytics Tracker spreadsheet, a Social Media ROI calculator, a Content Performance Matrix, and more tools to simplify tracking.

By following these steps, even a busy tradesperson or small business owner can make social media data work for them. Keep it simple, be consistent, and let the numbers guide your social media strategy.