If you are a business owner, you’ve likely heard of the term KPIs or key performance indicators. KPIs are designed to measure success within a business. Some examples of Key Performance Indicators could be: how much money is coming in and going out, newsletter signups, customers in the door, etc. In the field of social media we measure KPIs in likes, comments, shares, saves, and views. With the rise of video content on social media, it can be hard to measure what success looks like for your business. Are more views even getting you anywhere? Are likes turning into sales? How can you get people to share your content? KPIs can help with understanding the types of content that your audience responds to, engages with, and wants to see more of. Let’s dive into how knowing your KPIs can influence the success of short form video content.

For business owners, social media can often feel like an unstructured and overwhelming thing to do. Creating content has moved from being easy and lighthearted to being vital to a business’s success. So how can you use KPIs to build a stronger and more reliable social media presence? Think of KPIs like the foundation that you’re setting for your business’s social media profile. Let’s take the KPI “shares” for example. If you’re really interested in your content getting more shares, there is a formula that you can develop to make sure that happens more often (more on that later). But first, you need to know that shares = success on your page. This foundation will give you and your team something to work towards – a goal to reach. “This month our goal is shares. If we get more shares on our content, then we’re hitting our bigger goal of brand awareness” sounds and feels a lot better than “Oh we should probably post this to Instagram, right?”. If you do not build out that structure, it is going to be harder for you to see success on your business’s profiles.

Key Performance Indicators can benefit you and your business because you are, one, showing yourself that there is a way to reach success on social media and two, you have something to work towards. This can help with consistent posting and community engagement. 

Community engagement is one of the most important things you will do for your social media profiles. Community on social media matters so much because it helps you understand who you’re talking to and helps them build trust with your brand or company. When consumers build trust with a brand, they are more likely to spend money on that brand, to spread that brand via word of mouth, and to engage in your content, which is ultimately going to lead you to more sales down the line. KPIs require community because we are measuring success through likes, comments, views, shares, and saves. All of these things demand an engaged community to level up. When you have an engaged community, there is more money in your pocket.

Now let’s pair what we’ve learned about KPIs and social media to the success of short from video content.  Short form video content is content that is 3 to 10 seconds in length– think of TikToks, Reels, YouTube shorts, etc. This is the type of content that is being consumed at a rapid rate, and to be relevant on social media, you need to get on board with it. We are seeing algorithms across platforms pushing this type of content and we’re also seeing a lot of people freaking out about where to begin, and how to add it into their already busy schedules. Making short, aesthetically pleasing, snappy, exciting videos can be really intimidating. Here are some ways that you can use Key Performance Indicators to develop better success in your short form videos.

Work smarter, not harder. You can use your KPIs as a way to develop a content formula that you can come back to over and over again. This  formula will help you to create a structure when you’re trying to develop new types of content. Let’s start here: you want more likes on your videos. Likes = your KPI. You’ve experimented with video content on your page before and you know that 4-second long, colorful, bright videos do really well because they get more likes than anything else. Your next step is to pull apart that video– what really worked? How can you break it down into a step-by-step process? This will be your content formula and will act as a template for your content creation process whenever you want to get more likes on your page.

In order to understand the results that you want, especially if you want more likes or views, you want to be creating content that reaches an audience and then engages them immediately. Again, KPIs do not exist without community in the context of social media, so if you are trying to get more views on your TikToks, you need to come up with a formula that will enhance your views. A client of mine measures success in shares because their bigger goal is brand visibility and engagement. With shares, new eyes will see the product and, simultaneously, engage our existing community. It’s a win for brand visibility and brand loyalty. Once we decided this as our goal, we went through the content we’ve posted in the past and figured out what got the most shares. We then broke down that content into a formula, and now we use that formula to create more short-form video content that will generate more shares.

Using KPIs is absolutely necessary for the success of your business’s social media. This is because it provides a structure within a very unstructured world. As short form videos continue to rise and beat out other types of content, business owners need to get really comfortable with understanding how to make content that engages their audience and gets new eyes on their brand. Key performance indicators are your gateway to building out consistent content that is true to your brand, will get you results, and that is on trend with what’s happening on social media.