Why should you benchmark your performance on social media?

In order to prove that you are performing better than your competition, you need to do some social media benchmarking. However, this can be challenging if you don’t know how to, or understand the benefits it may have for you and your company.

Are you wondering how to outperform your competition, read on to find out how you can do exactly that. 

Benchmarking in the world of social media is a single metric that measures the average performance of all brands in an industry.

The most successful performance of a brand's social media campaign can be measured through a social network's inbuilt analytics. However, this can sometimes be difficult to monitor, and that is why some companies prefer to partner with a social media marketing agency, which will have the knowledge and tools to help you with this. 

Why are performance benchmarks important?

Social media benchmarks are important as they provide context for your social media KPIs, allowing you to understand the reason for your results and show the bigger industry picture.

Another important reason why you should benchmark your performance on social media is because it helps to set realistic goals and expectations for future campaigns.

It allows you to understand the norms and behaviours of what attracts your audience and enables a successful campaign without having to put in additional effort.

Regularly monitoring your competitors' social media and measuring how you compare with them will play a significant role in helping to improve your social media account performance.

Top tools to benchmark your performance on social media

Monitoring your social media account's performance can be pretty simple with the right tools (Unmetric, Vaizle, Quintly and Hootsuite Analytics) at hand.

Some will have a built-in benchmarking tool that allows you to compare the performance of your social media accounts against its competitors.

Key metrics that you'll want to keep an eye out for will include shares, mentions, and reactions, alongside other factors such as demographic and relatable influencers. However, metrics will vary depending on the social media platform of choice.

Overall, while social media benchmarking can present the overview performance, being aware of your competition will help your brand expand and your social media strategy to level up.

Once you can understand and put it all into practice, you will eventually be able to highlight whether you're overperforming, underperforming or on the right track.