A post gets 10,000 views.
Brilliant.
Another gets 200.
Disappointing?
Maybe.
But before deciding which one performed better, there’s another question worth asking:
What happened next?
Because marketing metrics can look impressive without necessarily telling you very much about whether the marketing is working.
The numbers we notice aren’t always the numbers that matter
Social platforms make certain metrics very visible.
Views.
Likes.
Followers.
Comments.
Shares.
And those numbers aren’t meaningless.
They can tell you whether people are seeing or engaging with your content.
The problem is when they become the only measure of success.
Imagine one Reel gets 20,000 views.
Lots of people saw it.
But nobody visited your profile, clicked your link or enquired.
Another post gets just 12 likes.
But three people who are exactly the type of client you want send you a message.
Which one worked better?
The answer depends on what the content was designed to do.
A smaller number can be much more valuable
This is particularly important for smaller businesses.
You don’t necessarily need millions of people to see what you do.
You need the right people to notice, understand and act.
A business selling a £20 product online might quite reasonably care about very large reach.
A consultant who needs five new clients this year probably doesn’t need 100,000 followers.
They may be far more interested in whether the right decision-makers are engaging with their content.
Context matters.
Look further down the journey
Instead of stopping at the number the platform puts in front of you, look at what happened afterward.
If you publish a social post, you might look at:
- profile visits;
- website visits;
- link clicks;
- new followers;
- email sign-ups;
- messages;
- enquiries;
- bookings;
- sales.
With email, you might look beyond open rates at:
- what people clicked;
- what pages they visited;
- whether they replied;
- whether they booked;
- whether they bought.
With your website, traffic is useful to know.
But what are those visitors actually doing?
Are they reaching the important pages?
Are they abandoning the site?
Are they completing forms?
Are they booking?
The further you follow the journey, the clearer the picture becomes.
This doesn’t mean vanity metrics are useless
I’m not particularly keen on dividing everything neatly into “vanity metric” and “good metric.”
Because even something like views can be useful.
If your objective is awareness, reach matters.
If you’re testing different types of short-form video, watch time matters.
If you’re trying to build recognition, seeing that more people are regularly encountering your content can be valuable.
The problem is treating a metric as important simply because it’s easy to see.
The useful question is:
Does this number tell me whether the thing did the job I wanted it to do?
If yes, use it.
If not, look deeper.
Your action
Take your last three pieces of content and look beyond the headline numbers.
For each one, ask:
Did someone visit your profile?
Click?
Subscribe?
Reply?
Enquire?
Book?
Buy?
You may discover that the post you thought “did badly” was actually doing far more useful work than the one that got all the attention.
And that’s the point of clarity.
Not chasing the biggest number.
Understanding which numbers actually matter.