7 TikTok Metrics You Should Track to Measure Performance

Tracking key TikTok metrics is crucial to building an engaged following, increasing brand awareness, and reaching your marketing goals.

With more than 800 million monthly active users, TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms. Brands that want to grow and reach a larger audience will have to take advantage of the platform.

Just like other social media platforms, you need to track the performance of your marketing strategy on TikTok. Tracking your performance will help you identify what’s working and the areas you need to improve on.

To help you get started with tracking your TikTok performance, we’ve outlined the essential TikTok metrics you need to measure and how to go about it.

Post Reach Percentage

Reach is one of the most important TikTok metrics to take into account when measuring your brand performance.

Reach is the number of unique TikTokers that have viewed your post at least once during a given period. It gives you an overview of how much awareness your brand sees on the platform. So if your brand goal on TikTok is to increase your brand awareness, then your focus should be on increasing your TikTok reach.

How to calculate your Post Reach Percentage

STEP 1: Measure the reach of any given post.

STEP 2: Divide the post reach by your total number of followers.

STEP 3: Multiply by 100 to get your post reach percentage.

(Reached Audience / Total Followers) X 100 = Post Reach Percentage

How to locate your ‘Reached Audience’ using TikTok Analytics

STEP 1: Go to the post you want to measure and click on the three-dotted lines on the right side of your screen.

STEP 2: Click on Analytics

STEP 3: Scroll down till you get to the Audience Territories section. Under this section, you will find your ‘Reached Audience’.

Several factors can affect the reach of your posts.

Did you publish when your audience was most engaged online? What hashtags did you use in the post? Did you try out a new trend or challenge? Was there anything different about the type of video you published that made your audience significantly engage with the post?

These factors above are some of the things that might affect the reach of your TikTok post.

Measuring the post reach percentage of each of your posts will help you identify the kind of videos your target audience loves to see from you.

Follower Growth Rate

A high number of followers is great for brand credibility, but the follower count mustn’t remain stagnant. A stagnant follower count signifies that your TikTok marketing campaigns are not working.

Your follower growth rate will help you identify whether your brand is catching the attention of your target audience. When evaluating your TikTok performance, your follower growth rate is a more efficient metric to measure than your actual number of followers.

For instance,

Brand A had 1000 followers at the end of November. In December, they got 100 new followers. Brand A’s growth rate is 10%.

Brand B had 10000 followers at the end of November. In December, they got 10 new followers. Brand B’s growth rate is 1%.

Of the two brands, only Brand A is seeing significant growth. If both brands maintain the same growth rate, Brand A will soon have more followers and engagements than Brand B. For Brand B to grow, it will need to change its TikTok marketing strategy.

If you use Iconosquare’s TikTok analytic tool called Tiklytics, you will see detailed information on your follower growth evolution. With the tool, you will be able to track your follower growth daily.

Engagement rate

Your TikTok engagement rate is an indicator of how well your audience responds to your content. A high engagement rate shows that your audience enjoys the kind of content you are posting.

The more followers that comments, likes, shares, and saves your content, the higher your engagement rate.

How do you calculate your engagement rate?

STEP 1: Divide your total number of likes and comments by your follower count.

STEP 2: Multiply by 100 to give you a percentage.

(Total number of likes & comments / follower count) X 100 = Engagement Rate

If you use Tiklytics, you will be able to easily measure how your audience interacts with your content.

On the app, you can see the full engagement history of your entire TikTok profile.

You can also compare your engagement growth rate for different time frames. This is a comparison of three months:

Tiklytics will also help you measure the average engagement rate per post. This is gotten by dividing the total engagement by the number of videos you have posted within a chosen time frame.

You will also see data on the average engagement rate per post for each of these metrics: likes, views, comments, and shares.

If your engagement rate is high, it means that a large number of your followers enjoy your content and are actively engaging with it. Keep moving forward with your current strategy.

On the other hand, if your engagement rate is low, it could be for different reasons. But the two main reasons your TikTok engagement might be low is because your content isn’t resonating with your followers, or you are posting when your followers are not active online.

Comments per post

For video content, likes are not the best way to measure performance. Some users might like a video without watching it. Comments are a better metric to measure.

When a user leaves a comment on your post, it shows that they watched the video and they connected to it in some way. That’s why some posts might have millions of likes with just a few hundred comments. Commenting requires time and thought.

This metric allows you to keep an eye on your average comment rate. It indicates how well your audience engages with a post. A positive comment average rate signifies that you have a loyal fan base.  If your comment average goes down, you will have to figure out what went wrong. Did they not like the video idea or did you post at the wrong times?

For every video you post, check out the number of comments it gets over time. You should notice a pattern over time that can help your TikTok strategy. For instance, if your audience comments a lot on a type of video, create more videos like that to keep your engagement high.

If your TikTok account is still small, it’s easy to review your posts one by one to see the number of comments you have. This will be difficult if you have a huge account. Luckily, if you use Tiklytics you can see the average comment per video for any timeframe.

Referral traffic

This metric helps you identify how much referral traffic you get from TikTok.

The goal of most brands that join TikTok is to increase brand awareness and also drive traffic to a landing page or product page, depending on the action they want their followers to take.

Using TikTok as a referral channel can be difficult because the only place you can add a clickable link is in your bio. You can also choose to include URLs in your captions, but they won’t be clickable. Either way, it can be challenging to measure how much referral traffic you get from TikTok.

How to track referral traffic from TikTok

The most efficient way to track referral traffic from TikTok is with UTM parameters. UTM parameters are tags that you add to a URL that lets Google Analytics know where the referred user is coming from.

If you are creating any landing pages for your TikTok campaign, you will need to set up your UTM codes to track your URLs.

You can also check the social network referral traffic section in Google Analytics to see how much traffic you get from TikTok.

Hashtag performance

This TikTok metric helps you measure the performance of the hashtags you use in your captions.

Hashtags are a key part of a successful TikTok marketing strategy. Using hashtags in your captions can help increase the discoverability of your videos. Using trending hashtags that are relevant to your brand and content will draw more attention to your videos.

How to measure hashtag performance using Tiklytics

For a more in-depth analysis of a hashtag’s performance, use Tiklytics. With Tiklytics, you will be able to see the average number of views, likes, comments, shares, and engagement rate for each hashtag. You can also compare two hashtags.

On the comparison table, you will see the general performance of each hashtag, as well as their different engagement rates.

How to measure hashtag performance using TikTok

Unlike Tiklytics, TikTok analytics will only show you the number of views that a hashtag has.

To see how many people have viewed a hashtag, search for the hashtag on the Discover page. On the result page, you will see how many views the hashtag has. You will also see related hashtags and the most popular videos using the hashtag

All this data will help you choose the best hashtags to use in your captions. However, keep in mind that hashtag performance is prone to change. Just like other social media platforms, current trends affect the performance of these hashtags. Regularly monitor this metric to help you decide on the best hashtags to add to your content strategy.

Best time to post

Finding your best time to post is an effective way to reach your TikTok audience when they are most likely to engage with your content.

According to a study from Influencer Marketing Hub, the best times to post on TikTok are 6 am to 7 am, and 7 pm to 11 pm. Days with the highest engagement are Tuesday by 9 am, Thursday by noon, and Friday by 5 am.

Of course, this figure will be slightly different depending on your audience and their location. Other factors like interests, gender, and age of your audience will determine the best time for you to post. The data from the study can serve as a starting point when choosing the best time to post for your followers.

Check out this very in-depth guide we have written on the best time to post on TikTok.

Conclusion

Here are all the key metrics that will help you create the best TikTok content strategies.

Your turn.

What TikTok metrics do you think are the most useful? Do share in the comments below!

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