What to Actually Measure
What to Actually Measure
A campaign you don't measure is a campaign you can't repeat. This page is about content-level performance: judging the post itself, not how far it spread or how much it sold, but how good the content was at holding attention and getting people to save, share, and respond.
The Signals That Matter
These signals tell you whether the content itself worked. None of them need reach, impressions, or sales data.
- Saves — the strongest signal. People save what they want to come back to. A high save count means the content was genuinely useful or worth keeping.
- Shares / sends — people put their own reputation on the line when they share. Shares mean the content struck a nerve.
- Comments — not just the count, the quality. Real questions and reactions beat one-word emojis. Read them for sentiment.
- Watch-through / completion rate (video) — the share of viewers who watched to the end. The clearest read on whether the hook and pacing held up.
- Average watch time and replays (video) — how long people stayed, and whether they looped it. Replays on a short video are a strong quality signal.
- Follower lift from the post — new follows the post drove. Content good enough to earn a follow is content worth repeating.
- Engagement mix — of all the engagement, how much is saves and shares versus likes. A post that's mostly saves and shares beats one that's mostly likes, even at the same like count.
The Vanity Metrics to Ignore
Top-line numbers feel good and tell you little about whether the content actually landed.
- Likes alone — the weakest signal. A post can rack up likes and still be forgettable.
- Raw follower count — tells you a creator's size, not whether their content works for you.
- Impressions and reach in isolation — distribution, not quality. A post can reach a lot of people and hold none of them.
The Golden Rule: Compare to Baseline
Judge each post against the creator's own baseline, not against other creators. A 6% save-and-share rate means little until you know that creator usually does 3%. Compare a post to that creator's median and you can see whether your brief made their content better or worse.
Pick one primary content signal before the campaign starts — usually save+share % or watch-through — and judge every post against it.
Next up: The Manual Way (Spreadsheet) — how to track these signals row by row when you're running just a handful of posts.