What Are Vanity Metrics & Do They Matter

Vanity metrics are exactly what they sound like – metrics that make your business or personal brand look good. They are flashy and the easiest to identify in the form of likes, followers, website traffic, etc. They can be tempting to rely on in making strategic decisions, especially if the numbers look good. However, just because something looks good, doesn’t mean it IS good.

Vanity metrics don’t necessarily contribute to the overall understanding of your business’s performance so it’s not very helpful to report solely on these metrics during recap season. At the same time, they shouldn’t be completely ignored either and we’ll explain why below.

Examples of Common Vanity Metrics

• Likes

• Followers

• Website Traffic 

Do Vanity Metrics Matter?

While we just dismissed metrics such as likes and followers as vanity metrics, we don’t advise you to ignore them altogether. At the end of the day, these metrics are the currency of social media. Even if you shouldn’t base your important decisions on these numbers alone, they can prove to be useful in determining answers to questions such as “Does my audience care about what I post?”. When it comes to recapping and reporting to your team, it’s important to look at the bigger picture and dig deeper to identify how and why these metrics you’re reporting on are meeting (or not) your objectives. This is where actionable metrics come in handy.

For every vanity metric, there is an actionable metric counterpart that will prove to be more useful in understanding your marketing strategy’s performance. We’ll list some below in reference to our examples of vanity metrics above.

Examples of Common Actionable Metrics

• Engagement Rate

• Conversion Rate

• Bounce Rate

These metrics may involve some simple math and take a little longer to get to, but they’re essential to determining where you went wrong and what actions you need to take to improve.

In Closing

Vanity metrics come in all types of forms. The key to identifying them is how you’re reporting on them. Ask yourself this question: Am I only including this data to beef up my results? If the answer is yes, then you probably shouldn’t. Data from vanity metrics aren’t reliable and they can rarely be reproduced. Social metrics earned a bad reputation over the last few years simply because marketers developed a habit of reporting them in isolation. However, when observed in conjunction with actionable metrics, you can come to a comprehensive understanding of how well your marketing strategy performed.

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