The Ultimate Breakdown of Social Video Metrics for Every Platform

Social video metrics track the success of your video content.

It’s especially crucial when you consider that videos tend to get more engagement than just posting photos or text on your feed.

But it’s a bit different from the metrics of a regular post.

For one, each platform comes with different kinds of metrics and different terms for them. It can get kind of confusing, and that’s why we want to help break it down for you.

Social video metrics for every platform

Facebook video metrics

What counts as a view: 3 seconds or more

Facebook videos earn the highest engagement of any other type of content on Facebook—with a rate of 6.09% engagement rate for video posts.

Source: Digital 2020

So it makes sense that you want to follow your metrics closely to optimize your views. Those metrics are:

• Reach. How many users your video was shown to.
• Engagement. How often your users interacted with your video.
• Average video watch time. How long users watched your video.
• Peak live viewers (if streamed on Facebook Live). The most live viewers you had at one time.
• Minutes viewed. How many total minutes viewers watched your video.
• 1-minute video views (Only for videos 1 minute or longer). How many users watched your video for at least 1 minute.
• 10-second video views (Only for videos 10 seconds or longer). How many users watched your video for at least 10 seconds.
• 3-second video views. How many users watched your video for at least 3 seconds.
• Audience retention. How well your video is holding an audience before they stop watching.
• Audience. Viewer demographics including top location, top audience, and people reached.
• Top videos. Your most popular videos.
• Unique viewers. How many unique users watched your videos.

With the view times, you can split them between Organic vs Paid views. This gives you an even better idea of where your traffic is coming from—and where you should invest your resources.

To find your metrics, go to your Facebook page and click on the Insights tab. There you’ll be able to access a whole host of metrics for your Facebook posts.

Tip: To get a deeper dive on this topic, check out our article on Facebook analytics and insights.

Instagram video metrics

What counts as a view: 3 seconds or more

Instagram videos garner more engagement than photos on Instagram. And with great features such as IGTV and Instagram Live, you can give your audience the content they crave while attracting new ones.

Source: Digital 2020

The social video metrics you can track on an Instagram Business profile are:

• Views. How many users watched your video for at least 3 seconds.
• Likes. How many users liked your video.
• Comments. How many users commented on your video.
• Profile visits. How many users visited your profile after seeing your post.
• Saves. How many users saved your video to their Instagram collections.
• Messages. How many times your video was sent to others through messages.
• Follows. How many followers you got from that video.
• Reach. How many users your video was shown to.
• Impressions. How many times users saw the post.

This differs from Instagram personal accounts where you’ll only be able to see your likes, comments, and how many people saved your video.

To access your metrics, simply click on the video post on your feed and click View Insights at the bottom of the video. This brings up the Insights tab that allows you to view your metrics.

Tip: For more on this topic, check out our article on the best Instagram analytics tools.

YouTube video metrics

What counts as a view: 30 seconds or more

YouTube analytics are (obviously) integral to your success on the platform. And when you consider the fact that YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine, you’ll understand why the site offers some of the best ways to expand your audience and build engagement.

The social video metrics you need to track are:

• Watch time. How long people are watching your videos.
• Audience retention. How consistently people watch your videos. When they stop watching.
• Demographics. Who is watching your videos and what countries they are from.
• Playback locations. Where your videos are being watched.
• Traffic sources. Where people discover your videos.
• Devices. What percentage of your views come from desktop, mobile, or elsewhere.

To access your metrics, click on your profile on YouTube and then Creator Studio. You’ll then see the creator studio dashboard where you can access your Analytics on the left panel.

Tip: For more on this topic, check out our article on YouTube analytics.

LinkedIn video metrics

What counts as a view: 2 seconds or more and the video is at least 50% of video on screen.

Though often overlooked for its long-form B2B content, LinkedIn’s video posts offer a great way for brands to build engagement and spread awareness. In fact, LinkedIn videos generaged more than 300 million impressions on the platform in a single year.

The metrics they offer are:

• Plays. How many times your video was played.
• Views. How many times your video was watched for more than 2 seconds.
• View Rate. Number of views multiplied by 100
• eCPV. Estimated cost per view. Gives you an idea of your ROI if you spent money to promote your video.
• Views at 25%. How many times users watched a quarter of your video.
• Views at 50%. How many times users watched half your video.
• Views at 75%. How many times users watched ¾ of your video.
• Completions. How many times users watched 97% or more of your video.
• Completion rate. How many times users completed your video.
• Full screen plays. How many users watched your vide on full screen mode.

To access your LinkedIn video analytics click on the Me profile icon on the top of the homepage. Under MANAGE, click on Posts & Activity. From there, locate your video with the Posts tab. Click on it, and then click on Analytics below your video (LinkedIn).

Tip: To get deeper insight on your metrics, check out our article on everything you need to know about LinkedIn videos.

Twitter video metrics

What counts as a view: 2 seconds more more with at least 50% of video on screen

According to Twitter, tweets with videos receive 10x more engagement than tweets without them.

Tweets with video attract 10X more engagements than Tweets without video. Visually, that's:

With video Without video
💬💬💬💬💬 💬
💬💬💬
💬💬 https://t.co/WZs78nfK6b

— Business (@XBusiness) December 13, 2018

Bottom line: You leave a lot of money on the table if you aren’t leveraging video in your tweets. Here are the metrics you need to succeed:

• Impressions. How many times users saw the tweet.
• Media views. How many times users watched your video
• Total engagements. How many times users interacted with your Tweet.
• Likes. How many times users liked your tweet
• Details expand. How many times people viewed the details of your tweet.
• Replies. How many times people replied to your tweet.
• Retweets. How many times people retweeted your tweet.

To view your Twitter metrics, simply click on the tweet with the video you want to monitor. Then click on View Tweet activity. This will allow you to view all the metrics of your tweet and video.

Tip: We have a complete guide on Twitter analytics for marketers if you want to get the most out of your metrics.

Snapchat video metrics

What counts as a view: 1 second or more

Since its release in 2011, Snapchat has developed a robust set of analytics features for personal creators and brands alike to measure their performance.

The catch: Snapchat Insights is only available to verified influencers and brands or accounts with a large following. If you want to build a big audience on Snapchat but don’t have one, check out our guide to using Snapchat for business.

If you have Snapchat Insights, here are a few crucial metrics you should follow:

• Unique views. How many different people opened the first video on your Snapchat story for at least one second.
• View time. This is how many minutes your viewers watched your Snapchat videos.
• Completion rate. What percentage of users finished your Snapchat story.
• Screenshots. How many users screenshotted your Snapchat story.
• Demographics. The gender, age, and location breakdown of your users.

If you create a Snapchat Ad, you’ll have a greater variety of metrics you can look into. Here’s a complete list of the metrics you can track with their ad platform.

To access your Snapchat Insights, you need to simply:

1. Open the app.
2. Go to the home screen by clicking your profile photo in the top left.
3. Click on Insights below My Story.

Tip: For more on this, be sure to check out our article on Snapchat analytics.

TikTok video metrics

Gen Z’s favorite platform can also be a great way for you to spread brand awareness. And when you consider that it’s one of the most popular mobile apps with 738 million downloads in 2019 alone, you can rest assured that it’ll be rife with your target audience.

Source: Digital 2020

TikTok allows you to access a wealth of metrics if you have a Pro Account. To do that, you’ll need to jump into your settings, then go to Manage my account. At the bottom of the menu, click on Switch to Pro Account and follow the simple instructions.

Once you’re done, you’ll have access to a variety of crucial social video metrics including:

• Video views. How many times users watched your videos over the course of 7 or 28 days.
• Followers. How many users started to follow your account over the course of 7 or 28 days.
• Profile views. How many times users viewed your profile over the course of 7 or 28 days.
• Trending videos. Your top 9 videos with the fastest growth in views over 7 days.
• Followers. How many followers you have.
• Gender. The gender breakdown of your followers
• Top territories. Where your followers live by territory.
• Follower activity. The time during the day as well as days of the week when your followers are most active on TikTok.
• Videos your followers watched. The videos that are popular with your followers.
• Sounds your followers listened to. The TikTok songs and soundbites that are popular with your followers.

To access your analytics, simply go into your settings and click on Analytics under the Account section.

Tip: Looking to create the best ads you can for TikTok? Here’s how you can do it.

How to track the right social video metrics

You can’t follow every single metric. The key is to pick the right ones for your organization.

That all depends on your goals. What are you trying to accomplish with your video?

Are you trying to increase awareness around a product launch? You want to increase your reach as much as possible in that case.

Maybe you’re simply trying to increase your audience? That means you want to keep a close eye on your followers after you release your video.

Does the video tell your viewers to like, comment, and subscribe (a.k.a every single YouTube video ever)? You’ll want to make sure your engagement numbers are up.

It’s likely that your videos are trying to do a combination of a few things—and that’s great! In those situations, you’ll want a good tool to keep an eye on all those metrics across different platforms.

We’d be remiss not to mention Hootsuite, which has a variety of analytics tools to choose from that can help you measure the performance of your social videos to varying degrees of detail.

Hootsuite Analytics. This helps measure your videos’ overall organic and paid ad performance.

Hootsuite Advanced Analytics. This tool gives you the 10,000 foot and granular view of the performance (and ROI!) your social media campaigns, including video content. It’ll also give you a look at your competitors’ performance and industry benchmarks so you can compare it with your own.

Hootsuite Insights by Brandwatch. Our enterprise listening tool that’ll give you a deep look into the keywords and sentiment surrounding your brand.

Ready to put your video marketing plan into action? With Hootsuite you can upload, schedule, publish, promote, and monitor your social videos from one platform.

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