All marketers are concerned with ROI—there is no point in having a social media presence without a profit. But how to measure success? In the age of big data, it seems like there is a metric for just about everything. Unless you know what to look at, you cannot assess your business’ social media strategy properly.

There is a common misconception among some marketers that click rate is the most important feature of a successful marketing campaign. But in actuality, clicks and impressions do not matter so much. The numbers can lie; clicks are often accidental or even fraudulent, so they cannot adequately count how many people your posts reach. Furthermore, these metrics say nothing about how much these users actually care about your business.

What really determines the success of your social media marketing strategy is the amount of time a user spends reading your material.This metric, Total Time Reading, while it does not measure how many people visit your page, actually tells you more about the people that do. The more time someone spends on your page, the more they are likely to receive a lasting impression from your product.

While clickbait is a clever strategy for getting people to visit your page, it does not necessarily interest them in your business. A post that resonates with your readers generates more ROI than one that generates clicks.

See Social Media Explorer for more.