A dashboard full of numbers is not the same as knowing what to do next. The test for any metric is simple and unkind: if it moved, would you do something different? Most fail it.
The four that pass
- Where the reach came from — followers, your profile, or recommendations. This tells you whether you are talking to the room or being carried out of it.
- Saves — someone intends to come back. It is the closest thing to a rating of usefulness that a platform reports.
- Shares — someone attached their own name to your post. It is rarer than a save and worth more.
- Follows from a post — which piece of work actually recruited someone, as opposed to which one got applause from people already there.
Each of those suggests an action. Reach mostly from recommendations means make more of that. High saves means the format taught something and should be repeated. Follows concentrated in one post means you have found the thing you are known for.
The ones that mostly do not
- Likes — cheap, fast and largely a function of how many people saw it
- Follower count — a running total that hides whether this month worked
- Impressions on their own — counts the same person twice and rewards nothing
- Anyone else’s engagement rate — a different audience size with a different denominator
None of these are lies. They are just descriptions rather than instructions, and a dashboard that leads with them makes you feel informed without making you any better at the next post.
How often to look
Weekly at most, and always across several posts. A single post’s numbers are mostly noise — the time it went out, what else happened that day, whether it was a holiday. The pattern across a month is the only part that is about your work.