Attribution and experiments
- How do I measure dark social?
- How do social media lift tests work?
- How does social media attribution work?
Measure what the number actually means
Social Analytics Guide
Measure social media without confusing reach, attention, attribution and business outcomes.
Why this site exists now
A useful subject guide, with its history stated plainly
Waagg.com previously related to social-media analytics. This is a new independent measurement and privacy reference, not the former service.
Explore the subject
Five routes into the guide
5 sections · 25 focused answers
02
Content analysis
- Can sentiment analysis be trusted?
- How do I audit social media content?
- How do I identify evergreen content?
03
Metrics
- Reach versus impressions: what is the difference?
- What does video completion rate mean?
- What is social media engagement rate?
04
Privacy and data access
- Do social analytics need consent?
- How do I evaluate a social analytics vendor?
- How should social data be retained?
05
Reporting
- How do I explain a performance change?
- How often should social reports be updated?
- How should uncertainty be shown?
From the reference
Recently updated
- How to Show Uncertainty in Social Analytics Reporting Show uncertainty in social analytics reports using ranges, caveats, and sensitivity analysis rather than false precision, and remove any chart without a decision owner.
- Social Media Metrics: Platform Definitions, Denominators and Data Rules Every social platform defines metrics differently. This hub states the rules: name the platform and date, show the denominator, never compare unlike metrics.
- Social Media Attribution and Experiments Hub Social media attribution requires stating the causal design, window, and blind spots—no method delivers precise user-level attribution, and each answers a different question.
- Social Media Engagement Rate: Reach vs Impressions as the Denominator Engagement rate divides interactions by reach or impressions. The denominator choice changes the number materially; native platforms default to reach.
- Reach vs Impressions: Platform Counting Methods and Duplication Explained Reach counts unique users; impressions count total displays. Platforms count them differently—Meta uses pixel thresholds, X counts any serve—so cross-platform comparison is invalid.
- Which Follower Metrics Matter: Stock, Flow, Quality and Business Relevance Follower count is vanity; net change, audience quality, and engagement ratio matter. Demographic data is modelled from a subset, not census-level.
- Why Social Platform Metrics Change: Definitions, Deduplication and Privacy Platform metrics change due to product updates, privacy rules, and API deprecations. Historical data may be retroactively recalculated against new definitions.
- How to Audit Social Media Content Without Causal Fallacies A social media content audit inventories posts, applies a taxonomy, and groups outcomes by comparable cohorts—without claiming one post's performance predicts another's.
- Can Social Media Sentiment Analysis Be Trusted Social media sentiment analysis is a probabilistic classifier, not a measurement—validate vendor scores against human-coded samples before trusting trends.
- How Social Media Attribution Works Across Models and Windows Social media attribution models assign conversion credit by rules and windows—platform self-attribution, GA4, and experiments each answer a different question.