Social Media Reporting: Organic vs. Paid Metrics Are Homographs

Go back to school with me. Do you remember “homographs, homophones, and homonyms”?

A homograph is a word spelled the same but with different meanings. Like:

Both are spelled “wind” but the difference is the long/short vowel sound.

Social media metrics are homographs...

When reporting social media metrics, be clear which numbers you’re tracking: Organic or Paid.

While some metrics have the same name, they mean completely different things depending on which side of social you’re working with.

Case In Point: Impressions don't mean the same thing across organic and paid

• Organic Impressions: Total times your content was displayed naturally. If you’re chasing virality (a four-letter word for Social Media Managers), this is your metric.
• Paid Impressions: Total times your content was displayed because you paid for it. High impressions aren’t impressive here— it just reflects the market size of your audience.

See the difference?

Same metric, completely different implications. When creating insights based on performance, this nuance is the difference between "this piece of content did ok" and "this target audience is too small, we need to increase our budget or expand our criteria".

Let's use another popular metric as an example:

Engagement: Not always what it sounds like

High engagement means you’re getting people to act, but that doesn’t mean they like-like you.

Ever seen a viral video flooded with hate comments? Engagement numbers make that look like a win. (It's not)

In organic, high engagement (likes, shares, comments) often signals relevance and helps boost visibility.

In paid, engagement is usually much lower—and honestly? That’s fine. If you’re running an ad about a 10% discount, do you really need a ton of comments? Didn't think so...

In short, engagement alone doesn’t tell you whether your content is working. Context is king.

How to Align Social Reporting Metrics To Your Social Strategy

No matter the metric, if you don’t have a clear strategy, you’ll find yourself circling the data finding any reason to point out why it’s good or bad.

Here’s how you can start tracking the right social media metrics that align with your social media strategy:

Your metrics should align with your strategy, giving you the full picture. If they only look good on a report, you're missing something. What matters is that the data tells you how to make your next move.

🔦 Throwback Project Spotlight 🔦

• 💼 Services: Social Media Strategy Retainer + Email Marketing Retainer
• 👤 Client: Proof Hard Ice Cream
• 📱Channels: Klaviyo + Socials (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn)
• 📦 What We Did + Why: Proof Hard Ice Cream is a boozy ice cream brand I worked with in 2024. The brand concept was "Just the right amount of wrong" AKA bringing an adult-indulgence to a childlike delight. Imagine: If you like strawberry ice cream, why not have strawberry daiquiri ice cream - ya catch my drift? Here's what some of that work looked like:
  • 🎊 We worked with another agency to support the social launch of the new look & feel. I worked with the in-house creatives to bring the brand to life on social from post concepts to running community giveaways (it's a product too good to NOT give out - to those 21+).
  • 🤳 When launching in Costco, we ran an micro-influencer campaign to get hyper-local buy-in. We reached out to dozens of SoCAL alcoholm, ice cream, and Costco influencers to partner with for the launch.
  • 👋 We re-engaged hundreds of previous buyers who went cold with a nurture email series.

What I'm consuming

Professional Growth Reading: Create Once, Distribute Forever Ross Simmonds has become famous for one of my favorite concepts - repurposing content. This book title says it all - Create Once, Distribute Forever. I'm a fan of this book because not only is this the way to become an efficient content marketer, it's the way to be sure that you KNOW without a shadow of a doubt that your content is being seen and responded to. Because the problem many times in our field isn't that the message doesn't resonate -- it's that it doesn't get through. This book preaches on the fact that you've got to come up with a distribution plan for everything you publish. If you take 1 piece of this advice, you'll be better off.

Podcast: Social Media Marketing One of the oldest podcasts on the subject, Social Media Examiner has published this podcast for years. While the whole concept is cringey (the "social media marketing jungle" branding looked 2008 IN 2008), the content is pretty great. I've stumbled upon some amazing leaders in the space through this podcast that I really respect. Michael Stelzner and his team are experts at content repurposing, strategic timing, and leveraging evergreen assets. How do I know this? Because this podcast is FULL of the speakers that will be at Social Media Marketing World 2025 - which I will be at! If you want to learn what I'm learning, just listen to this podcast and you'll get a glimpse.

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