Definitions

A vanity metric is a metric that makes you feel good about your business without actually providing you with any true value.

In other words: it's a number that you can't use.

Let's give an example. Let's say that a business has 2,000 people following their Twitter account, but their tweets only occasionally get 1 or 2 "likes." That would make the number of followers they have a vanity metric, because it doesn't show the most important truth: that most of their followers were either bought or inactive.

An actionable metric, on the other hand, reflects the important truths in your business. They can show you if you are succeeding or failing. These are the metrics that you use to make decisions in your business.

Let's give another example. If a business's Twitter following of 2,000 people is a vanity metric, then their low engagement rates are an actionable metric. They can use these low numbers to make the decision to change their strategy. How can they start conversations about their business? How can they increase link clicks and shares? How can they get their followers to tell their friends and families about them?

Why You Shouldn't Focus On Vanity Metrics

You might be thinking that vanity metrics look great from an outsider's perspective, and that your business's supposed popularity will encourage more eyes to turn your way. However, vanity metrics can actually become huge distractions for you and your business. If you focus too much on growing a meaningless number, then you'll focus less on the numbers that actually matter.

To clarify, let's keep the previous example going: the business has a high following on Twitter, and decide to focus on increasing this number because it's the metric that makes them feel good. To increase this number, the put more money into their Twitter marketing budget - and they see results. They now have 3,000 people following them.

But they don't see as dramatic an increase in engagement, and their increase in leads from Twitter is even less of a dramatic increase.

Why is this? Because they were only focused on increasing the following number. They weren't focused on the engagement metrics, which would have revealed to them: who was engaging, why they were engaging, and how they were engaging. These are the metrics that would have shown the business how they could generate leads.

So the cause of focusing on the wrong metrics? Wasted time and wasted money.

Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Metrics

These are just a few examples - but notice a pattern here? Vanity metrics don't matter to your business's mission - unless your business's mission is to be popular. In most cases, we have a goal we want to reach such as serving our community. Having a large social media following won't help you serve your community, not if your followers aren't engaging with your post and purchasing a product or a service.

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