Axos Bank

Hannah Murphy

Community Growth Strategist

Reading the Signals behind Social Performance

I define meaningful social media impact through share of voice, community building and, ultimately, conversion. Vanity metrics absolutely have their place. They help us understand our audience and what content is resonating, but the real impact comes when people are actively talking about your brand, building familiarity and trust with it and eventually becoming loyal customers. That’s when social goes from simply generating engagement to creating real business value.

I think some of the more granular platform insights have become incredibly valuable, like slide-specific carousel metrics on Instagram and in-network versus out-of-network reach on LinkedIn. We’re no longer taking surface-level metrics at face value. We can dig deeper into what’s actually working, where we’re losing people and who our content is reaching. Understanding where audiences drop off or how content performs with followers versus non-followers gives us much stronger signals for optimization and helps us create content the algorithm is more likely to surface to new, niche audiences.

Connecting Social Activity to Business Outcomes

It starts with bringing social into the conversation earlier. Social shouldn’t be an afterthought at the end of an omnichannel campaign. It should be part of the strategy from the beginning. Connecting social campaigns to landing pages and clear actions allows us to better understand how social contributes to traffic, conversions and ultimately the bottom line. The more integrated social is across marketing initiatives, the more opportunity we have to extend brand messaging, reach new audiences and drive measurable business impact.

One of the biggest challenges for financial institutions is connecting social activity to a customer journey that can be much longer and more complex than in other industries. Someone may discover a financial brand through social, engage with its content for months and build trust before ever opening an account or applying for a product. That makes attribution difficult, especially when multiple channels influence the final decision. For financial institutions, I think it’s important to look beyond immediate conversions and consider how social contributes to brand familiarity, trust and consideration over time.

Putting People at the Center of Social Measurement

I see social media measurement becoming more human-first, emotiondriven and real-time. It will be less about how many followers a brand has and more about how people actually feel about and connect with that brand.

That shift is already happening, with 78% of consumers saying a brand’s social presence impacts how much they trust it, and that number jumps to 88% for Gen Z, according to Sprout Social.

Sentiment, conversation, community engagement and authentic advocacy will become increasingly important indicators of success. To me, the future is community-first and sales-second. It’s about building genuine relationships and trust first, knowing that stronger business outcomes will follow.