There is more to measuring the reach of your content than just monitoring the number of website visits or likes on social media, according to Jade Furubayashi, social media manager at Simply Measured.  She outlined five ways to track content in an interview with Bridget Quigg, a blogger at the social analytics solutions company.  

• Engagement: To measure how well your content draws viewers, Jade suggests using engagement metrics specific to each platform. She favors retweets on Twitter and shares on Facebook because “if you’re trying to decide which content to produce to increase your brand’s reach, you’re going to want to focus on the sprawl of content, rather than comments and replies, where it can stay isolated.” 
• Click Thrus: Try to assess what is driving traffic to your website. Jade explained that click throughs are different from traditional engagement in that people are not always clicking through to the most engaging pieces. They may like to share something which they may not have necessarily read.
• Sentiment:  Keep an eye on the coolness and demographic factors in social media traffic. Jade cited an example of the crossover of H&M and Starbuck followers in Simply Measured’s study “1 Million Twitter Users: A Study of People Who Follow Brands.” The 18-to-24 year olds make up the largest and fastest growing audience segment for both the retailer and coffee vendor. 
• Downloads:  Measure the value of certain content to readers by having them click through to fill out a form in order to download gated content. “If the conversion from visit to download is high you know you’re hitting on something that is thought provoking and interesting enough that they won’t just bail when they see a form,” Jade said.
• Personas: Simply Measured has done some content analysis by using personas. specifically Twitter bios. Using Twitter bios, for example, Simply Measured tracked people who share a guide or other content and then analyzed the content by the job description of the person who shared it.  She noted a difference between those who followed a study versus a guide. Studies are more for everybody in the social community whereas guides such as “How to Create a Global Social Media Strategy” are more niche-oriented.