Are Vanity Metrics worth our time?

March 10, 2026|Lia Gordon

Mirror mirror on the wall which is the most-liked post of them all?

In the world of digital marketing and social media, it’s easy to get caught up in numbers that look impressive. Thousands of followers, hundreds of likes can make a brand appear successful at first glance but do these numbers turn to sales? Or do they offer valuable insight? Let’s explain what vanity metrics are:

What is a vanity metric?

Vanity metrics are data that look good on a surface level, but when you dig deeper, they don’t necessarily offer meaningful statistics about the performance of your marketing. From our experience, vanity metrics may make your brand seem popular, but they rarely provide conversions or insights to make informed decisions. Some common vanity metrics include:

Social media followers
Post likes
Page views
Email subscribers

Followers and likes: Useful or flattering?

Just like anything else, the value of metrics depends on your goals. For example, if your objective is brand awareness, then followers and likes can be useful for reaching people and gaining attention. However, it’s essential to understand that more likes or followers don’t necessarily translate into call to actions. If you are happy to accept that a brand awareness campaign won’t increase sales or help measure real success, then you understand why they are deemed as vanity metrics. There’s nothing wrong with wanting your brand to look busy and if the goal of your marketing is to create the perception of popularity, then vanity metrics can serve this purpose.

Followers & likes can be misleading

On platforms like Facebook and Instagram, focusing purely on follower numbers can be misleading. People follow accounts for many reasons that don’t necessarily reflect genuine interest in the brands. People might follow your brand because they enjoyed one funny video, they were briefly interested but lost interest later. For example, one of our clients used to do follow and like competitions often, and although they would see an increase in following and overall engagement, any other campaign or post after it wouldn’t get interaction and once the competition winner would be announced followers dropped. An organic post might receive many likes, but there’s usually no data to prove that it helps move your audience further along their customer journey. In many cases, we see that vanity metrics don’t directly correlate with real business outcomes.

Actionable metric: Engaged followers

What gives more value is how your audience interacts with your content. A smaller audience that regularly engages with your brand, such as your top fans on Facebook, can be far more likely to recommend your business. It’s worth paying attention to people who comment on your posts, send direct messages and are regular contributors. An engaged community also gives you something vanity metrics don’t, real feedback. Social platforms have also shifted to prioritising engagement over follower count in their algorithms.

Other actionable metrics that matter:

Other actionable metrics, meaning data that provide real insight into audience behaviour, can be post saves, conversion rates, engagement quality and website clicks. These metrics show that people find your content valuable and their interest to learn more, show the number of people taking actions, and help us and you understand what really resonates with your audience. The bottom line is that vanity metrics shouldn’t be the numbers guiding your entire marketing strategy. They are great to see but always ask yourself whether those numbers are translating to sales. If you want to talk about the metrics that matter the most, please get in touch.