How to Define Social Impact with Custom Metrics | Sprout Bites

Hi, my name is Nathan and during this Sprout Bites video, I'm going to teach you how to define your social media impact on your own terms using custom metrics. If you're currently calculating data or KPIs in manual spreadsheets because they aren't available in Sprout, and you have access to Sprout's Premium Analytics Suite, you can now build those formulas directly within the platform as custom metrics. Use this feature to centralize all your key reports and save time by keeping your reporting entirely within Sprout. First, make sure you have the right permissions to manage custom metrics. Custom metrics can be created at the global account level and the group level — configure these permissions accordingly to empower the right team members to create them. To get started, find Custom Metrics under Reporting and Listening Settings. Every custom metric needs a few unique customizations. First, give your metric a name — this is how it will be identified across all your reports and custom metric settings, so make sure it's unique. For visibility, custom metrics private to a group restrict availability to users with access to that specific group, while custom metrics shared across all groups are available to everyone in your Sprout account. For format, choose whether this metric will display as a number or a percentage. Now you're ready to build your custom metric's formula. Custom metrics let you build unique mathematical formulas by combining existing Sprout data with basic math — adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing. Want to calculate a unique share rate by dividing shares by impressions? You can do that. Want to customize an engagement rate to reflect only the engagements that matter to your social goals? This is where you do it. My pro tip when building formulas: hit the backslash key on your keyboard to view all the Sprout metrics and math equations available for use. Once created, these custom metrics live inside your reports. The final step is adding them to your key reports. Navigate to a custom My Report and you'll find your newly created custom metrics there. My tip for report building with custom metrics is to lean on post widgets — specifically those with "post" in the title — and tag widgets, where you can see campaign or content pillar performance organized by tags. Once your custom metrics are created, you'll find them within the metrics options when configuring these widgets. Simply select your custom metric and you'll see your KPIs calculate and reflect your data instantly. You're ready to go — build your formulas in custom metrics and save yourself time on every future report.