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How To Measure ROI on Social Media: Vanity vs. Value
Learn Why Engagement and Conversions Matter More Than Follower Count
Nicola Vaughan
December 10, 2025
Learning how to value social media followers is tricky -- especially when it’s tempting to measure success purely by follower counts. Each new follower feels like proof that your channel is growing, but here’s the uncomfortable truth: these followers aren’t really yours.
Followers on Instagram, TikTok, or X (Formerly Twitter) can change overnight with one policy change or platform glitch, leaving you vulnerable to the ways of the algorithm.
You might have thousands of followers, but when you analyze the data, only a few hundred regularly see your content. The real value begins when you convert that audience into an owned channel, such as a newsletter, where you can control the connection and start tracking your return on investment (ROI).
The best tool I’ve found for this is beehiiv. It’s built to transform your social media following into an owned, newsletter audience. With tools for signup pages, engagement tracking, and monetization, beehiiv helps you build lasting relationships and measure the true value of your audience.
In this piece, I’ll share how I measure ROI from social media, why engagement and conversions matter more than follower accounts, and how to use beehiiv to start turning followers into loyal subscribers.
Table of Contents
Initially, a large follower count may suggest that a brand is extremely successful. A brand with a big following signals credibility, growth, and social proof -- the sort of metrics most brands value.
But when you look a little bit closer, you’ll notice that follower counts are more fragile than they seem and may not actually mean that the brand has a good ROI.
Every social platform controls which followers see your content via their unique algorithm. These algorithms shift constantly, meaning that content that once reached thousands can suddenly stop working.
One tweak to the feed or one drop in engagement, and your visibility can fade without warning. Accounts can be shadowbanned, restricted, or suspended entirely, instantly cutting off access to your audience.
Let’s look at an example. You might have 10,000 followers on Instagram, but only 500 ever see your posts. Your engagement rate from these 500 followers is even less, and the likes and comments you’re receiving rarely turn into real conversions.
While social media is a powerful discovery channel, it’s not reliable for long-term growth. Your followers belong to the platform. Until you bring them to an environment you own (like a newsletter or email list), you’re always building on borrowed ground.
How To Calculate the Value of Social Media Followers
You need to look beyond vanity metrics and focus on ROI to determine the real value of your social media followers.
The easiest way to do this is by comparing the cost of acquiring a follower to the value that follower generates.
Here’s a basic formula to calculate follower ROI:
Follower ROI = (Revenue Attributed to Followers - Cost to Acquire Followers) / Cost to Acquire Followers
This formula will give you a sense of whether your social growth efforts are yielding any real results or if your followers are just vanity.
I’ll break this down in the next sections:
Cost Per Acquisition and Lifetime Value
Consider what it costs to gain a follower vs. a customer.
If you’re running ads to grow your account, you might be paying between $1 - $2 per follower. But if only a small number of those followers ever buy from you, the cost likely outweighs the value.
In contrast, if you spend the same money driving users to a newsletter signup, you’re building owned followers that are more likely to become paying customers.
Here’s an example. If your average lifetime value (LTV) is $100 and 5% of your subscribers convert into paying customers, each subscriber is worth around $5 on average.
This means one email subscriber could be worth more than 100 social followers who never buy or click.
Engagement Rate as a Better Metric Than Follower Count
Follower count doesn’t tell you anything about how active or interested your audience is.
The metric that tells you this information is engagement. Engagement determines how many people interact with your content, predominantly through likes, comments, shares, or clicks.
Here’s a basic formula to calculate engagement rate:
Engagement Rate = (Total Engagement / Total Followers) x 100
Let’s say one of your posts gets 500 likes and comments from 10,000 followers. This post would have an engagement rate of 5%, which is a much better indicator of success than a follower account alone.
A smaller, more engaged audience wins over a large passive audience any day, especially when it comes to tangible results.
How Conversion to Owned Channels Changes the Equation
When you move followers to an owned channel like a beehiiv newsletter, the equation changes.
An owned channel gives you direct, predictable access to your audience, without needing to rely on algorithms.
If 1,000 of your 10,000 followers join your newsletter, for example, and each subscriber generates an average of $5 in revenue over time, that segment of your audience is worth $5,000.
Meanwhile, the remaining 9,000 followers may produce zero revenue.
That’s why I focus on the followers at the top of the funnel – attention that only gains real value when converted into tangible, measurable relationships.
Why Listen to Me? I have been working in the digital marketing space for nearly 10 years, predominantly helping brands with their email marketing and online presence. I now specialize in creating great content for beehiiv to help people nail their email strategies!
Having lots of followers can be great for reach. But if you want lasting results, you’re better off moving your audience into a platform you own.
That’s where a newsletter can become a super valuable asset, and with beehiiv, converting social followers into subscribers is super easy.
Let’s look at why newsletters are more valuable than social follows, how direct communication drives real revenue, and how beehiiv makes the whole process easier.
An email lands directly in someone’s inbox, with no algorithm required and no competition in a crowded social feed. Instead, you’re building a direct, personal connection.
Another benefit of email marketing is that it has staying power. While people can unfollow a social account, they’ll still regularly check their emails. This makes newsletters more reliable for nurturing relationships and driving ongoing conversions.
You can also use newsletters to focus on monetization and improve your overall ROI.
You can promote products, offer exclusive content, or monetize your email list through sponsorships, all helping to improve your ROI and measure it accurately.
Using beehiiv To Capture and Nurture Followers
beehiiv is designed to bridge the gap between your social media followers and your owned newsletter list. beehiiv makes it easy to turn casual followers into loyal subscribers through a range of sign-up experiences.
Here are a few ways beehiiv helps to aid conversions:
Sign up links in bios and posts: You can add a direct beehiiv signup link to your Instagram, TikTok, or X (Formerly Twitter) bio and pair it with a clear call to action (CTA) such as “Join my free newsletter for exclusive content!”
Dedicated Landing Pages: beehiiv allows you to build conversion-optimized landing pages with no coding knowledge required. You can then link to these pages when posting stories, reels, or ads and measure the results.
Native Integrations: Connecting beehiiv with other tools like Zapier and Shopify is easy and allows you to automate workflows and add existing customers to your list.
Automation: Welcome new subscribers with a series of onboarding emails. This is a quick, easy way of introducing your brand and giving followers a sneak peek of what’s to come.
A great example of these features can be seen in the beehiiv case study about customers Colin and Samir of The Publish Press. They grew their newsletter to over 20,000 subscribers with a 45% open rate, and their story shows a successful scale-up, high engagement, and positive revenue generation from a newsletter.
Building Direct Relationships That Drive Revenue
Once followers become subscribers, you build a direct relationship that is more powerful than just being a follower. You can send personalized messaging to help nurture your subscribers and increase the chance of them becoming customers.
With beehiiv’s 3D analytics, you can track open rate, clicks, and conversions, allowing you to understand what your audience values most about your content. From there, you can turn to segmentation, offering personalized offers and monetizing your subscribers through partnerships or paid tiers.
The result is a loyal, high-intent audience that provides profitable, measurable results within a platform that you control.
3 Practical Steps To Start Converting Followers Today
So how do you actually convert followers into newsletter subscribers -- and ultimately customers?
Here are three simple, proven steps you can start using today, with no expensive funnels or complicated setup – just consistent action that will compound over time.
1. Add Clear Calls to Action in Your Content
Most creators forget the simplest thing: you need to ask people to subscribe. All content provides an opportunity to add a clear, compelling CTA, from posts and videos to Instagram Stories.
Make sure your CTA is direct and to the point. A good example would be: “Enjoy this post? I share deeper insights each week in my free newsletter – sign up now!
Small, consistent CTAs add up, and inviting people who already enjoy your content is a great way of converting more followers.
beehiiv prioritizes CTAs, allowing creators to directly link a signup page or embed a form within their site. With one click, followers can become subscribers instantly.
2. Offer Lead Magnets or Exclusive Newsletter Content
Giving followers an incentive is a great strategy for conversion. People are far more likely to subscribe when they know they’ll receive something valuable in return.
Here are some simple offers that can work well for incentivising followers to convert:
A free PDF guide or checklist related to your account
An exclusive behind-the-scenes post of a case study
A discount code or early access to a new launch
A ‘bonus tip’ version of your most popular post, available only to subscribers of your newsletter
beehiiv allows you to host and deliver these resources via landing pages or automations. A top tip is to make your offer feel personal and aligned with your content. It should be something your followers actually want, rather than another email that clogs their inbox.
3. Optimize Content for Conversion: Social → Newsletter
It’s easy to get your content noticed, but conversion can be a trickier game.
Optimizing your content for conversion means thinking beyond likes and shares. It’s about creating content that nudges users towards your newsletter or conversion page.
Here are some examples of types of content that convert well:
Mini-guides or tutorials: This type of content shows immediate value and offers a deeper dive within your newsletter.
Behind-the-Scenes Insights: Followers love seeing ‘behind the curtain’ of a brand. Newsletters give a private, exclusive area for this, making subscribers feel like they have access to something that no one else does.
Gated Content or Early Access: Make a big deal out of content that is only available to subscribers. This will create a sense of scarcity and exclusivity.
Problem-Solving Posts: Think of a common challenge that your audience faces. Create a resource that solves the problem and link to it via your newsletter.
Visual content is also key to conversion. Bold visuals, clear text overlays, and short, actionable captions will help your CTA stand out. The key is to make a path to subscribing as simple as possible, with one click getting someone from the post to sign up.
When you’ve put your conversion content in place, you need to analyze what works. Test different messaging, formats, and posting at different times of the day to see which posts generate the most newsletter signups.
Over time, you’ll have a content strategy that not only grows your followers but that delivers a measurable ROI that you can work on.
4. Use beehiiv’s Tools to Automate the Journey
Once followers start signing up, you won’t need to manually manage every step with beehiiv’s automation features.
Here’s how beehiiv’s onboarding process can work:
Welcome Sequences: This will involve a few emails that introduce your brand, share your best content, and reinforce your brand voice.
Tagging or Segmenting New Subscribers: beehiiv can personalize content based on source (Instagram, TikTok, X (Formerly Twitter), etc.)
Tracking Engagement: You can track which platforms or messages drive the best signups and make future decisions accordingly.
Kaitlyn Arford, beehiiv customer and creator of newsletter Freelance Opportunities!, has used beehiiv’s landing pages and automation to convert casual followers into 11,000 loyal subscribers, showing the power of an owned audience. Check out this case study here!
My Recommendations for Measuring True Audience Value
It’s important to look beyond follower count and focus on the metrics when evaluating your social media performance.
In short:
Prioritize Email Open Rates Over Social Reach: As of 2025, the average open rate across industries is 42.35% (Hubspot), while organic reach on platforms like Instagram averages at around 3.5% (Social Insider). This difference shows the importance of building and nurturing an email list over focusing on vanity metrics.
Focus on Engagement: Engagement rates are a more reliable indicator of audience interest than follower counts. High engagement shows a dedicated audience who are more likely to convert into loyal customers.
Calculate Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) and Lifetime Value (LTV): Understanding the financial impact of your audience is crucial to calculating ROI. Comparing CPA and LTV through paid ads vs. email subscribers can give you an idea of the superior ROI of an engaged email list.
Focusing on these metrics can give you a clearer understanding of your audience’s true value. This allows you to make better-informed decisions moving forward and really understand what channels work best for your brand.
If you want to get started with an owned audience, start a free, 30-day trial with beehiiv. Features like sign-up pages, automated onboarding sequences, engagement tracking, and monetization tools make it easy to grow a high-value audience with a clear ROI without relying on unpredictable social platforms.
Begin capturing, nurturing, and monetizing your followers with beehiiv today.
Google’s “People Also Ask” Questions
You can value social media followers by measuring engagement, conversions, and ROI.
Key metrics to track include click-through rates, comments, shares, and how many followers convert into subscribers, leads, or customers. Calculating LTV vs. CPA can help to quantify a customer’s true financial impact and ROI.
What is the value of followers?
The value of followers depends on how engaged they are and whether they can be converted into subscribers/paying customers.
For example, a highly engaged follower who joins your newsletter or makes a purchase is far more valuable than 100 followers who don’t engage with your content.
Followers provide reach and awareness, but their real value comes from direct, monetizable connections.
Why are followers important on social media?
Followers are important on social media because they signal social proof, expand reach, and create opportunities for discovery.
However, their importance diminishes if you can’t ultimately move them to a channel you own, like an email list, where you can reliably engage and convert them.
How much is 1k followers on Instagram worth?
The value of 1,000 followers on Instagram varies depending on engagement levels and niche. While followers can contribute to organic reach, actual conversion may only be a fraction of this.
On the flip side, 1,000 email followers could be worth hundreds of dollars over time, depending on your business and average LTV.
What is a good number of followers on social media?
A good number of followers on social media is subjective and depends on your goals as a brand.
Instead of choosing a specific number, you should focus on quality and engagement rates. A smaller, engaged audience that converts into newsletter subscribers or paying customers is much more valuable than a large, passive following.
Metrics like engagement rate, click-throughs, or subscriber growth are better indicators of success than follower count alone.
Social follows can be fleeting, with algorithms controlling the narrative, but emails are direct, consistent, and monetizable.