After running content for various projects over the years, the metrics I actually care about have shifted hard. Sharing in case it's useful:

5 metrics I stopped tracking on social — and what I track instead

**1. Follower count → Returning visitor rate.** 50k followers who never come back is a vanity number. 2k people who return weekly is a business.

**2. Reach → Save rate.** Reach is what the algorithm decided to do for you that day. Saves are people committing to come back. Saves predict everything else.

**3. Likes → Comment depth.** Not count — depth. Average reply-chain length. 50 comments of "great post" is worse than 12 comments with real threads.

**4. Posting frequency → Time-since-last-useful-post.** I'd rather post once a week and have it matter than 5x and have 4 be filler. Audiences remember the worst post more than the best.

**5. Cross-platform consistency → Platform-native fit.** Same brand, different shape. Reddit isn't Twitter isn't LinkedIn. Cloning a post across platforms is cost-cutting, not strategy.

I've been working on a tool over at peakoai.com that surfaces these "second-order" metrics across platforms — they're hard to see otherwise.

What metrics have you ditched lately?