Let’s call out some common vanity metrics in the creator realm and why you might not want to stress too much about them:
Social Media Follower Count: It’s the classic example. Yes, 100k followers looks flashy. But if only a tiny fraction see your posts (hello, algorithms) or care about your content, the big number means little. Many marketers agree “follower count does not necessarily equal the number of successful transactions or meaningful engagement,” and it can even be faked or bought. A smaller but engaged follower base is far more valuable. So, track followers as a general growth indicator, but don’t use it alone to judge your influence.
Total Page Views or Impressions: Whether it’s your blog or TikTok, raw views/impressions are surface-level. You might get a viral spike of 50k views on a reel – great – but if people swiped away in 3 seconds, that high view count didn’t do much. One creator noted having a blog post with 80k monthly views that never led to a sale – classic vanity metric trap. Instead of total views, focus on metrics like average watch time or pages per visit (which show if the content resonated).
Likes and “Hearts”: Getting likes feels good, and they can indicate something, but they’re a fairly low-effort form of engagement. People can double-tap while scrolling without deeply engaging. Likes also don’t necessarily translate to any conversion or loyalty. They’re not useless – they can help your content’s visibility in algorithms to an extent – but creators shouldn’t use likes alone to determine success. They’re similar to follower count in that they signal popularity but not depth. As one expert put it, likes are “just a sign of whether your brand is popular or not” but have no direct impact on conversion rate.
Email Open Rate (by itself): For those running newsletters, open rate is commonly tracked. But due to technical issues (like email clients not loading images counting as opens, or the new privacy protections Apple introduced), open rates have become less reliable. Plus, an open doesn’t mean they read or enjoyed your email. It’s a vanity metric if you don’t also consider click-through rates or replies. One marketing professional called open rate “that vanity metric you should stop measuring” for campaign success – good subject lines can spike open rates, but what you really want is people clicking or acting on the email’s content.
Total Subscribers or Member Counts: This is like follower count for other platforms (YouTube subs, email list size, etc.). Again, having a million subscribers looks amazing – but if only 10k ever watch your videos, the million doesn’t reflect your active community. Subscriber count can be very deceiving (lots of dead subscribers who signed up long ago). It’s not that you ignore it completely – it’s a sign of reach potential – but the active engagement metrics matter more.
Time on Site / Time on App (in some cases): This can go either way. Time on site can show content was engaging… or it can mean someone left the tab open. It needs context. If you’re a blogger and your average time on page for a 5-minute read article is 1 minute, that’s bad (they left early). If it’s 5+ minutes, great. But chasing an ever-higher avg time can be misleading – sometimes a quick experience is fine (like a user found what they needed fast). Some experts label “time on site” a vanity metric because it doesn’t directly correlate to conversion or satisfaction unless paired with other info. Use it carefully.
The thread connecting vanity metrics is lack of insight or quality. They can be high due to external factors (algorithms boosting you broadly but superficially) or can be gamed. Without context, they don’t tell you if you’re reaching the right people or if your content strategy is effective. So, rather than obsessing over, say, hitting that next round number of followers, spend that energy on actionable metrics which we’ll dive into next.