How to measure a social video (hint: not by views)

Views are the vanity metric everyone reaches for because they are big, public and flattering. But a view can mean someone scrolled past in half a second. On its own, it tells you almost nothing about whether the video did any work.

The three numbers that actually matter

• → Retention — do people stay past the first 3 seconds, and how far do they get? A high average watch time means the content earned attention, not just caught the algorithm.
• → Saves and shares — the strongest signal that a video was useful. A save means "I want this later"; a share means "someone else needs this". Both beat a like by a mile.
• → Profile actions — visits, follows and link taps after the video. This is the bridge from "watched" to "interested in you". Reach with zero profile actions is just noise.

„Reach is how many people the algorithm showed you to. Results are how many of them did something because of it."

Why we still film the person, not the product

When you optimise for retention and saves instead of raw views, the content changes. You stop making polished brochures and start making things people actually watch to the end: a doctor explaining a procedure simply, an owner answering the question everyone is too shy to ask, a real before-and-after. That is the same reason our work leans on people on camera — retention follows faces and stories, not logos.

A practical test: next time a video "did great", open the analytics and check retention, saves and profile visits before you celebrate the view count. If those three are flat, the view number is a mirage. If they are strong on a smaller video, you just found the format worth repeating.