Compare Social Media Performance Across Platforms: A Fair Method

TLDR: Raw numbers from different platforms are not comparable. Pick one metric per goal, measure each platform against its own median, and show the result in one table with three columns: this period, your median, and the gap. That gives an honest answer to "where should the next hour of effort go?"

Teams often put every platform in one chart and declare a winner. The chart looks clean, and it is misleading.

A like on one platform is not a like on another. Audiences differ, feeds differ, and the way each platform counts reach differs. Comparing the raw numbers rewards the platform that counts generously, not the one that works for you.

Know what "normal" looks like on each platform

Start by learning each platform's typical range. In Mydrop's data, the median engagement rate per post was 3.1% on Instagram, 3.0% on TikTok and 1.1% on Facebook. The middle half of Instagram posts ran between 1.1% and 6.7%.

So a 2% Instagram post is normal, and a 2% Facebook post is a strong one. Read the full tables in the Mydrop social media benchmarks.

The same lesson applies to your own account. Your own median over the last 90 days is the fairest yardstick, because it already contains your audience, your format and your niche.

Choose one metric per goal

"ROI" is too wide to measure on a post. Break it into goals and give each goal one metric.

Goal	Metric to compare	Where it lives
Reach new people	Saves or shares per post	Platform insights
Send traffic	Link clicks	Tracked link
Get leads	Replies, DMs, form fills	Inbox and form
Make sales	Orders from a tracked link or code	Your shop or CRM

Pick the row that matches what you are trying to do on each platform. LinkedIn may be about leads, Instagram about reach, and TikTok about reach. That is a good reason not to compare them with one number.

Build one table, not ten charts

Make a table with one row per platform and these columns:

• This month: your chosen metric.
• Your median: the typical value over the last 90 days.
• Gap: this month minus median, as a percent.

A platform with a positive gap is working better than normal. A platform with a negative gap needs a look. You are comparing change against baseline, which is the only fair comparison across platforms.

Mydrop analytics show native per-platform metrics and a multi-profile benchmark, so you can read the medians without building the table by hand. For a client or boss, white-label PDF reports put the table into a shareable format.

Count effort, not just results

ROI has a cost side that most dashboards ignore. For each platform, write down the hours your team spent last month.

Then divide your chosen result by the hours. "12 leads from LinkedIn in 8 hours" and "30 saves from TikTok in 20 hours" are comparable in a way that "12 vs 30" is not. You do not need exact time tracking. A rough estimate to the nearest hour is enough to see which platform pays back your time.

Watch for two traps

Posting frequency is not a lever by itself. In Mydrop's data, accounts posting under once a week had a median rate of 7.0% and accounts posting seven or more times a week had 0.7%. That is a correlation, because smaller accounts post less and carry higher rates. Do not cut posts just because the rate looks better.

Small samples lie. If a platform has five posts this month, one hit changes the whole average. Use at least 90 days, or say "too few posts to judge" in the table.

Write the verdict in one sentence per platform

A table is only useful if it leads to a decision. Under it, write one sentence for each platform in plain words: "Instagram is 12% above its median, keep the carousel series" or "Facebook is 20% below its median, test two new post types before cutting it".

This keeps the report honest. A reader who skips the numbers still learns what to do next, and you are forced to commit to an action instead of admiring a chart. Review the sentences next month and check whether the action moved the number.

Run the comparison this week

Pull the last 90 days for each platform, pick one metric for each goal, and fill in the three-column table. Circle the biggest negative gap and spend your next experiment there.

To see every platform's metrics and benchmarks side by side, start free on Mydrop and connect your accounts.