You’ve created content and loaded it onto your social platforms. You’re all excited. You know it’s a great piece and will suck in your audience. But then here comes that nagging feeling in the back of your mind—or will it? How can you know for sure your efforts are making an impact and driving results? Today we’re going to discuss an important tool to help you answer that question: social media analytics. But, what is social media analytics, and how can it help you get the results you’re hoping for? When it comes to social media analytics, there’s an ocean of information to swim through—we’re thinking of the Pacific right about now! We’re going to break this information down into bite-sized pieces so you won’t drown in information overload.
Simply answered, what is social media analytics? It’s the gathering and analyzing of data from across your various social media channels. This useful information can then be used to guide you in your business strategy. Through these methods, you can learn what resonates with your audience and which of your efforts are performing better than others.
Let’s break down this question of what is social media analytics a little more.
Metrics is information on the numbers gathered from different social media channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and such. It shows when people like, comment on, or share/retweet your content. It lets you know the heartbeat of your audience and how they’re responding to you.
Analytics is the processing of those numbers from across your online channels by software platforms. Those numbers are analyzed and categorized. The results help you to know whether your social media campaign is working or not. You can then use these results to plan out your strategies, make business decisions, and keep customers happy.
Analytics help you interpret gathered information and steer future campaigns in the right direction.
One aspect of social media analytics is social listening.
By “listening” you can stay on top of what your customers are thinking, feeling, and talking about online. By tracking keywords, mentions, and conversations on social media, you can learn what people are saying about your brand, competitors, and industry.
Knowing this kind of information can help you divert any online situations that might occur.
On a positive note, it will also help you foresee opportunities. These are only a couple of the benefits of social media analytics.
The first step in analyzing social media metrics is to develop a goal. In other words, what are you hoping to accomplish?
When setting your goals, make sure they’re specific and can be measured. Be realistic in what you’re wanting to accomplish and give yourself a reasonable amount of time in which to do it. Make sure your goals are related to your plan and set deadlines on how long you want it to take you to reach them.
Now that you’ve determined your goals, determine what strategy to take.
With your goals and strategies in place, you can begin measuring certain metrics to learn how effective your strategies actually are and how well your social media is performing across the different channels.
Consistently monitoring and documenting metrics will help you track your goals.
Your goals and strategy will determine which analytics you need to measure. Keep in mind that each goal needs its own metric.
According to sproutsocial.com, some of the most important metrics to keep an eye on are:
Others to consider are mentions and discussions of your brand.
Hootsuite wrote an excellent article explaining the different social media analytics tools across platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Each site has its own set of tools, and you can learn a TON of useful information by using them.
Besides Hootsuite, Google Analytics and Sprout Social are great resources as well.
Businesses with low budgets will benefit greatly by signing up to tap into these free resources. In order to access data on Pinterest and Instagram, for example, you’ll need to open up a free business account.
By tracking metrics, you’ll know how well your social marketing strategy is working. Once you have this insight, you can redefine your strategy if needed.
There are many tools to use in the social media analytics process that help you find out if you’re meeting your goals. What metrics you use depends what goals you set. And knowing those numbers will help you reach your goals.
We hope this article helps you realize the benefits of understanding what is social media analytics, but we know this might all still feel pretty new—we’re here to help!
At Amenable, we have an amazing marketing team in place to help you reach and meet all your social media marketing goals. Reach out today, and let’s discuss how we can help make your goals a reality!
