Learning the ropes of social media can be a long process. It takes time to properly brand your platforms, create some eye-catching content, and to build an audience. Once you’ve completed these steps however, you are provided with valuable insight on which social media tactics are working for your business. More specifically, paying attention to social media analytics is important because it can illustrate how successful a campaign is, how well your posts are performing, and help narrow down your approach so you can focus on the best parts of your social media strategy.
So what are social media analytics exactly? Simply put, these analytics refer to the process of gathering and interpreting data from your respective social media platforms. The way to find this information varies depending on the social networking site.
Facebook:
The “Insights” tab houses your social media data.
Twitter:
You can locate your analytics by navigating to the separate “Twitter Analytics” by clicking on the left sidebar, and then by clicking “More”.
Instagram:
A business profile is required to see analytics, but you can access this information by clicking on the Menu button in the top right corner of your profile.
YouTube:
Open the YouTube studio app, click “Menu,” and then click “Analytics”.
LinkedIn:
Start by clicking on the “Me” icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage. Under “Manage” you’ll see “Posts and Activity,” where you can locate specific posts that you’d like to learn more about. You’ll then be able to click on the “Analytics” icon below the post to gather data about how your posts are performing.
Once you have accessed your social media analytics, you can open the door to understanding the unique insights and preferences of your target audience. These numbers also supply a better view of the current conditions within your business’ market and can offer valuable feedback to help inform better business decisions.
While browsing your business’ specific analytics, there are certain pillars of social media success that you should be paying attention to. The first of these pillars is engagement. Likes, comments, shares and retweets all fall under the engagement category. These interactions play a big role in most social media algorithms, so it’s a crucial part of social media metrics. Another big part of engagement is tags and organic mentions (mentions are not used in comment replies, but are calculated by the original tag to your account). Other elements of engagement include reach and impressions. Reach is your content’s potential views, so if one of your followers shares a post of yours, then your reach is your follower count, plus their follower count. Impressions are the amount of times your post shows up on someone’s feed or timeline.
Now that you have a good idea of what falls under the category of engagement, you may be wondering about what this means for your social media strategy. Well, once you have your basic engagement data, you can extrapolate that to learn even more information about your social media metric. To find the post engagement rate, divide the number of engagements by the number of reach/impressions and voila! As you’re creating your social media strategy, it’s important to keep in mind that decisions should not be made off of engagement metrics alone. Some content you post may lend itself more to likes, while other content may prompt your followers to comment, so you won’t always see equal amounts of engagement.
Another pillar of social media analytics is referrals and conversions. A referral is how someone ends up on your website, so in terms of social media, the term “social media traffic” is the amount of people who end up on your website via your social media platform. This data will generally be reported through your website analytics, and will oftentimes break the social media traffic down by network. This is valuable information because you’ll be able to figure out which social media platform is driving the most traffic to your website. A general conversion is when someone buys a product off of your site. A social conversion helps to track which of those visitors to your website found you through social media, paid a visit to your site, and made a purchase all in one session.
The next pillar of social media analytics is share of voice (SOV). SOV marks how your business stands up to your competitors within your industry. This acts as a measure of your brand’s visibility within the digital sphere. Paying attention to SOV helps you understand the buzz surrounding your business, and whether or not you need to devote more time in your social media strategy to switch your social media channels or content format. If you’re looking for analysis on how well you stack up to competitors, or if you’ve recently launched a paid advertising campaign, share of voice insight is incredibly valuable.
Customer service is key, both in person and online, so it’s no surprise that customer care is the final pillar of social media metrics. Many businesses struggle responding to reviews, comments, or even direct messages on social media but this step is crucial to a well rounded online presence.
Your social media analytics can tell you how fast (if at all) your team is responding to messages. It has been reported that 71% of consumers who have had a positive experience on social media are likely to recommend the brand to their friends and family, so if your customer care is lacking, then you’re missing out on countless opportunities.
Though social media analytics may seem like another time consuming task to add to your to-do list as a business owner, paying attention to the metrics and making changes based off of your social media data actually saves you time and energy in the end.
Social media analytics can tell you which social network is the best platform to focus on, what relevant content should be shared, and what social media posting strategy you should formulate. The analytics offer valuable information on what your audience is looking for, and what your competitors are doing. Ultimately, social media shouldn’t be a chore, and with proper time spent on analytics, you can crack the code.
