Using social media analytics to grow your business

Social media analytics is the ability to gather and find meaning in data collected from social channels to support business decisions — and measure the performance of actions based on those decisions through social media.

To track social media analytics, you’ll look at likes, comments, shares and saves, but you might also monitor mentions and discussion of your brand or consumer insights. Social media analytics are key to proving ROI, making informed business decisions and so much more—and luckily, nearly every platform offers its own form of in-app analytics.

5 reasons why it is important

1. Trendspotting - is the act of pinpointing upcoming trends before they're mainstream. These include; what platforms are gaining traction, topics of interest your followers are talking about and type of content your followers engage with most.

2. Brand sentiment - is understanding how people feel about your brand. This can help you to manage happy and unhappy followers.

3. Perceived value - is the demand for your service and how much people are willing to pay for you. This can help drive your strategy and guide the content you create to improve value perception and make sure you're showcasing how your product or service can hit key pain points.

4. Setting goals - is a great way to see what channels and content are performing well and where you can focus more attention. It’s important to remember to set realistic goals.

5. ROI - can help prove why your effort into social media is important. After running new ads, campaigns and marketing strategies, analytics can show if you are generating more followers, clicks and sales.

What are the types of social media analytics?

There are several different types of analysis you can perform to make sure your social media strategy is working.

Performance

As said in the name, you need to measure the performance of your efforts. This includes social media metrics like impressions, reaches, likes, comments, shares, views, clicks. This shows how your content is performing and if you need to switch it up or not.

Audience

This is to make sure the needs of your target audience are being met and if not, adjusting your content strategy in order to do so. Audience analytics includes data like age, gender, location, device.

Competitor

It is crucial to look into how your competitors are doing. How many followers do they have? What is their engagement rate? You can then compare this to your data and adapt your strategy to meet your goals.

Sentiment

As said previously, how your brand is perceived and how users feel about you is crucial. You can use social listening to gauge what is being said about a certain topic, such as your brand or subjects related to it. This is a proactive way to monitor yourself online.

How to track your analytics

Once you’ve got your piping hot report in your hands, it’s time to analyse the data. Social media metrics offer a clue as to what’s going on out there on the world wide web: it’s up to you to interpret what they actually mean.

Look for any spikes and drops in your numbers, and then dig into why those anomalies happened. Were you running a new, experimental campaign that inspired a ton of comments? Did your free workout video not get more people moving and following you? You might discover information that helps you either replicate those highs, or avoid another low. You want to make sure you address a pain point, but to know the pain points of your followers look at the ages you're targeting and the countries they are in - think more about behavioural patterns than just psychographics because when you know your audience you can deep dive into their needs

If your goal is to grow your Instagram following, then metrics that track engagement (like follows and likes) are probably the most important ones to keep an eye on. If you see people are engaging with your posts and not following, try to assess what could be a barrier. Maybe your content isn't cohesive and consistent, with some posts e performing well and others not - you can gauge what content people are looking for and use those themes as prompts for future content.

If your goal is sales, conversion-related metrics are more relevant (that might include views or click-through rates). Not all metrics are equally important for every goal, so save yourself a headache by tracking the numbers that actually matter.

TIP: Instagram shows you peak times for different days - you want to make sure you post during times when your followers are most active and stick to posting at the same time.

Remember that social media analytics are an ongoing process. By consistently monitoring and adapting your strategy based on the insights you gather, you can effectively leverage social media to drive business growth.