Businesses use social media as a tool to connect, engage and interact with their target customers. It is also used to market and sell products or services to their audience. Having a social media presence is very important for businesses. Along with their social media efforts, businesses also need to focus on analytics.
Social media analytics can provide insights into which platform and posts are resonating with your target customers. This is important for your social media efforts as it can help you understand your audience better. When you know your audience, you know which type of content they are looking for. It helps you increase engagement which has a positive impact on the overall success of your business. In this article, we will talk about how to conduct social media analytics that can help you gather important insights.
What is Social Media Analytics?
Social media analytics is the process of collecting and evaluating data based on metrics from multiple social media platforms. This analytics provides insights on various aspects of your social media marketing efforts. Analyzing different areas is crucial for the success of your social media marketing efforts and overall business growth.
Social media analytics help you gain a deeper understanding of your target audience and which platforms they spend most of their time on. It enables you to identify the right platforms for your business. With analytics you can also determine which type of content and posts drive more engagement and conversions. In addition, you can gain insights on your social media ad campaigns and make improvements that can drive better results.
Just like any other marketing efforts, social media marketing requires analytics to monitor your progress and give valuable insights that can be used to better resonate with your target customers.
Let’s look at all the different types of analytics reports you can leverage.
Social Media Analytics Reports
Social media analytics reports can provide information on specific metrics and data such as impressions and engagement of the posts you share on your social media account. You can view some of these metrics on your social media accounts. However, to see the overview of your social media efforts over a certain period you will need reports. These reports can help you view your social media marketing efforts in a more organized way. You can get these reports when you leverage platforms like HubSpot or Hootsuite.
These tools can provide various reports that can help you track the performance of your social media efforts. You can also customize your reports to view metrics that are important for your business. It becomes easier to view your reports on one platform and you can access any reports you need.
As an example, let’s look at some of the reports that are available on HubSpot’s social media analytics reporting options.
Published Posts Report
The Published Posts report shows the number of social media posts that you have published over a certain period.
Audience Report
The Audience report shows the number of followers you have across different social media accounts. It also provides a comparison between the numbers of current and previous followers.
Interactions Report
The Interactions report shows the number of likes and comments on all your posts across various platforms.
Clicks and Shares Report
These reports show the number of clicks and shares your posts got on various platforms.
New Contacts Report
This report displays the number of new contacts created in HubSpot due to the web sessions driven from social media accounts.
These are all the types of reports you can get if you use tools for social media analytics. Here are some tools that you can consider using for your social media analytics.
Tools for Social Media Analytics
The tools you choose depend on what is best for your business and budget. Different tools have various price points and features that you can research about before you make your decision. Here are some tools that are commonly used for social media analytics.
HubSpot Social Media Software
HubSpot Social Media Software as seen above has various reports that can help you track your social media marketing efforts. It can also give you insights on your customer journey and help you understand which marketing strategies are working best for your business. You can also analyze your search engine optimization efforts that impact your ROI.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a tool that can allow you to create customized reports with over 200 metrics. These reports are easily shareable with other team members so that everyone can be updated about the ongoing campaigns.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is another tool that helps you track the performance of your content and campaigns across various social media platforms. Sprout Social can also be integrated with HubSpot.
Google Analytics
With Google Analytics you can track how much traffic and leads end up on your website through your social media channel.
How To Measure Social Media Efforts?
Here is how you can start tracking your social media efforts that can help you gain better understanding about your audience and what resonates with them.
Set SMART goals
The first step is to set SMART goals. This method helps you to set goals that are realistic and attainable. SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. If you want to start tracking your social media metrics, you need to have goals. Goals can be a good starting point before you implement any strategy and later you can track metrics to see if you are meeting these goals.
The SMART method ensures that you set goals that are relevant, specific, and attainable. You want to set goals that are realistic based on your team and resources. This helps you focus on things that are important for your business. It also ensures that you give yourself a specific time within which you can achieve your goals.
Identify the metrics you want to track
The next step is to determine which metrics you want to track. These metrics depend on your social media marketing campaigns and the goals you set. Metrics vary based on the tools you use for your social media analytics. Here are some common metrics that are used for social media analytics.
Engagement: This is all the interactions such as like, shares, and comments.
Impressions: This metric shows the number of times your post appears on someone’s feed.
Mentions: The number of times your business is mentioned by audiences or other businesses.
Social Listening: When you monitor what audiences are saying about your brand or products on social media.
ROI: This helps you track whether the investment you are making in your social media efforts is bringing in revenue or not.
Here are some more metrics that you can track for your social media efforts.
Pick a tool for social media analytics
The next step is to choose which tool or software you want leverage for social media analytics. We discussed a few tools above, but you can explore more options on Google. This decision is based on multiple factors. The first thing you need to assess is if you want to use a tool to track your social media marketing on multiple platforms or just one. Next, you should review the list of metrics you have decided to track and research which tools help you cover those metrics.
Budget is an important factor that will help you decide which tool is best for you. There are various tools available with different price points and features. You should also research whether the tool you pick can support your goals. Lastly, determine if you are going to use any integrations and find the tool which is compatible with that. Many tools offer free trials to help you get a demo of how it works. Research various tools or software and pick the one based on these various factors so that it aligns with your business needs.
Track your social media analytics efforts
Once you implement your tool or software you will be able to track your social media efforts. When you start using these tools you will be able to track your social media marketing efforts and build customized reports and dashboards.
To track your success, you can examine a few areas like are you achieving your SMART goals? Is the software helping you with your business requirements? Are the metrics you picked giving you valuable insights? All these questions can help you gauge whether your social media analytics is heading in the right direction.
Make improvements
If you have tracked your social media analytics efforts and you discover any mistakes, you can make improvements. For example, if the tool you picked is not aligning with your business needs, then you can switch to another tool that suits you better. As you start with analytics you may realize that you need a tool that is more sophisticated than the one which you are using. Or you may simply want to upgrade your existing plan.
Once you have started your social media analytics efforts, you will come across many areas that need improvements or upgrades. As you get more familiar with analyzing your social media efforts, you will know exactly what works for your business. It is important to track and review your progress frequently and make the necessary changes. This can help you analyze your audiences and campaigns better.
Social media analytics gives you deeper insights into your target audiences to help you engage and convert them. With these insights you can evaluate which type of content works better for your target customers and how you can use it to attract them to your business. It is a great way to boost conversions and build long-term relationships with your audience. Many businesses post on social media without analyzing their audience or other interactions. However, to get the best results you need to know what improvements are needed.
The tool you pick for social media analytics is important and you need to ensure that you do your research first before picking one. When you start analyzing your marketing efforts you discover more about how you can be more relevant to your potential customer.
Found this helpful? Check out more interesting articles from our blog.
