We are pleased to continue our advent calendar Day 4 release with the definition of "Social Media Analytics". Kelsey Simmons, Business Intelligence Analyst at WhoWhatWear has shared her definition of the term with us. 

🎈 The definition of "Social Media Analytics" 

Social Media Analytics is the study of the performance of social content in order to understand how users are interacting with and responding to specific digital media. As this ecosystem is constantly in flux and varies by industry the more current the information and robust the context for comparison, the more accurate the takeaways from analysis.

🔎 Let's be more specific 

In practice, social media analytics includes collecting a wide enough set of data to be able to identify patterns in content performance. Analysis can be as simple as identifying which of a brands owned posts have received the most likes or which owned content was posted during the time period where an account saw the greatest growth in following. Viewing these top owned posts engagement metrics amongst those of a brands competitors brings context to analysis, allowing an analyst to gauge where on the scale any given collection of content falls within the broader landscape. Competitive analysis can become as complex as manually tagging a specific topic that exists in the visual component of owned and competitive content before normalizing engagement metrics by each accounts following to determine which account is engaging the highest percentage of their audience on a specific type of visual. Insights from this reporting enables stakeholders to make more informed decisions when tweaking social strategies to optimize performance and choosing KPIs that will accurately track the goals of their social media efforts.