Social media analytics are becoming more and more important these days, but why? And what’s the best way to track it? In this blog post, we'll find out why social media analytics can maximize campaign impacts and create business value. In addition, we will detail the methods that will allow you to better analyze your social networks on a single platform.
*Source: datareportal
By analyzing your data, you can access a number of valuable insights, for instance: the number of people who clicked on your post, views and length of media watched, or who subscribed to your account. Thanks to this kind of data, you can target and personalize your next actions.
An example of the insights you can produce: by observing a user who recently came three times to your site via your Instagram publications, you will be able to put forward paid ads to direct this person to a desired action such as a purchase. This can be done with Call-To-Action (CTAs), for example including sentences such as "Buy Now", or featuring limited-time discounts, such as a simple "Get 10% off this week.”
With the data collected, you will have valuable information to turn your targeted prospects into customers.
To go even further, social media analytics is a key solution to assess when and why your products or services are purchased. That is to say, you will be able to build touchpoints at every step of your buyer’s motivations.
Let's take an example: you are a company that offers carpooling services. You launch advertisements to increase your visibility and your number of application sign-ups. After several weeks of campaigning, you realize that people click on your ad and download the app mostly on Sunday nights.
What can you infer from just this data? You realize that people will tend to plan their trips on the weekend rather than take care of this duty during the week. You can then decide to more heavily advertise on the weekends or adapt it with copy such as: "download our application and plan your carpools in advance" or "save time by planning your trips early". You will then have targeted the people most likely to take action while understanding the user's motivation to use your service.
In summary, social media analytics allows brands to more effectively learn what their audience is interested in and what influences their buying decisions. This information allows marketing departments in particular to create more personalized and, above all, relevant experiences and content. At the core of this process is making certain you send the right message, to the right person, on the right channel, and at the right cost.
Building your web and social media strategy is important, but you have to be able to embrace change and adapt according to your results. Maximize your results by redoubling your efforts on the content that works for you. Don't invest more time in content that requires a lot of time and money for little return on investment.
If you get the most traffic on Twitter from surveys, publish more of them! If the long videos you post on Facebook are getting very few views, consider revisiting its model and shaping it differently next time.
This tip is probably the easiest to implement, but it requires careful attention to your social media analytics.
Now that you’ve learned about reasons why social media analytics is so important, let’s focus on which channels you should focus on.
First of all, you might ask yourself: which social media should I monitor? You're probably thinking of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok, and other global names, and you're right. But, you should definitely go beyond traditional sources: conduct exploratory monitoring in your sector.
You should definitely pay close attention to discussions happening on public forums, review sites, and blogs. Among them are TripAdvisor, of course, for hotels and restaurants, Yelp for businesses, Glassdoor for the employer brand, Etsy for small businesses, and many more.
On one hand, as specialized sites are used by consumers to gather further product information or reviews, these online domains are sources to identify your competitors, therefore giving you an added dimension to conduct deeper competitive analysis.
Competitors on social media: examples of sites and conversation spaces to analyze
You need to look out for as much qualitative data as possible to make decisions. Explore, listen, and analyze. But how do you do that? This imposes a lot of data to process and interpret, how to manage it? This is where several tools can help you.
To begin, most social networks offer their own analytics platform. For example, you can access the data from your Facebook account by going to the "Insights" tab or from your Instagram account by going to your profile.
However, what if you want to find all the data coming from your different sources in the same place? To be able to access what is being said on the web, on social networks, on forums and all the other platforms previously mentioned?
To get a 360-degree analysis and to find everything in one place, there is social network listening software. For instance, social listening tools like Digimind Social work with businesses to build key trends into perspective and visualize consumer data through dashboards to deliver a more robust and informed brand strategy. On the same analytics platform, you will be able to research, collect, analyze, and report data from a variety of sources.
Example of social media channels that Digimind's Analytics Module can pull data from
Without the right tools and experience, it can be difficult for most marketers to understand how their audience interacts with their brand. These social media analytics tools can help you understand those interactions. If a key part of your marketing and e-commerce strategy is social media, then analyzing it is even more important.
These social media analysis tools can be compared to management tools. Management tools help you create and schedule content on a regular basis, while analytics tools verify this content so that social media teams can make clear recommendations on where to improve.
If you use these tools rigorously, your analyses will allow you to know your audience at your fingertips, and thus adapt your content to please, engage and ultimately, reach your objectives.
Stop neglecting your analytics data and get the right tools to monitor the ticks in your social and digital strategies! Social listening is a modern intelligent tool that marketers and strategists rely on to provide dynamic social media analytics on the fly, saving you the hassle of manually gathering data, instead putting more work into making actionable decisions. 👇