Social media data is a collection of information from social media platforms that can provide insights into your audience as well as your social media performance.
Understanding your social media data can help give you a better idea of how your customers feel about your business, products and services. When you analyze your data, you can improve your marketing strategy by understanding what resonates best with your audience. You can also improve your customer service by identifying issues and trends before they become a problem. Understanding your social media data also allows you to create more engaging content that your followers and audience want to see. It’s not just about the numbers, but rather what’s driving those numbers.
Social media data can include both quantitative and qualitative aspects.
This includes likes, shares, comments, follower growth, and mentions.
By examining these aspects you’re able to gauge the effectiveness of the social media strategies you have for your business. This analysis helps to optimize content, improve engagement, and drive marketing success. Analyzing and understanding your social media data is essential for understanding your audience’s behavior and engagement. Without it, it will be hard for you to determine if your social presence is actually helping you reach your business goals.
The number of likes or retweets on your posts aren’t indicators of a successful social media page.
It takes a lot more than just looking at how many of your followers interact with your posts. You have to dive deeper to see if your social media platforms are truly driving the results you are hoping for your business. That’s why understanding your social media data is so important. When you analyze your social media accounts and collect specific data such as reach, impressions, engagement, total followers, unfollows, profile visits, and link taps you are giving yourself an inside look at what’s working and what’s not. This information shows you how your audience interacts with your social platforms. Then, if you’re not satisfied with your findings, you can make necessary tweaks and adjustments.
Here are some steps to help get you started to better analyze and understand your social media data:
- Create a spreadsheet: this should be the first step to help you better understand your social media data. Create a spreadsheet that includes the social media platforms you want to assess. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn, decide which platforms you want to collect data for. This will act as a hub for all of your social media data so that you can compare it over time and have it all in the same place.
- Pull reports from each social media platform: most social media platforms have their own analytics built right in. Look for the “Insights” to gather the specific data you are looking for. This could be followers, impressions, reach, engagement, link clicks, profile visits, etc. As you find the data, input the numbers into your spreadsheet.
- Review all of the data: Once you have collected all of the data you wanted for each platform, you might feel overwhelmed. Don’t get discouraged! Take one platform at a time. It’s no easy feat, but think of the big picture and how understanding your social media data will help your business thrive.
Now let’s talk a little bit about HOW exactly to review what you found to better understand your social media data.
Start by looking at the BASICs – engagement and followers.
Engagement is one of the most important things to track – engagement is how many people are interacting with (clicking) your content. Photo views, video plays, likes, comments, and shares are all forms of engagement. High engagement means you captivated an audience enough to make them act. Pay close and careful attention to posts with the most engagement and replicate it as often as your can without becoming stale.
While reach and impression are also important data to collect, engagement is a metric that you can “almost” control. Reach is the number of people who see your content at least once. Impressions is the total number of times your content is displayed, regardless of whether it was clicked on or not. You can’t necessarily control how far and how often your content is shown, especially if your main form of content is organic social media. But you have more control in what your audience sees. You can create relevant, quality content to encourage your audience to engage.
How your followers count ebbs and flows is also important to watch.
When you track this alongside other metrics, like engagement, you can make decisions about how often or what you post. If you receive 12 new followers when you share a sneak peak of a new product or service, that is an indication that content is strong for your brand. But on the flip side, if you post an issue-based stance and lose 12 followers, that’s also an indicator.
Profile visits can help assess brand visibility and the impact of content marketing efforts.
Profile visits are the number of unique accounts that view your social media profile over a specific time period. This can be an important metric for understanding the interest in your brand and the products and/or services you offer. A high number of profile visits can indicate strong interest and engagement in content and may lead to more significant engagement like follows, likes, and share. Understanding your social media date like this can help small business owners make informed decisions about their strategy and how they are reaching their target audience. It can also help optimize your profile page to achieve your business goals.
It’s typically the most beneficial to perform a social media analysis monthly so that you can get a better look at where you’re doing well and where you could use some improvement. Create a tab or column on your spreadsheet for each month to compare. Many business owners refer to this as monthly reporting.
The key significance to tracking your social media analytics is to measure the ROI of your digital marketing efforts.
Digital marketing campaigns are an important part of business growth.
Many small business owners want to understand their return on investment (ROI) when it comes to digital marketing costs. Posting on social media takes time, and time is money. Knowing what moves the needle and what doesn’t could prove to be very cost effective for you. Making data-driven decisions means you could save time AND money. You could also increase your business impact at the same time.
In the realm of social media marketing, your success isn’t just about having a large following; it’s about making sure that your efforts translate into tangible outcomes. Measuring social media ROI allows you to assess the effectiveness of your campaigns. Effective measurement allows your business to see the success of your social media marketing efforts; what’s working and what needs improvement. This is another key reason why it’s important to understand your social media data.
The first step in measuring social media ROI is aligning your efforts with the overall goals of your business.
Clearly defining your business objectives and how they intertwine with your social media goals lays the foundation for effective measurement. Make sure to have a clear idea of what you are aiming to achieve through social media. Whether it’s increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, generating leads, or booster sales, each goal requires a tailored approach. By aligning your social media strategy with your business objectives, you know that every action you take contributes directly to your brand’s success.
