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Measuring Success: Understanding Social Media Analytics

Social media analytics has been a commonly used term for social media optimization, yet it still seems like a foreign word to the people who could benefit from it most. Conducting social media analytics is always among the list of "What to do to boost my social media presence or ROI" or "How to enhance social media platforms for business growth." Yet, many businesses today do not take advantage of this. I think it is because people tell you that you need to use it but won’t tell you how to use social media analytics. 

Ruth Sherrill

Social media analytics can make or break your business, but the key is understanding what it means, what areas need to be analyzed, and why. Continue reading to find out more.

What Does Social Media Analytics Mean?

In simple terms, social media analytics is gathering data from all your social media platforms, analyzing those data and reports, and using it to understand how well your audience interacts with your posts, their success rates, and how effective your marketing efforts are.


Why Social Media Analytics is Important for Businesses

Here are the top three reasons why social media analytics is vital for your business


1. Improve ROI

This is one of the obvious reasons. The main goal of your social media marketing strategies is to gain significant ROI, and when you are not getting that, despite your efforts, that is a problem. 

This is where social media analytics comes in. Social media analytics helps you point out the weak areas, allowing you to focus on them to improve your ROI.


2. Identify and Stay Up-to-Date With Trends

Things change with each passing day, and something new is always trending. Without being up-to-date on the latest trends in your industry or niche, you would get left behind without knowing why. And it just might be a slight change in the previous trend that can mar your social media success.

To stay on top of this, social media analytics is highly recommended. It shows you the "What's going on now," "What has changed," "How it changed," and more.  


3. Tap Winning Ideas from Your Competitors

Who said you can't steal or borrow ideas from your competitors? You don't have to ask directly, send a spy, or snoop around - Social media analytics gives you all that and more. By carrying out analytics on their social media platforms, you find out what strategies are working for them, then implement them on your own. 

It's like adding an extra sprinkle of sweetener to your already delicious meal to enhance its flavor. Big win.


Different Analytics for Different Objectives

Social media analytics serves various purposes and can be used to measure the success of different objectives. The important aspect lies in discovering what those objectives are, as it will guide you in choosing the most relevant metric.


1. Awareness

Social media analytics for awareness involves knowing the number of your audience members who view your content. If your primary goal is to measure the success of your awareness of social media, these are the analytics to focus on reach, visits, impressions, and follower growth.

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2. Engagement

Engagement is the new likes, so let's face it: Engagement is the most important metric to carry out. It shows you the level or amount of engagement you get on each post/content, which can help you narrow down what to focus on. The three most important social media analytics for engagement are likes, shares, and comments. (Psst. We use Metricool to track our analytics for clientele, check it out.)


3. Conversion

Conversion metrics vary for different organizations or businesses. However, the reason behind it stays the same - to measure the success of how much your post is driving people to perform your required action, such as subscribing, signing up, and more.


Three Key Areas to Use Social Media Analytics to Measure Success

To effectively measure your social media success and redefine your strategy, you need to know the key areas in which to use social media analytics. Understanding why social media analytics is important for these is the first step towards success.


1. Audience Analysis

Everything starts with your audience. They are the reason you do what you do, so knowing a lot about them is essential. Social media analytics gives you a well-detailed insight into what your audience loves, what they spend more time looking at or engaging with on social media, what problems your audience needs your product or service to solve, and more. 


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To perform the basic audience analysis, carry out the following actions

  1. Analyze your current audience

  2. Analyze your website and other social media visitors

  3. Use analytics tools like Metricool to track and analyze your audience engagement with your post

  4. Segment your audience into groups and review the data to understand their interests

  5. Track how your content performs within and outside your region. 


Social media analytics acts as a roadmap to understanding your audience and how they accept or interact with your content. Conducting audience analysis will help you find your target audience and build an effective, audience-first marketing strategy.


2. Performance Analysis

This is a key area in which to carry out social media analytics. This way, you get to understand where your strategy is working well, struggling, or failing. 

Key performance analytics to track include 

  • The number of interactions on your platforms

  • The number of interactions per number of followers

  • The number of click-throughs

  • The amount of follower growth.


To analyze your performance

  1. Regularly monitor key performance metrics. 

  2. Use the data to assess the type of content and strategy yielding the best results.

  3. Test different types of content, posting times, and formats to determine the best performance.

These metrics are highly important to spot bigger and latest trends.


3. Competitive Analytics

As stated earlier, there is nothing wrong with getting an idea from your competitors. Comparison is never a good thing in some areas, but it is essential in some, and it is in this case. 


Use your social media analytics to compare your performance with that of at least four of your competitors. To do this

  1. First, identify your competitors (in your niche)

  2. Analyze your competitor's target audience and segments

  3. Analyze their content, keywords, activity, and engagement

  4. Conduct a SWOT analysis

  5. Regularly update your analysis with social media monitoring

This gives you a good idea of how you rank and what you need to stack yourself up.



Social Media Analytics Requires the Right Tool

The right social media analytics tools are underutilized, which is why many businesses fail to get the complete and correct analytics needed to effectively measure their social media success. They use native tools that provide shallow performance in hopes of saving costs, which is doing more harm than good. 

As a business owner, the success of your social media platform is paramount because if it's doing well, so is your business. After all, your social media platforms are an extension of your business. As a result, your social media analytics must be carried out with the right tools to ensure you don't miss out on a multitude of in-depth analytics that can propel your business forward by 101%.


What's the next step?

This is where we come in. We are the marketing service that provides you with in-depth data analytics that accurately measure your success. Using advanced social media analytics tools, we ensure you get current and result-driven data tracking metrics and analysis to help you understand your audience and optimize your strategy for better results.

At RSMS, our services range from social media analytics reporting, audience insight, and segmentation to competitive analysis and metric building. These services are to ensure that you never miss out on data points and insights that can help you measure your success.


Conclusion

At Ruth Sherill Marketing Services, we want to ensure your business succeeds, starting with your social media platforms. Our approaches and services are result-driven, highly effective, and proof-filled. 

Are you ready to measure your success with social media analytics? Like and leave a comment if this blog was helpful!



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