Working with social media analytics involves gathering and assessing data across platforms to enhance your digital marketing strategy. Companies can utilize social media data to better reach their target audience and grow their online presence, which can ultimately lead to an increase in new customers.
Social media data can give insight into which methods of reaching consumers are most effective. It also gives information about what products or services resonate with consumers the best. You can measure these important aspects by looking at followers, post engagements, reach, mentions, and several other factors.
Other pieces of information you can extract from social media data are whether your customers prefer videos or pictures, the demographics of your customers, and which social media platforms are the best to reach your existing customers and new ones.
Analytics You Need to Know
Social media metrics are a valuable asset to businesses. However, the kinds of metrics you track depend on the size of your company and your business’s goals. Here are some important metrics you can consider tracking for your business:
Reach
This social media metric is based on the number of people who view the content you post on social media. This includes posts, stories, and videos. Reach is a solid metric to track because it gives you information about the number of followers and non-followers that your posts reach.
Impressions
Impressions will tell you how many people saw your content. It’s different from reach because impressions factor in views of your content whether it was clicked on or not. So, it’s likely that impressions will be higher than reach because it also includes the number of times your content is viewed, even by the same person multiple times. Understanding why people may be coming back to view your posts is a good indicator that a content format or topic is resonating well with your audience.
Growth Rate
Checking in on your audience growth rate will tell you how many new followers you are getting on a particular social media platform. However, it includes this information as it pertains to a certain time frame. Every business should want new followers on their social media accounts. It’s easy to calculate. Simply track how many followers you received during a certain period. Then divide that number by your total number of followers and then multiply that number by 100. That summation will equal your audience growth rate.
Engagement
Engagement involves the number of reactions, comments, and shares a post or set of posts receives as it relates to a percentage of your followers. To figure out what your engagement is you’ll have to count comments and shares and divide that by your total number of followers. Then multiply that number by 100. The answer will be your average engagement rate percentage.
How to Spot Trends
Businesses also need to understand how to use these metrics and incorporate them into a useful strategy to help elevate their business. Part of that includes identifying trends based on data comparison over a certain period of time.
MoM stands for month-over-month. It indicates changes in metrics by comparing one month to the previous month. You can calculate this by taking Month B number and subtracting it from Month A numbers. Then take that number and divide it by Month A numbers. Then take that number and multiply it by 100. Your answer will give you your percentage growth.
Similarly, YoY or year-over-year data can be helpful for businesses and understanding their social media metrics. You can use the same formula to come up with your yearly percentage growth. Simply take Month A numbers and subtract Year Two numbers from Year One. Then take that number and divide it by Year One. That number should be multiplied by 100. The answer is your yearly percentage growth.
These two equations are great for showing positive trends or seasons. Any metric measured in this way will give you information about improved metrics and which ones need improvement.
Looking at the Big Picture
Once you look at all the metrics that are important to your business, you’ll want to think about forming a content strategy. This is a critical step in amplifying your business. First, you can look at which metrics are decreasing and come up with ways to increase those numbers. So, if you are receiving fewer views on videos, try looking at videos that performed well in the past and determine how you can use that format for future videos.
Follow this process for each metric so that you create a strategic plan for all of your social media platforms.
Digital Mules: Expertly Crafted Content Strategies
If you don’t have the means to come up with your content strategy plan, you have other options. At Digital Mules, we have an experienced team waiting to assist you. As a full-service digital marketing agency, we’ll examine your data and devise a social media strategy plan that will benefit your business. Please contact us so we can begin working with you!
