Social media analytics can be overwhelming at times! There is much to know and each social platform has different terminology. So how do you know what analytical data actually matters? How do you know what metrics to read?
The truth of the matter is that those questions can not be answered unless you know what it is that you or your brands mission is and then to understand what that mission is on social media. Once you determine what exactly you want to do, who you want to target and many other variables; those questions will be clear to answer. I will be acting as a social media manager. I will display a series of questions pertaining to social media presence and activity that is focused around how to compare, increase and diversify ones brand. These questions will be answered with a variety of metrics that could help aid in determining how one could do better.
Who is my Audience?
This question is crucial. You can not expect success of your content or brand without knowing who it is you’re trying to target. Let it also be known that you could be surprised by who some of your audience may be and where they come from. This type of data will help you be able to craft up more content to help keep your audience engaged and continue expanding that follower base!
- Demographic Analytics: This analytical data will help you really get an average sense of your followers. It’s going the extra step to be able to find a common theme or themes amongst your audience. This type of metric could help you tremendously in increasing other metrics such as engagement, sentiment, impressions and more! Demographics will break down where your followers are located, account type (organization or individual), age, gender, interests, profession and more.
- Sentiment Analysis: This is what people think of you. I enjoy the sentiment analytics and would use this as a way to help gauge how I am doing with my current and new followers. This metric really forecasts how your next social media campaign could do and gives an overall feel that your brand is being spoke about in a positive way. I strongly believe metrics for sentiment is overseen when it comes to understanding an audience because many in the field equate this metric as simply the overall tone of how a brand is perceived online. Which is true! However, that tone will justify any changes amongst your current audience. Is interest changing or evolving? Is your audience talking about another brand? Why? Are they outgrowing your brand? How can we evolve with the audience? The list could go on, but sentiment is something I would strongly recommend as a social media manager.
Am I Doing Better Than My Competitors?
It is always good to compare your posts to one another and draw conclusions to help increase your content. It is just as good if not better to regularly be sure you are comparing your social media game to your competitors as well! Certain social media platforms will give a user the option to compare their page to other competitors.
- Competitor Analytics: Depending on what social media analytical tool you may be using, you’ll want to know how others are doing in your industry. Facebook and LinkedIn do a fantastic job at breaking down metrics for users needing to see an in-depth view of what sets them a part (or not) from their competitors and their followers! Competitor analytics will not only help set industry-standard benchmarks and targets but will also keep you one step ahead at all times if analyzed properly.
- Engagement: I would consider this the most important metrics before even analyzing the competitor insights in depth. You have to be sure that your social media platforms have engagement. Likes, comments, shares…they all matter! If we didn’t have the option to view data already compiled by social media analytical tools like what Facebook, LinkedIn and many others provide, this is how we could also determine how we are doing compared to those we are competing with. Just at a simple glance, we could compare a number of things such as; time content was posted, quantity of likes, shares, comments and more! If your competitor has more likes and comments than you do, why is that? I would advise that you analyze the type of content they posted, what time of day, how many followers they have and so on. These are very basic ways of being able to compare yourself to others in your industry but just as important to consider.
What Are People Saying About My Brand?
As much as we may not want to admit it, we are going to want to know not only the good but also the bad and the ugly of what people are saying about our brand. Now of course, we can’t please everyone but we can sure try! Ideally you’ll want more positive commentary on the brand than negative. But how do we figure that out?
- Sentiment: My favorite metric is back again! As stated above, this can forecast a lot for a brand if it is being analyzed correctly. But at its core function, this will tell you exactly how your audience is feeling and why. Social Sentiment analysis to be more specific is something that you may want to consider. This is a tool which helps in the process of gathering information of how your audience or consumers perception of your brand may be. It analyzes online conversations and content surrounding your brand or audience by keeping track of key words that describe your brand. It is a sure way of knowing how your audience feels!
When Is The Best Time to Publish?
When you are first starting out and as you are gaining momentum in the amount of followers you are receiving in a certain amount of time, it is important to determine when most of your followers are active on the platform that you are posting on. Many platforms such as Instagram, will be able to tell you when your followers are most active and will help you find the best times you could post. There are two metrics I would consider for this question.
- Engagement: The likes, comments, shares and everything else that goes into a good engagement score will fluctuate greatly if you don’t have certain times you know when your audience is active. No matter what your goal is for a post or campaign, the engagement variable will play a role each and every time. Compare one post to another. Let’s say post number 1 has 22 likes and it was posted at 1am on a Saturday while post number 2 had 102 likes and was posted on a Saturday at 4pm. Let’s also say that the content of the posts were relatively the same: a five to six worded caption and a selfie. One could conclude that the reason post number 1 wasn’t as successful as post number 2 is because most of those followers may have been inactive around 1am compared to those followers being more active by 4pm on that Saturday.
- Content: This is something that is so simple, we tend to forget to categorize it at times. You can’t answer this particular question without actually having content to post. More on this metric in the following responses.
What Content Does My Audience Enjoy The Most?
As a social media manager, this question makes me the happiest. All one has to do is compare the different content posted to the page and how many people actually engaged with that particular post and figure out why?
- Engagement: How many people engaged with a particular post over the other. Let’s say you are finding more people like, share, and comment on a post with text and a video while people are engaging less with a post that is just text. Conclusion? Your audience enjoys content with videos.
- Content: What are you putting into your posts? What platform are you using and is that platform meant for the content you are creating? These are some questions I would ask if I was your social media manager. These are questions you must consider when creating content for your page. Understanding the effects of what plain text, video, images, audio and more can do as your content on your audience is important to know and can easily be tracked through engagement metrics as well.
Which Social Media Network is Best For My Brand?
This can be a heavy question for many brands out there. Just because you can post on a social media platform, doesn’t always mean that you should or that it is beneficial for your brand. This goes back to understanding your mission of the brand, your mission on social media for the brand, and then really understanding where your audience is located. Having a multi-purpose social media analytical tool that can help monitor more than one social media account is highly recommended. This will help tell you what pages are doing better and could even provide data as to why that could be.
- Social Media Analytical Tool: This is going to help you manage many different aspects of social media platforms. Most importantly, this will help you determine what the best social media network is for your brand.
- Content: It is good to know where your brand should be, along with where your audience is as well. However, it doesn’t always hurt to try a few platforms out if you are really just getting started and trying to establish your brand amongst an audience you may not know as well as you would like. This is something many wont want to admit, and many professionals may stray away from this advisement; however I do believe it could help with a question like this. As long as you have an analytical tool to help understand what platform does better for your brand, you’ll be able to make that executive decision on whether to remove your brand from one platform or the other. You can’t make those decisions without the content being created, of course!
How Can I Have a Better Performance?
This question could mean a lot of things. You can always know how to do better by simply analyzing your social media data. This is certainly situational as you need to know where you want to improve. The core answer to this question and what will help you no matter what the situation is; to analyze, analyze, and analyze some more. Seriously! Continue overlooking your posts, content and what is getting the most attraction from your followers. Aim to amplify your efforts each and every time. Mix it up a bit as well! Throw in a curve ball to your followers that can compliment your engagement efforts. You don’t know unless you try.
- Content: This may be sounding repetitive by now but the content really does matters. It keeps your brand relevant, and your audience up to date with what is going on. Constant interaction is most beneficial for the brand. You don’t want your audience getting bored or forgetting about your brand. Constantly creating content is key!
Remember, there is a lot that goes into social media analytics. Metrics is a wide variety of topics and it really can be something that is situational to the brand. What I have listed above may not work for your brand, and that is okay! Every brand is unique and thus calls for different metrics to be analyzed. It is important that you know what your brands mission is and to carefully be sure that the issues you’re wanting to correct aligns well with the actual goals set in place for your brand. Be sure to check out my previous posts as they both display greater examples on social media analytics and how to better understand analytical tools.
Thanks for reading!
-Austin
The Media Relations Nomad 