Why Social Media Analytics should matter to you and the most important metrics you should know about
For most of the population, social media is all about sharing posts and connecting with your friends. But, for businesses and brands, social media can be an ideal way to generate extremely useful and timely data on what their customers want, think, and need from them.
That wealth of information behind your Instagram post or latest tweet can be tapped into through your Social Media Analytics. Not only is there an entire market behind this data, but these analytics have also enabled users and social media teams to maximize their efforts and track performance in a much deeper way than counting likes.
Techopedia has a solid definition of social media analytics:
“Social media analytics (SMA) refers to the approach of collecting data from social media sites and blogs and evaluating that data to make business decisions. This process goes beyond the usual monitoring or a basic analysis of retweets or ‘likes’ to develop an in-depth idea of the social consumer.”
These metrics are the drivers behind your social media efforts. They can tell you more about your target audience like where they’re active on the internet and when. They can inform you which social media network your content performs best on and why. They can let you listen in on your competitors and gain an advantage over their efforts. And most importantly, they can give you direct feedback, almost in real-time, about how your campaign is performing and if you’re on track with your predetermined goals.
Social media analytics are core to getting the most out of your efforts online. However, there are a serious number of different metrics and specific KPIs to track across the web. Here are three main reports you might find yourself writing and which metrics to track for each:
The Daily Report
When making a report for yourself, it’s important to keep in mind the target audience: you. That means it doesn’t have to be beautifully designed or perfect, but it needs to be functional and helpful in tracking your daily progress and keeping tabs on results from the day. An important metric for yourself would be basic engagement metrics from any posts you put out that day. You could track likes, comments, or shares, essentially anything easy to jot down in case you need to reference it later when creating larger reports. Additionally, if your brand values brand awareness, it would make sense to keep tabs on daily reach or impressions on either the account as a whole or specific posts.
Creating a daily report for yourself isn’t just a great way to stay on top of the HUGE amount of analytics and data out there, it can also make creating future reports that much easier. If you make a quick note of daily performance metrics and even any significant account mentions that occurred, it’ll be that much easier to track what worked, and more importantly what didn’t, at the end of the month.
The Weekly Report
So, what happens when your immediate boss asks you to make a weekly report? Well, thankfully your boss, like you, probably understands all the social media jargon for each unique platform. This means you can dig into the nitty-gritty of the data from the week and not have to worry about information flying over their head.
This report will probably have similar metrics to those you include in a daily report, yet they might be a little briefer. If you or your brand are pumping out a lot of posts every day, it might be a little much to include every single engagement metric for each post. Nonetheless, these are important metrics and should be included. This means likes, shares, and comments, or even the total number of engagements for the entire week. Using weekly metrics allows you to compare performance across a weekly basis, meaning engagement rates and other metrics can be tracked throughout the year to show growth or decline. Additionally, it might be beneficial to recap any significant account mentions that occurred during the week, and the additional traffic that mentions brought in.
Again, if brand awareness is something your boss values, you should 100% include weekly values for reach and impressions, and possibly even how they stand up to reach metrics from previous weeks. Likewise, the weekly report is the place to dig a little deeper into metrics that correspond with overall business goals and strategic goals. That means if the company values share of voice over social media you can include listening metrics like sentiment, or if you’re looking for more information on your target audience you can include demographic and timing metrics like age ranges or optimal posting times. As with all metrics, it’s vital to relate them back to any overall goals your brand may have, and this weekly report is just the place to dip your toes into metrics.
The Monthly Report
The largest and most common form of a social media report is a monthly report. These are the reports that let you know how you’re doing concerning strategic goals and give a broader picture of social performance. Additionally, these reports are most often for higher up management, which means you need to steer away from all those granular details about the campaign and jargon from your weekly report.
As with all metrics, you always should know how they tie back into your strategic goals, but on this report that’s the main point, you need to communicate. As a general rule, focus your report on the metrics that most pertain to your current goals, but there are a few general metrics that often find themselves in monthly reports.
These are general engagement and reach metrics, as mentioned before, like posts, likes, comments, and shares. However, these should include monthly averages and comparisons to past performance. Include average monthly growth and average likes and comments for the month, and additionally drive them home with easy to understand percentage changes, like growth or decline. This allows you to reinforce the insights from your data, rather than just spewing numbers at your management. The more you can relate your metrics to the overall business goals and bigger picture of the campaign, the better.
You may also want to include examples of your highest performing content. Often times showing what performs best gives those in charge a better idea of what they’re investing in with your campaign. Additionally, if ROI is important in your social media strategy, be sure to communicate referral and conversion metrics within your report. This means conversion rate driven from social media, monthly referrals, and more insights pertaining to creating customers and monetary value from your social efforts.
