The top social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn offer tons of data. But it can be difficult to understand how to analyze social media data<\/a> to figure out the numbers that matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whether you\u2019re new to using analytics or you track yours every day, read on to discover tips that can help you use social media for business<\/a> growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each social network offers its own analytics tool to give insights about new followers, engagement, audience demographics, and more. But you need to figure out which metrics your brand should actually focus on and where to find them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Along with using the analytics features of individual social channels, you can also benefit from using a third-party social media analytics tool such as Khoros<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It can help you:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the next section, I\u2019m going to discuss the best practices to accurately track and measure the effectiveness of your social campaigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is to ensure that you do social media marketing better, faster, and smarter with advanced analytics tools such as Khoros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Want to improve your social media marketing ROI<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n You should learn to mine and analyze your social media data so that you can deliver a better ROI by using powerful tools and strategies. Doing so can help you identify opportunities for growth and leverage them to drive better results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s take a closer look at social media analytics best practices and tools that can help you take your digital marketing game to the next level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first best social media analytics practice is to understand who your audience is <\/strong>and what they are looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you don\u2019t know who they are, you will not be able to give them what they need. And, in return, they won\u2019t give you what you need (more business).<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can use the analytics features of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to gather insights about your audience, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n How else can you learn about your audience?<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can use an advanced third-party social media analytics tool to perform real-time searches across social channels and collect useful data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can get an overview of your growth over a period of time, the top tweets mentioning you, your most influential accounts, and the top terms contributing to your growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Analyzing such data can help you make sure that you\u2019re talking about things that are relevant to your target audience. You can create content using the topics and hashtags that generate maximum user engagement in your niche.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you ask industry experts for social media analytics best practices, many of them will ask you to measure metrics that actually matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You may be tracking a lot of metrics, from follower counts to engagement rates. But which ones should your brand focus on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reach, impressions, clicks, likes, shares, comments, sales, or revenue – there is a long list of data points you could consider tracking and measuring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this section, I\u2019ll tell you how to choose your top metrics <\/strong>and where to find them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The engagement rate is one metric that everyone loves and revenue is another important metric that brands and marketers often focus on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, the key metrics you should track depend on your social media marketing goals<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If your goal is to increase brand awareness, you should collect data about your reach, impressions, and shares. On the other hand, tracking likes, comments, shares, and clicks will make more sense if your goal is to boost user engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Similarly, you should measure the number of clicks, click-through rate, number of views on your product pages, and revenue generated to meet sales goals. You can use UTM codes and links to track which posts and sources are bringing you maximum conversions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another point to note here is that you should stay agile with analytics. You should re-examine and update your key metrics from time to time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because the macro-environment, your business, and your social media marketing goals will evolve over time. You will have to revise your targeted metrics accordingly and it should be easy to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most social media platforms give you access to the data you want to track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visiting these analytics sections of individual platforms is a good way to start. However, to minimize your efforts and save time, you can find social media analytics tools that will pull all of the data for you in one place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Using the right tool can make it easier for you to collect data, analyze information, and create presentable reports with fewer efforts. It can make up for the money you spend on these tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Competitor research is a crucial part of any marketing strategy, including your social media strategy. To stay ahead of the competition, you should learn what your competitors are doing <\/strong>to climb the ladder of success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What information do you need about your competitors?<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are tools and techniques that can help you find out this information and organize it into reports that are easy to understand and interpret.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The points I\u2019ve mentioned above are the common ones. But there is more to using social media analytics like a pro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What do professionals do differently?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Have you ever thought of checking the share of your voice about a particular topic? And comparing that to the share of voice of your competitor?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am going to share similar insights about my voice share on \u201cinfluencer marketing\u201d with you using Khoros\u2019 competitive intelligence<\/a> feature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Step 1: <\/strong>Select Twitter from the drop-down. You may conduct research for other social platforms as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The topic I talked the most about is \u201cinfluencer marketing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Step 2: <\/strong>Enter the term\/topic you want to search for using double quotes (\u201c \u201d) and press \u201cEnter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Step 3: <\/strong>Select the \u201cVoice\u201d tab. Add your account by entering the handle name of your Twitter account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This tool will present a graph that reports the voices shared about \u201cinfluencer marketing<\/a>\u201d from all users. It will also present your share of voice about the same topic in a different color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What does this have to do with competitive research, you may ask?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, it allows you to add multiple accounts (your competitors) and discover their percentages of the larger conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Step 4: <\/strong>Add multiple accounts to get information about how well you are performing against other competitive brands in terms of content creation and engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Step 5: <\/strong>Scroll down to figure out the percentage share of your voice about the topic on the particular social media network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is that all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nope. You can also analyze which sub-topics, content types, and hashtags are helping others have a better share of voice in your niche.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Step 6:<\/strong> Click on the voice circle of other brands in your competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This allows you to quickly understand the content strategies your competitors use to drive growth. You can benchmark their content\u2019s performance against yours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s one reason why I really love this social media analytics tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, conducting competitive analysis will do no good for your brand unless you use the collected data wisely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You should use these insights to find out the strengths of your competitors and find ways to make their strong points a part of your social strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the above reports, I found out that Influencer Marketing Hub<\/a> enjoys a large share of conversations about \u201cinfluencer marketing\u201d on Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the reasons behind their growth are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n These three topics help them get a lot of shares, mentions, and retweets, which increase their overall share of voice on influencer marketing<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Step 7: <\/strong>You should use these insights to create content that the audience is appreciating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n While creating an industry report requires a lot of research, data mining, and time, it has been easier for my team to create listicles and guides that people love to read and share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the future, we might also work on publishing a study report that people will find valuable and share within their circles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Identifying your top-performing content allows you to repeat your success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most analytics tools like Facebook Insights provide you with information about your top-performing posts. These results are based on the number of likes, shares, engagement rate of your content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you click on any of the graph peaks on Khoros, it also provides you with your top-performing content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can get more information (such as the data about top retweeters) by double-clicking on the boxed content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many marketers want to know the best times to post their content on different social media channels. But the truth is: there is no specific answer to the right time to post on social media<\/a>. You should be skeptical of any tool that promises to magically give you the perfect answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The best posting times are unique to every brand and they change. They depend on your niche, type of business, audience, season, and social network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You should use data to analyze when and how often to post on different social media platforms. Similarly, your social media analytics reports can help you finalize how often to post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Always rely on data and insights instead of guesswork and algorithms if you want to improve the results of your social campaigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Learn what people think and post about your brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You should track brand mentions <\/strong>on social media to find out what people are saying about your company, products, and services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you give importance to social listening, you will be able to track, analyze, and respond to conversations about your brand and your products\/services. You should respond to your happy customers and to trolls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can also discover the common pain points and resolve them to improve customer satisfaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, leveraging social listening tools can help identify when and how to engage with users to curb the negative interactions about your brand. You can find out in advance when crises are emerging and stay on top of crisis management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Are any influential people saying good things about your brand? You can collaborate with your most loyal brand advocates to co-create more positive content for your brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Along with understanding what people think about your brand, you can compare that with how they think about your competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just like social listening, social monitoring allows you to stay on top of industry trends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can use social media monitoring tools<\/a> to identify:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Monitor conversations relevant to your industry to make sure you leverage the right topics, content types, and strategies to attract and engage users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Q1. What are social media analytics?<\/strong><\/p>\n A.<\/strong> Social media analytics involve gathering and analyzing data that can help brands and marketers like you make the most of their social campaigns.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Q2. What can social media analytics do for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n A. <\/strong>Social media analytics can help you: Q3. How should you track social media analytics?<\/strong><\/p>\n A. <\/strong>You can leverage the analytics features of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social platforms. You can also leverage competitive social media analytics tools to get an overall report about how your posts are performing.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Q4. How should you<\/strong> present social media analytics?<\/strong><\/p>\n A. <\/strong>You should present social media analytics in easy-to-understand reports that include graphs, positive data, and opportunities to improve. There are many tools that can make it easier for you to compile useful reports.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Q5. Have other questions?<\/strong><\/p>\n A. <\/strong>Get in touch<\/a> with me. I\u2019ll be happy to answer your questions.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n Are you measuring the effectiveness of your social media strategy and content?<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want to improve your social media marketing ROI, you need to know what\u2019s working and which areas need improvement. The social media analytics best practices I\u2019ve discussed in this post will help you use data to your advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that you know how to get key insights about your audience, competitors, content, and more, it\u2019s time to use them to meet your business goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here is what to do next:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you have other questions about using social media analytics or improving your social media campaign ROI? Discuss them in the comments below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Building a presence on social media is important. But it is also necessary to analyze how well your social media strategy and content are performing. The only way to do…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"table_tags":[],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":26,"label":"Social Media"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/7-Social-Media-Analytics-Best-Practices-You-Should-Follow.jpg",1024,506,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"Shane Barker","author_link":"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/author\/sbsuperx\/"},"comment_info":3,"category_info":[{"term_id":26,"name":"Social Media","slug":"social-media","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":26,"taxonomy":"category","description":"If you're looking for the latest trends in social media, you've come to the right place. Our repository is full of the latest posts on social media trends. From new platforms and quick hacks to algorithm changes, we've got you covered.","parent":0,"count":175,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":26,"category_count":175,"category_description":"If you're looking for the latest trends in social media, you've come to the right place. Our repository is full of the latest posts on social media trends. From new platforms and quick hacks to algorithm changes, we've got you covered.","cat_name":"Social Media","category_nicename":"social-media","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36237"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36237"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90612,"href":"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36237\/revisions\/90612"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36237"},{"taxonomy":"table_tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/table_tags?post=36237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Getting Started with Social Media Analytics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Often, social media networks themselves define metrics, which can make it challenging to report on campaigns that span social networks and often include a mix of paid and organic results.
Platforms such as Khoros<\/a> allow you to pull data in a consistent manner or simply define your own custom metrics to track across social media platforms.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\nBest Practices to Use Social Media Analytics to Empower Your Campaigns<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1. Learn Everything You Can About Your Audience<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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![\"Image](\"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Social-Media-Analytics-Best-Practices-1.png\" "\\"\\"")
2. Measure What Matters<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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3. Keep an Eye on Your Competitors<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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![\"Image](\"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Khoros-1.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Khoros-2.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Khoros-3.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Khoros-4.png\" "\\"\\"")
![\"Khoros](\"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Khoros-5.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Khoros-6.png\" "\\"\\"")
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4. Identify Your Top-Performing Content<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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![\"Khoros\"](\"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Khoros-7.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Khoros\"](\"https:\/\/shanebarker.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Khoros-8.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n5. Figure Out When and How Often to Post on Social Media<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
6. Manage Crises in a More Informed Way with Social Listening<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
7. Monitor Conversations That Are Relevant to Your Industry<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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FAQs<\/h2>\n\n\n
– Learn about your audience and competitors.
– Track follower growth.
– Identify your top-performing content.
– Identify the best days and times to post content on different social networks.
– Track brand mentions and quickly respond to conversations.
– Curb negative conversations about your brand.
– Measure the efficacy of your campaigns.
– Optimize your social strategy for a higher ROI.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nHow Will You Make the Most Out of Social Media Analytics?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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