More often than not, finding success from your digital marketing efforts requires navigating social media analytics – so where do you start?
If you are able to become a data savvy marketer, then learning how to analyse, evaluate and ultimately weaponise your social media analytics will help you to create benchmarks, find the best times to post, and allow you to get to know your audience. After all, knowledge is power.
Why You Should Pay Attention To Social Media Analytics
Would you attempt to drive into a new city without having a look at a road map first? More often than not, the answer is no. “Winging it” has a time and a place, but going in blind is not an effective strategy when it comes to conquering social media as a brand or a business in the digital age.
Finding the time – and motivation – to really comb through your social media analytics can offer a wealth of benefits. Just a handful of these include:
Get To Know Your Audience – Most platforms are able to tell you all kinds of things about who is engaging with your posts. This can range from anything and everything to gender, location, relationship status, and even when they are most active – so use that data to steer your social media strategy in the right direction.
Find The Best Social Network For Your Brand – Marketing via social media should never receive a “one size fits all” approach. Use your social media analytics to determine which platform is appropriate for you – if your content is image driven and doing well on Instagram and Pinterest, then you may be wasting your time deploying the same strategy on Twitter.
Create Better Content – When it comes to your online presence, using the analytics function on social media is also one of the best ways to track what’s working – and what’s not. Take care not to fall into the ego inflation trap of vanity metrics, and instead work on your engagement levels.
Track Your Competition – Did you know that you can follow and track the growth of your fellow industry peers on Facebook? This is particularly useful if you’re relatively new to the social media marketing arena, as it can help you to avoid the same mistakes others have made.
Improve Return On Investment – You may think you have an idea of what the people want, but failure to track your campaigns can result in your efforts falling flat. Instead, pay attention to the popular posts and adjust your overall brand strategy accordingly. After all, time is money.
The Best Free Social Media Analytics Tools
While each social media platform has its own built in analytical tool, this can be time consuming and difficult to navigate if you’re juggling multiple accounts.
While there are several highly regarded paid tools out there like Hootsuite and Buffer that come highly recommended, you may not have the budget to continue using them after their applicable free trials come to a close. As an alternative, there are several free options that can prove to be just as invaluable, these include:
Google Analytics – The overlord of all things analytical in the digital realm; there’s not many data queries that Google Analytics can’t solve. Not only does it track your website’s traffic, but it’s also a great tool to see exactly how users got there in the first place, i.e. through a social media post.
Google Trends – Although designed to help target keywords for web content SEO, the same strategy can also be deployed to help you rank across your social media platforms. Providing that your content is optimised, there’s nothing stopping you from appearing in search results to acquire new audiences (and potential leads).
Hootsuite – This tool dominates the realm of social media realms, and offers a free plan for individuals with a maximum of three social accounts. Not only does it help users to track their analytics, but it’s also a great scheduling tool that helps cut down on the monotony of posting regularly.
The Key To Success On Social Media Is Great Content
Like it or not, all the data analysis in the world won’t save you if your published content isn’t relevant, eye-catching or on brand. Producing quality content takes time, effort, experience and resources – and you’re not alone if you can’t quite commit to that.
The good news is that here at Content Hive, producing world class content is exactly what we do best. We have itemised a list of digital content services, and allocated credits next to each of these.
What this means is that each month, you can use your credits with us to produce digital content such as social media posts, blog articles, videos and even animated Instagram stories. We believe that this model means we can produce high quality content in faster than normal delivery times. It also means that because you have a monthly credit, you are going to want to make sure you use these up – and so do we – meaning that your digital content is always going to be consistent.
If you aren’t quite sure where to start on your digital or social media marketing journey and would like to speak to a professional, why not book in a free discovery call with us at Content Hive today to discuss how we can get your brand buzzing online.
