How to Make the Best Use of Social Media Analytics For Your Marketing Strategy

Social media marketing is an effective way of getting exposure and generating leads for your business, but as with any marketing strategy, it’s only as effective as you are at evaluating and improving the tactics you use.

For social media that means regularly reviewing your analytics to see what’s working, what isn’t and figuring out the changes you should make to improve your strategy.

Few of us enjoy trying to make sense of data (well, maybe I’m a bit of geek and love it if I’m being honest), but it is an important marketing activity you should do at least once month if you want your social media marketing to be successful and get the results you’re hoping for.

Don’t worry though, I’ve got some great tips and advice you can implement straight away to make best use of your social media analytics and ultimately, get better results from your social media marketing.

You should be reviewing your social media analytics on a monthly basis

The first step is to look at your top performing posts and tweets.

Consider why certain posts worked better than others and try to break down why this might be the case. Did you use pictures or memes? Did you use a different style of writing such as sharing a personal story or a case study?

Aim to include more of what worked well in your future social media posts but take care that it doesn’t dominate your entire strategy, you still need a good mix of different post types and styles.

Too much of a good thing doesn’t always translate well when it comes to getting results from social media marketing!

If none of your posts worked particularly well and you’ve had this result consistently for several months, it could be the case that this isn’t the right social media channel for your target audience and that you’re probably better off focusing on other platforms instead.

Use your analytics data to understand your target audience better

Understanding who your followers are is important when planning and creating content for them.

In the first instance, you want to be sure that you are actually reaching your target audience for your services or products. For example, if you offer female health products but most of your followers are men then you’re not quite hitting the right mark and need to rethink your content.

Timing is important for having posts perform well on social media, so understanding your target audience and when they’re likely to be online is a good goal to aim for. When do they work, when are they likely to be busy, when should you be posting and interacting with followers? The answers to these questions will help you understand how to use the right times for your posts to gain more traction and better results.

Social media analytics can help you plan your future marketing plans

Once you understand your social media followers and their preferences, and you know the kind of posts that perform well for you, you’re able to plan your future marketing campaigns more effectively.

This is particularly useful when you’re thinking of running paid ads on your social media channels.

Pay per click advertising can work very well on social media but only when you understand your audience well enough to know that they will click on your paid ad, otherwise you might be disappointed with the results.

A simple spreadsheet can be enough to keep track of your analytics

Yes, there are tools out there that can help you track and evaluate your social media analytics, but in truth, I find figuring out the most important metrics for me and creating a spreadsheet I can record data on each month is enough to help me evaluate things effectively.

Simply head into the analytics section of your social media platform:

Facebook it’s in the “insights” section of your business page

For Twitter it’s called “analytics” and can be found in your account info

LinkedIn has analytics available when you go to the “posts and activity” page and click on the analytics button under each post or article.

Pinterest has it’s prominently displayed “analytics” link on the top left corner of the home page.

Instagram “insights” is available in your business profile.

Take some time to explore each analytics option that’s available to you, the information it can give you and how you plan on using this data in the future. It’s also a good idea to make sure that you have Google Analytics set up and reviewed regularly to check how well your website is performing in terms of visitors from your social media profiles and posts.

I personally find social media analytics so interesting and packed full of information about the content shared that if you do find this task boring, or are struggling to get started with it, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me today for some friendly help and advice.