What is Social Media Analytics? Every little thing You Have to Know

It is one thing to know in your heart that you are a social media expert, another to be able to prove it. This is why social media analytics are so critical to any successful campaign or branding strategy.

Data keeps you on track to meet your social media goals, proving what works and – just as importantly – what doesn’t. Read on to learn how to track social media analytics and social post analytics, and why these numbers are key to getting your engagement and reach.

What is social media analytics?

Social media analytics is the collection and analysis of data points that help you measure the performance of your social media accounts.

These are the metrics that will help you evaluate your social media marketing strategy on both a macro and a micro level. Not only will they help you see how social media is contributing to your larger business goals, but they can also help you assess customer sentiment, spot trends, and avoid PR crises before they happen.

To track social media analytics, check out Likes, Comments, Shares, and Saves, but you can also monitor mentions and discussions about your brand or consumer insights by practicing social listening.

Social media analysis Tools will help you with all of these calculations while creating performance reports that you can share with your team, your stakeholders, and your boss – to find out where you’re doing well and where you’re struggling.

How to Track Social Media Analytics

It might seem like a daunting task, but keeping track of your social media analytics isn’t difficult. It just takes a little planning and a lot of consistency. You have that!

We even made a template for you to include your Social Media Analytics report in at the end of this post.

Set SMART goals

It is almost impossible to measure your success if you don’t know exactly what success looks like. So great social media tracking starts with setting a goal for your brand.

To be clear, a social media destination is not the same as a social media strategy (although both are important).

A social media goal is a statement about something in particular that you want your marketing activity to achieve. Your goal can be applied to something short term and small (e.g. a single ad purchase) or it can be a bigger picture (e.g. a goal for your entire social media campaign).

Either way, we recommend that you use the SMART framework for your social media goals to prepare for maximum success.

SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.

• Specific: Your goal should be as specific as possible. What exactly do you want to achieve? “Improve our Instagram account” is too vague. “Build Instagram Engagement by 500% “is much clearer.
• Measurable: Set up some quantifiable indicators (also called hard numbers) to show your success. For example, “increase our TikTok followers this month at 1,000. ”Without a measurable goal, you’ll never know if you’ve achieved it.
• Available: Listen, it’s great to want to reach for the stars, but if you lower the bar a little lower the more likely you’ll actually get there. Think of baby steps here. If your goal is to get a million views to your website this week but you only started it yesterday, just prepare for failure.
• Relevant: How does this goal fit into your overall plan? Go ahead and do your best to get Rhianna to follow you again on Twitter, but make sure that pursuit of that goal benefits your branding strategy.
• Time bound: Deadlines are key. When do you want to reach your goal? If you can’t create a schedule, it may be an indicator that your goal is simply not specific or achievable enough.

Here are some suggestions for social media goalsif you need a starting place. Once you have achieved such a goal, it is time to figure out how best to measure your progress toward that goal. What leads us to …

Decide which metrics are most important to you

There are many different numbers flying around in the social media verse. Likes! Fan! Views! Shares! Duets! (?) How do you know which ones Social media metrics are important? Well … it’s really up to you.

Instagram analysis

Do you remember the goal you set yourself in step number one moments ago? (We really hope you remember it just happened.)

That will determine which metrics are really important because you want to keep track of the data that will help you measure your progress towards your goal.

Social media metrics can be divided into one of four categories:

• Awareness: current and potential audience.
• Engagement: how the audience will interact with your content.
• Change: Effectiveness of your social engagement.
• Consumer: how active customers think and feel about your brand.

If your goal is to grow your Instagram followers, then metrics that track engagement (like follows and likes) are probably the most important ones to keep an eye on. If your goal is sales, conversion-related metrics are more relevant (e.g., views or click-through rates).

A social media analytics report in Hootsuite Analytics

Not all metrics are equally important to every goal. So, save yourself a headache by keeping track of the really important numbers.

Check it out regularly

Importantly, social media analytics shouldn’t just be used for “before and after” snapshots of the impact of your goal. Check your analyzes regularly in the course of a campaign or project Social media reports to make sure you are on the right track.

“What cannot be measured cannot be managed,” says an old management proverb. If you simply set your strategy and let it go unnoticed, you will miss out on opportunities to adjust and adapt.

All major social media accounts have their own in-platform analytics tools. In fact, here’s a list of step-by-step guides on how to use the Insights tools for pretty much any social platform you can dream of:

But here’s a hot time-saving tip: Hootsuite Analytics or Impact are great all-in-one tools for checking your data at a glance … and helpful for scheduling regular custom reports.

With Hootsuite Analytics, each report has a flexible, interactive interface that is fully customizable: drag and drop an unlimited number of “tiles”, each showing a specific metric.

Custom report from Hootsuite Analytics

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Choose your ideal combination of metrics or use an existing template. Instantly export in the format of your choice, or schedule them for automatic email delivery.

Hootsuite Impact is another, more expensive, but nerdy option that is part of the Hootsuite toolkit. Impact measures organic and paid content metrics for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, as well as organic content metrics on Pinterest and YouTube.

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Watch out for tips and drops

Once you have your red-hot report in hand, it’s time to analyze those analytics. Social media metrics provide an indication of what’s going on on the World Wide Web: it’s up to you to interpret what they actually mean.

Look for spikes and falls in your numbers, then investigate why these anomalies occurred.

Did you run a new, experimental campaign that generated a lot of comment? Did your product have an unflattering display on a successful TV show that put off customers? You may discover information that will help you replicate those highs or avoid another low.

Like you monitor social mood Over time, you will understand how your messages can affect your followers’ attitudes towards you (for better or for worse!). By paying attention to trends and unusual behavior, you can better understand the impact of your messages and develop better strategies for future posts.

Use the right tools

Technology is your friend when it comes to social media analytics, and there are dozen of tools out there to help you understand the numbers.

The right social media analytics tools can help you answer questions like:

• Do my followers comment more photo or text contributions?
• Which social media network brought the most traffic to our website this month?
• Should we post more on TikTok next quarter?
• Is it worth it for my brand to keep my Pinterest account active?
• What were our posts on Facebook this year with the most likes?
• … and on and on and on. You know, all that juicy stuff.

As you probably noticed in our love letter above, we’re fans of Hootsuite Analytics’ custom drag-and-drop reporting feature, but if you’re looking for even more great analytics tools, check out our list of The best free social media analytics tools here (with a few paid options to be on the safe side, in case you really want to dive into the numbers).

Report template for social media analysis

Are you ready to track your social media analytics like a real data hero? We have the table of your dreams here. Download our free social media analytics report template and show your team what a track star you are.

Track your social media performance and maximize your budget with Hootsuite. Publish your posts and analyze the results in the same easy-to-use dashboard. Try it for free today.

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