.svg)
.svg)
Social media marketing can provide immediate feedback from your audience. A funny or attention-grabbing post may rack up hundreds or thousands of likes and shares. Highly engaging content — like Duolingo’s famously “unhinged” TikTok videos — can even attract millions of views. By contrast, posts with little engagement can seem like flops or missed opportunities. However, you’re not seeing the whole picture if you rely only on these real-time engagement metrics to measure your social media performance.
Social media analytics allows you to explore the overall impact of online conversations about your brand. This process involves gathering and analyzing various data points from social networks. The insights gained from this data can help you understand why certain content hooks your audience and other posts get ignored. Data analytics also makes it easier to spot opportunities to grow your online presence.
Once you're familiar with the types of social media analytics, essential reports, and top tools, you'll have no problem getting started.
What Is Social Media Analytics?
Social media analytics uses statistical methods and software to interpret social media data. This approach helps organizations understand their brand’s and content’s performance across social media channels.
Suppose a fitness company shares educational posts on Instagram. Data analytics allows you to evaluate which types of social media content attract the most attention. This analysis might reveal that nutrition-related posts receive higher engagement than workout content. This insight allows you to adjust your marketing strategy to focus on the most compelling content.
Additionally, social media analytics helps you look beyond your brand to interpret the larger market. Gather data about your competitors to learn about — and potentially imitate — their marketing strategies. You can also use social media tools to identify emerging trends to incorporate in your content. For instance, you could make a TikTok video that uses a viral dance to promote your services.
Social media analytics offers many other benefits for organizations across industries. This approach can:
- Allow you to deliver more value to customers
- Deepen your understanding of your target audience
- Enable data-driven decision-making
- Help you refine your content strategy
- Increase the conversion rate
- Provide insights into customer sentiment surrounding your brand
- Reveal trends, such as rising or declining engagement
What Are the Four Types of Social Media Analytics?
There are four kinds of data analytics for social media. Combining them allows you to better understand your campaign performance, audience, and market.
1. Descriptive Analytics
Descriptive analytics uses social media data to interpret events and understand relationships. This technique helps you describe historical and contemporary trends. However, it doesn't identify the underlying reasons for these patterns.
Social media marketers often use descriptive analytics to track these crucial metrics:
- Engagement levels: Comments, likes, and shares
- Follower counts: Number of users who follow your accounts on each social media platform
- Impressions: Number of times your content is viewed
- Profile visits: Number of times people click on your social media profiles
This simple method detects changes and patterns in the data over time. For example, descriptive analytics lets you identify peak engagement days and plan your posting schedule accordingly. This approach also reveals the types of content that garner the most comments and shares.
2. Diagnostic Analytics
Diagnostic analytics examines the factors that influence customer behavior and outcomes. Use this method to determine why specific events or challenges occur.
Suppose your TikTok follower count doubles in a month. Diagnostic analytics lets you identify variables that may have contributed to this increase. For example, a prominent influencer may have spotlighted your brand, or a hashtag you use could have gained traction. These insights help you understand the factors contributing to your success and replicate them for continued growth.
3. Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics uses historical data to forecast future events and trends. This proactive approach lets you make educated guesses about the future and enables strategic decision-making.
Use predictive analytics to anticipate industry trends and user behavior. For instance, this method can help you forecast the engagement rate for humorous Instagram reels based on how this content has performed in the past. This insight can help you tailor your social media strategy to fit your audience’s preferences.
Predictive analytics can also project which social media content and topics will become more popular in the future. Get ahead of the competition by adopting these emerging trends.
4. Prescriptive Analytics
Prescriptive analytics evaluates social media data and recommends ways to improve future performance. It provides the most sophisticated analysis of social media. Marketers use this approach to optimize their social media strategies. This type of analytics can also guide decision-making, though you should still use your best judgment.
Here are a few recommendations predictive analytics can provide:
- The best posting frequencies and times
- Influencers to collaborate with
- Methods to engage customers on social media platforms
- Specific audiences you should cater to
- Strategies to prevent and manage public relations crises
- Types of content to share
5 Types of Social Media Reports You Should Know
A social report compiles and analyzes relevant data and metrics from social media platforms. These documents allow you to monitor your performance and generate actionable insights based on your findings.
Here are five must-have social reports to add to your marketing toolkit.
1. Audience Report
An audience report offers an in-depth analysis of your users. This tool will help you understand your audience’s characteristics, behaviors, and preferences.
This report identifies key audience demographics, such as:
- Age
- Device usage
- Gender
- Geographic location
- Times of peak activity
An audience report also tracks changes in your audience size and follower counts. This data helps you identify periods of growth and pinpoint content that resonates with your users.
Use this information to tailor your social media efforts for your audience. Imagine, for example, that your audience report reveals that 35% of your followers live in California. You can personalize your content by referencing California landmarks and events.
Many social media platforms automatically provide these social media metrics. For instance, Instagram offers free Insights for business accounts, and X Analytics compiles follower demographic information for advertisers.
2. Engagement and Interactions Report
An engagement and interactions report evaluates how users interact with your brand and content. It analyzes these key metrics from social media platforms:
- Click-through rate for links included in your content or profile
- Comments
- Impressions
- Likes
- Replies
- Shares
These metrics provide insights into your audience’s interests and preferences. For example, your users may flock to memes but not engage with how-to videos. Tweak your social media strategy accordingly.
3. Competitive Analysis Report
A competitor analysis report examines the social media strategies of similar brands. Here are a few aspects it may analyze:
- Engagement levels
- Hashtag usage
- Most popular posts
- Number of followers
- Publishing schedule
- Visual branding
You can manually collect this data by observing your competitors' social media accounts. Paid competitor analysis platforms can provide additional insights.
A competitive analysis enables you to identify successful social marketing strategies and monitor industry trends. It also helps you brainstorm ways to distinguish your brand. For instance, you may notice that none of your competitors share product tutorials and fill this gap.
4. Published Posts Report
As the name suggests, a published posts report tracks the content you’ve shared across social media channels. This report allows you to monitor the distribution and frequency of your posts. This data can help you maintain a consistent content schedule.
5. Social Campaign Report
A social campaign report is ideal for tracking social media performance across platforms. It compiles data from multiple channels and may analyze these aspects:
- Brand voice
- Conversion rates
- Engagement metrics
- Followers per platform
- Ranking of top posts
- Return on investment
This type of report lets you zoom out and compare the effectiveness of your content for each platform. These insights can help you develop a social media optimization strategy.
For instance, you might discover that your Snapchat and TikTok posts consistently attract new followers, but your Reddit posts have declining engagement. You could allocate resources more effectively by focusing on high-performing platforms and scaling back your Reddit posts.
What Are the Best Social Media Analytics Tools You Could Use?
There are hundreds of tools for social media analysis with different features. Here are a few top options:
- Buffer tracks hashtag performance, engagement levels, and other metrics. It uses predictive analytics to parse this data and recommend strategies to increase engagement.
- Later offers analytics tools for Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, and Twitter. Users can generate custom reports with the metrics they value.
- Semrush lets you benchmark your social media performance with top accounts in your industry. This platform also automatically emails you reports about your social media strategy.
A marketing agency is another valuable tool that can significantly enhance your social media presence. Compose.ly can help you develop a data-driven social media campaign tailored to your unique customers. Our writers generate high-quality social media captions and search engine optimized content you can share on social media, such as blog posts and e-books.
Key Takeaways
Social media analytics is a powerful tool for every marketer. These techniques and tools provide informative and nuanced insights on social media. They can help you transform hit-or-miss social media campaigns into consistent successes.
Start exploring your social media accounts' data and see what patterns you uncover.
