Analytics for Social Media: The Definitive Guide

More than 3,8 billion people across the world utilize some form of social media.
That’s a big reason why companies want to participate in social media, as you might expect. Businesses may learn more about their target market and consumers, strengthen relationships with them, and increase sales by utilizing social media.

The trick is learning what kinds of postings work best on which channels to reach those people.

What is social media analytics?

Gathering and analysing data and reporting based on metrics from one or more social media accounts is known as social media analytics.

Many critical aspects of your marketing and business’s overall performance may be gleaned from the data collected through social media analytics.

The value of social media analytics may be broken down into the following categories.

Learn more about your intended audience and the places they frequent.
Figure out which social networks have the most visitors, and which social posts result in the most shares, likes, comments, etc.
See which kinds of social media posts get the most likes and shares from your audience on various networks.
Find out how your audience feels about your social media advertising and campaigns both while they are running and after they have ended.
Strengthen your company’s social media strategy to achieve its unique objectives in areas such as marketing, sales, and customer service.

Report Formats for Social Media Analyses

Analytical Report on Audience Size
In the Audience report, you can see how many people are following your various social media profiles now compared to how many people were following you before.

Report Analyzing Previously Posted Content
The total number of posts made across all of your social media channels over a certain time frame may be seen in the Published Posts report.

Analytics of Interactions
The Interactions report tallies up the responses across all of your channels, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Report Analyzing Web Traffic
Using the Clicks report, you can see how many people interacted with your HubSpot-published social media content.

Analytical Report on Stocks
The number of times your audience members shared one of your posts may be seen in the Shares report.

Impressions Analytics Report
The number of times your LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram posts were viewed is tallied and displayed in the Impressions report.

Report Analyzing Session Activity
In the Sessions report, you can see the total number of social media-driven online sessions for a specified time period.

Report Analyzing Potential New Contacts
The number of contacts added to HubSpot as a consequence of social media-driven website visits is displayed in the New Contacts report.

Having said that, you may be asking what resources are out there to assist you in obtaining such reports and data.

Methods for Monitoring Social Media Stats

Establish SMART objectives for your social media tracking.

Set SMART objectives to help you succeed in your social media analytics endeavours. Making sure your objectives are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound) can help you concentrate your efforts and achieve or even surpass them in a short period of time.

Asking yourself “What do I want to learn from my social media analytics?” is a good place to start. Examine each component of the SMART objective in detail. An illustration of a SMART objective for your social media analytics plan is provided below.

Make a judgement on which metrics will be your primary emphasis.

The moment has come to settle on the social media metrics that will be monitored. Several widely used measures related to social media should be taken into account. Different analytics tools and social media platforms might produce different results. But here are some high-level metrics that can be used with pretty much any social channel or analytics software.

To begin, you must choose the social media analytics tools you intend to employ.

The next step is to choose on a set of social media analytics tools; we’ve already mentioned a few of the most common ones, but you can always check out more with a quick Google search.

The following questions should be considered before settling on a certain instrument:

Is it more important to you to have a solution that can assist you manage your social media analytics across numerous channels and platforms (like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn), or simply one (like Twitter)?
Which metrics did you settle on (as we briefly discussed in the preceding step)?
Do you need a programmed that can grow with your needs and provide a la carte or subscription pricing, as well as features you may activate or deactivate as you see fit? (Check out the Sprout Social price sites, such as this one, for more details.)

Evaluate how well your social media analytics are working.

You can evaluate the efficacy of your social media marketing activities after putting analytics tools into play. You may utilise the analytics tool you set up for this purpose; for example, you might be able to generate individualised reports and dashboards, or extract relevant information pertaining to metrics that are of particular importance to you.

If you’re having trouble determining how well you’re doing, you may use the following questions as a guide in addition to your tools:

Can you evaluate whether or not you’ve met your SMART objectives?
Is the message told by the metrics you prioritised a positive one for your company?
If you’re running a business, how well did your needs be met by the programme or technology you implemented?

Modify your social media analytics if you see the need to.

If you want to know if you need to make any adjustments to your social media analytics strategy, you need to first analyse how effective your current approach is.

Perhaps you’ve come to the conclusion that a certain metric isn’t shedding enough light on your social media marketing efforts and you need to find something else to track instead. Perhaps you’re in need of a new tool because your current programme doesn’t let you to modify cross-channel reports to your liking. Even if you are satisfied with your current level of social media analytics reporting and strategy, it is important to reassess this process at regular intervals to ensure it continues to fit your needs.