3 reasons analytics needs to be part of your social media strategy
Are you out of your depth when it comes to social media? Confused about how others keep making decisions to grow their social media accounts?
The most common things I keep hearing are:
How do I decide which platforms to focus on?
Which platform is making me money?
Do people even like my content? and so many more!
You don't have to be so confused anymore! It all comes down to analytics. I know analytics is a scary word to most people, but it doesn't have to be.
Why is social media analytics so important?
Adding a process in place to look at your social media analytics can help you know::
What is working
What is not working
Where to spend all your time and money
How to set goals for your social media strategy
What type of content to focus on
And so much more! So, why not get started today.
Before diving into social media analytics, I want to draw attention to the BIGGEST MISTAKE I see people making when it comes to looking at data. They always look at their data in a vacuum. And by that I mean, when looking into social media, they will look at each platform that stop there, but that doesn't give you the whole picture! Unless you are conducting all your business on a social media platform, you need to see how this audience interacts with your website!
Let's start by diving into some of the many reasons being proactive with your social media analytics can help you grow your business exponentially!
1) WHAT IS AND ISN'T WORKING
This is probably one of, if not the most, important reason analytics should always be a part of your social media strategy! By understanding exactly what is and isn't working can not only save you time, but also money (we will go into this in the next part. Knowing this information can help in the following ways:
You will know if your content and efforts are reaching your ideal audience
If not, you can re-visit your graphics, captions or hashtags to ensure you are reaching the right audience.
You will know if your content is resonating with your ideal audience
If not, this allows you to re-work your strategy without wasting more time posting content that isn't working!
For this you can start by looking at social platform data but then dive into your website. When someone comes in from Instagram, are they staying on your website longer than those from Facebook? This can help you understand where to promote more content that requires those to stay on and read.
You can see how your account performs overall not just in real time.
What I mean by that is, you can receive 5 more comments a few days in a row and be excited but to really understand how your account is doing, you should look at at how your engagement rate has been growing or decreasing over time to ensure this wasn't a one time growth :)
2) WHERE SHOULD I FOCUS MY TIME AND ENERGY
This is key because who wants to waste time on social media platforms that are doing nothing for their business? If you can properly understand which platforms are performing well, you can save a LOT of time and money by focusing your strategies. To understand which platforms are best for your business, it's really a 2 step process.
Write down how your business really works and what your customer acquisition strategy is.
For example, do you make money directly on social platforms by running your business there, do you direct your audience to a landing page, or do you have a website that you direct them to?
Look into your social media analytics AND your website data to see how platforms are performing.
This is super important and often, the step most people miss. They will just look at vanity metrics on for social analytics, such as: number of followers, number of avg. likes or comments on posts, but the second half of this is to look at what this audience does. How many go to your site? Of those, what do they do once there (do they leave immediately, do they stay and read your content, do they sign up for a course, etc.)? It's not just about how many followers you have or even how engaged they are on your platforms, it's about how many interact with your business on the platform that you make money from (website, landing page, etc.).
3) HOW TO SET GOALS FOR YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY
This is one of my favorite reasons because when people want to set goals for social media, the biggest challenge is setting quantitative numbers. It's easy to say "I want to grow this platform" but the best goals are quantitative in nature but it is super difficult to know what is realistic for your business. Looking at analytics is PERFECT for this! Looking at your historical data, seeing the rate of growth, the rate of engagement can help you set these quantitative but realistic goals.
Also, comparing yourself to everyone else is a major online crime that everyone commits (myself included -_- ). Looking at analytics is a great way to step away from that habit. You only see what is happening superficially on someone's profile. Just because someone has 1,000 more followers than you doesn't mean they have more engagement/sales on their website. Understanding your own data and setting your own benchmarks is a great way to move away from comparing yourself to others in your field!
Now it's your turn!
I hope this post was super helpful in understanding not only the importance of looking at social media analytics, but also comparing that traffic on your website. Analytics is all out painting the whole picture because your customer doesn't only live on one platform or only use one device. If you are still in the planning stages, check out my blog post series on mapping your customers' buyer journey to make looking into your data easier and more efficient!
