Social media analytics insight: part 1
In a previous social media analytics blog, we provided you with the top reasons as to why you should love analytics. If you haven’t read it yet, analytics allows you to maintain optimum social media productivity by measuring your progress and evaluating the reach and success of your content. And let’s face it, what gets measured gets done. So now we’ve given you the reasons why you need analytics, you might like some insights on what are the best tools for job.
Part one of this blog discusses engagement analysis and part two (check back next week) will discuss monitoring, measuring and analysing competitors.
Finding your best posts:
How can you analyse which posts are working and which ones aren’t?
Let’s start with with your Facebook page. You’ll want to look at comments, likes, shares, photo clicks, expand cli
cks and video plays.
Facebook Metrics is a great tool that has all of this information.
Access your metrics from the Facebook admin panel by clicking Insights.
Once you have exported your data, you’ll want to know what you should be looking at and how to interpret it, right? First, have a look at the engagement and reach columns.
An engaged user is someone who has clicked on anything on your page. This could range from sharing a post to simply having a read of the comments. Why is engagement and reach important to know? If you’re serious about measuring and improving your page, use the engagement column to pinpoint which posts are generating the most likes, comments, clicks and shares. Knowing which content engages your audience and triggers their interest and providing more of that will keep them coming back for more.
Reach tells you how many fans and non fans have seen the content you’re posting. This is a key indicator of the quality of your audience and your content. If your posts aren’t reaching your audience, then ask yourself, are you targeting the right people? Just as an aside, without paying for Facebook posts/advertising your organic reach is likely to keep declining. This is just the way Facebook get you to pay for their service provision.
If you require similar information for your Twitter account, Twitter Analytics is a great tool to find your most effective posts. You can access Twitter Analytics by logging into analytics.twitter.com/accounts. Access is granted once you either purchase Twitter Cards or by becoming an advertiser. If you require further information on twitter advertising, check out this link.
The homepage will provide you with 28 day summary of your recent activity. 
Keep scrolling and you’ll be able to find summaries of each month. Each summary will provide you with a monthly snapshot of the number of tweets, impressions, profile visits, mentions and new followers.
But, let’s get down to the nitty gritty. Similar to Facebook, you’ll want to analyse your engagement. In the Twitter-verse, engagement equals replies, retweets, mentions and favourites. Greater engagement provides better opportunities for your business to create brand advocates, receive feedback on products or services and better understand your customers.
How do you assess these engagement factors? Look at your @replies to analyse how many users are seeking an active conversation with you. Mentions and retweets on the other hand, are more of an endorsement to your brand. Mentions and retweets have greater audience potential, while @replies are crucial for gaging how many customers are hoping to build a relationship with you.
Let’s not forget favourites. Analyse your favourites as a measure of how your posts are resonating with your audience. Even though favourites are not often seen by other users – they’re essentially a virtual high five from the consumer which says “I want to see more of this!” So where do you find this info? On your Analytics panel, click on Tweets and look at the engagement panel.
Keeping up to date on how your brand is engaging with its social media audience can be crucial to building and maintaining a strong brand presence and the provision of value to your community. However it is also not the only aspect of social media you should be analysing. Stay tuned for part two of this blog, which will continue the discussion on how you can use social media analytics tools to monitor progress, analyse your competitors and evaluate hashtag usage.
Of course, if you’re looking for more advice on building your brand via social, online or offline marketing activities, we’d love to chat. You can give us a call on (02) 9994 8005 or drop us a note.
