Analytics are important to track when it comes to social media marketing. They can help you identify which strategies and methods are working and which aren’t, allowing you to re-focus if needed and spend your time and budget more effectively.
There are various social media statistics that you’re able to track, but it’s important to track data that’s specific to your business and how you use social media. By tracking the right metrics for your business and your community, you can understand better how and when you should share content online, as well as the type of content that is most popular. Social media agencies are quick to inform you about the metrics that need to be tracked in order to gain success and here’s a guide that will remind you of what to look out for.
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Optimal Timings
Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter move quickly. Posts will get buried easily if you don’t know when the right time to post is, and this is why it’s vital that you track your analytics. Apps like Tweriod and Hootsuite allow you to track optimal times on Twitter, while you can easily rely on Facebook’s own page insights. Knowing when your followers are online plays an important role in your content’s visibility and ultimate success.
Audience Engagement Rate
As your audience grows, you need to make sure that you’re targeting the right people and that they’re actually engaging with the content that you’re sharing.
The engagement rate will allow you to study whether or not your social media efforts are working with your followers. The average engagement rate is calculated by dividing the number of interactions your content receives by the total number of followers, multiplied by 100%. While figures such as the number of likes and shares are good to look at, the average engagement rate will let you identify who is engaging with your content and whether your strategies are working or not.
Click-through Rate (CTR)
When you share content on your social media platforms that contains a link, it’s likely that your goal is to have followers actually click on the link. The CTR that your links receive will be the primary metric to measure success. This can be done by making use of a URL shortener to track clicks. Platforms like Bitly are free to use and offer tools that shorten links, share your links and measure the CTR for each.
Track Your Top-Performing Platform
Just because you’re making use of every social media platform, that doesn’t mean they will all work perfectly for you. While Facebook and Instagram are social giants, you never know what success you may gain from smaller platforms like Pinterest. You need to test and experiment with which platform drives the most leads and clicks in order to better focus your social media efforts. This will help you eliminate those platforms that drive the least sales or traffic.
Social media dashboards such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Cyfe allow you to connect multiple social networks so that you can compare each one. This will help you identify which network drives the highest engagement.
Content Metrics
By tracking your content metrics, you will be able to spot specific patterns by analyzing the content you share online. If your posts are 20% video-based but 80% image-based, is this approach really working for you? Does it drive the traffic or sales that you need?
Following the 50/50 content rule is highly recommended. With this, you will be able to know the impact of your original content posted vs. content created by others. Sharing testimonials, guest posts, blogs and infographics are other types of content you can share on your social media pages to keep things lively and interesting.
Competitor Analysis
Analyzing your own data and metrics is just one part of the process. You need to track whether your competitors are doing better than you online so that you can outdo them. Analyze your competitors on a daily or weekly basis so that you know where you stand in comparison.
Track what works for them and what doesn’t work for you so that you know where you need to improve in terms of social media. It will help you improve your social media strategies so that you’re beating your competitors in terms of engagement, reach and even sales.
Number of Posts
Many studies on social media show that brands should post around 1-2 per day, especially on Facebook. It’s important to find out the right number of posts for each platform so that you can improve engagement as well as growth in your community. As each platform works differently, so do its users.
Twitter users may be happy and content with 10-15 tweets per day, but if you’re posting 10 images in one day on Instagram, chances are that you’ll lose a good amount of followers as they’ll feel as though they’re getting spammed.
Find the right balance of posts for each platform. You can do so by using their dedicated analytics to learn how often your followers are engaging with your content. It’s a trial and error process, but once you nail it, you’ll be on your way to better engagement.
About author
Umer Bilal is an Internet Marketer at Grafdom.com – a website development, Web design, social media organization based In UAE, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and around the middle east areas. The agency designs dynamic websites, manages viral marketing campaigns, develops mobile apps & provides robust hosting solutions for some of the most recognized brands.
