IMPORTANCE OF ANALYTICS
You spend hours planning your social media content calendar. You have the perfect balance of educational posts, company updates, industry updates, product or service features, and holidays. You’ve figured out how to incorporate some humor and levity into your feed.
Then you spend more hours actually creating the content! You take photos or maybe even hire a professional. Perhaps you even face your fears and film videos of you talking about yourself and your business.
Or you hire someone and paid a pretty penny to have all of this done for you.
Either way, social media management takes a lot of time and effort, and potentially a monetary investment, too. So do yourself a favor and start tracking your analytics!
Thankfully, social media platforms do a lot of this for you. They not only track engagement [likes, comments, saves, and shares] but they also track how long people watched your videos, if they clicked any links, and if you had anyone follow you directly because of a certain post. You can track follows and unfollows down to the day. Platforms will also tell you the age and gender of your audience, and where they live.
Use analytics to your advantage! This information can help you figure out what’s working and what’s not. It also provides the historical data you need to assess your strategy on both macro and micro levels.
But there are SO MANY numbers that get tracked. Here are the ones we like to focus on:
COMMENTS: Comments are the quickest way to tell if you have an engaged audience. If your content is motivating people to offer praise, describe a personal experience, ask questions, or even offer a different viewpoint, then you can feel good about your strategy. Be sure to reply to comments, even negative ones, in a timely manner to keep the conversation going.
SHARES: If people find your content helpful, funny, or provocative enough to share, good job! When your audience sends your post to a friend or reposts it, even more people see your content, increasing your reach.
SAVES: Saves are a good indicator that you’ve produced something helpful for your audience. Any post that is saved is likely a good template for future posts that will be successful.
PROFILE VISITS: Did a post motivate people to visit your profile page? You’ve got yourself a winner! Getting people to your profile is not the easiest task, so if your post was engaging enough to where people wanted to learn more about you, continue to utilize that strategy.
LINK CLICKS: If you included a link in your post or directed people to the link on your profile, and you don’t see any link clicks in your analytics, then you’ll need to reconsider your call-to-action and try different ways of motivating people to visit your links.
Did you notice what’s not on the list? Likes and follower counts. It’s easy to “like” something on social media. You can “like” a post without paying any attention to what it’s about. Likes are great for the dopamine hit, but not great for offering any meaningful information. And it’s the same with your follower count. Sure, 10,000 followers looks great. But if you have 10,000 followers, but only one or two people who engage meaningfully on your posts, what’s it all for? It is better to have a smaller, but more engaged audience.
So what if you track your analytics and you aren’t happy with the results? Then it’s time to pivot. Are product posts performing poorly, but posts of your face performing well? Smile for the camera! Does your audience seem to care more about text-heavy posts with a lot of industry jargon or tips and tricks? Leverage that information by producing more! Are your links going unclicked? Consider adding more incentive for people to click like a surprise or a giveaway.
When you do make changes, give them time to work [or not work]. Try to avoid changing your strategy each month. Observe trends over time and make subtle changes.
If this seems like a lot of work… it is. But there are some tools that are made specifically to track your social media analytics. HERE are just a few you could try.
