What is social media analytics and how you can use it?
In social media marketing, analytics are extremely crucial but a lot of marketers underestimate the importance of it. So let us first talk about what social media analytics is.
“Social Media Analytics is the art and science of extracting valuable hidden insights from vast amounts of semi-structured and unstructured social media data to enable informed and insightful decision making. It is a science, as it involves systematically identifying, extracting, and analyzing social media data (such as tweets, shares, likes, and hyperlinks) using sophisticated tools and techniques. It is also an art, interpreting and aligning the insights gained with business goals and objectives. To get value from analytics, one should master both its art and science”
In social media marketing, content is everything but it’s nothing if it fails to connect people to your brand and your vision. You can churn out as much content as you want and post it on as many platforms as you want but it would be like talking to the walls if it fails to attract any customers or clients towards your brand. This is where analytics help you by tracking the behavioural pattern of the people who are reading you content or paying visit to your pages. Analytics can help you in understanding that how many visitors come to your website per month, how much traffic you are getting from each social media platform, and what time of the day or what day of the week matters the most to your followers. You can use the tools like Google Analytics, Hootsuite and HubSpot to track the reach and virality of your content or you can simply use the analytic and insight features offered on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages to understand that how many people your post has reached, how many views it had and how many people engaged with it.
Once understood the importance of analytics, this is how you can use it to your advantage:
Help you to understand the ROI: Though it’s difficult to calculate the ROI that you get from social media marketing but by using analytics you can see the clear picture of the results of your efforts. By using the analytics you can see that how much your fan base has grown, how people have reacted to your content, how well they have received your message and eventually how much traffic it has brought to your website or your blog.
Help you to strategize: Analytics help you to save time; effort and money because it helps you to understand that on which social media platform you are getting the most traffic and which particular type of post and content your followers are interested in. On the bases of the insights provided by your various social media pages, you can strategize your marketing plans more efficiently and can channel your energies in the right way without wasting your resources and vainly waiting for the results.
Help you to enhance your product/services: By using analytics you can understand that what appeals to your customers and what drives them away which helps you to tweak your content, resolves the issues, change your approach and serve your customers and clients in a better way.
