What are Analytics & What do They Measure?
Social analytics can be used to monitor your company’s overall performance. Tracking everything from financials to marketing. By providing further insight on your company’s digital performance, analytics can help you make conscious business decisions going forward. Analytics can be used to measure a variety of different aspects of digital marketing including information related to your total number of followers, audience engagement statistics, and overall awareness towards your brand.
Follower Metrics
One aspect measured by analytics are the increases and decreases in the total number of followers you have. Through examining these patterns, you can determine possible causes for positive and negative changes in your follower count. Aside from just numbers, analytics can reveal demographic information about your audience such as age, gender, and location. By gaining a better understanding about your target audience through the use of social media analytics, it can become easier to predict how they will interact with your content in the future. Arguably the most important follower metric tracked by analytics is the average time of day when your followers are most active on a given social media platform. This piece of information can benefit your business greatly because it identifies a timeframe for you to post on social media in order to achieve the best results.
Engagement Metrics
Social media was designed with plenty of opportunities for engagement in mind. Social analytics measure actions such as likes, comments, and clicks to determine how successful your current campaigns are from the perspective of the public. We use Buffer & Google Analytics to track some of these metrics. Engagement metrics are particularly important because they help you assess the strengths and weaknesses that your business possesses. Using analytics to evaluate your performance on social media can benefit your business by helping to determine what changes you should consider making as well as what aspects you should continue to use in future content.
Brand Awareness Metrics
Growth on social media platforms can only be achieved if people are aware that your company exists. For this reason, analytics also measure the reach that your content and brand has in the community. Social analytics keep track of views, shares, and mentions of your company to calibrate the potential influence you could have within that platform. Having an idea of the average number of people your content connects with will help you set goals related to increasing your reach. Once your goals are established, you can begin experimenting with different engagement styles to determine which is best received by your audience.
Examining analytics allows you to be in control of how the public views your business and grants you the freedom to tailor your messages accordingly to ensure positive feedback as well as a greater outreach. If you have any questions about reviewing social media analytics, feel free to reach out to our team and we will be happy to help!
Zain has been designing web & iOS software for over 10 years. He launched Rare Digital in 2011 to bring his digital expertise to small businesses. He has a knack for paying close attention to detail, problem solving, and creative design.