Understanding Social Media Analytics

From follower counts and engagement rates to audience reach, you can quickly drown in the world of social media metrics. How do you know which metric should be your life vest and which ones you can toss out to sea? There are some basic metrics that every company should monitor. But there are others that could be even more important to your business. In this blog we’ll cover the core data points to stay on top of and why, as well as how to determine which measurements could be the most meaningful for your business.

Why Social Media Metrics Matter

Social media analytics give you instant feedback about how your company is performing across social media channels and whether your social media strategy is effective. In addition to providing an overview of your social media performance, metrics help you see where strategic opportunities exist, and where you need to adjust your strategy.

There are several reasons why measuring social media metrics is essential:

• Measure and prove return on investment (ROI). The goal when investing in social media is to attribute the corresponding monetary value of your investment in social. It’s important to understand if the resources you’re investing into social media are resulting in a direct or indirect ROI. A total of 61% of marketers still struggle to prove ROI from their marketing efforts. However, a 2021 Hootsuite social trends survey that found that 85% of organizations that integrated social media data into other systems expected to be able accurately prove their ROI.

• Help make better business decisions. Social media analytics will provide the marketing team with data and insight that help them identify what’s working and what’s not when it comes to social media and content strategy. However, social analytics also provide crucial insights that help inform strategic decisions outside of marketing. For example, social listening tools allow marketers and analysts to understand how audiences feel about their brand, product or industry. These insights can help inform product decisions and uncover trends relevant to your industry as they happen.

• Keep track of competitors. Every business has key competitors they monitor to understand how they’re doing in the industry as a whole. Benchmarking provides crucial insights and allows you to see how you stack up against your competition or see how your performance looks against your industry’s averages.

Still, keeping track of your social media metrics is easier said than done. Only 34% of surveyed marketers were confident in their ability to measure their success on social media, while 30% did not feel like they were able to measure their performance at all.

What You Should be Tracking

Every social media platform has its own native analytics for you to explore. Although it may seem tedious to check Facebook’s Insights tab and Twitter Analytics, it’s essential to monitor and document your metrics on a consistent basis to track your progress. It’s also important to remember that all metrics have meaning. The key is to determine which each metric tells you and translating that back to your business goals. Here are some essential social media metrics and what insights you can learn from them:

• Likes, comments, shares and retweets: Today, around seven-in-ten Americans use social media to connect with one another, engage with news content, share information and entertain themselves. Engaged consumers connect with brands through interactions such as “likes,” comments and social sharing. Tracking likes and other engagement metrics will tell you how your audience interacts with your account and how often. High engagement rates will indicate what content your audience finds most interesting or relevant. This can serve as a guide when planning future content.

• Follower growth: The number of followers you have isn’t as important as how engaged your followers are. But follower growth can play an important role in helping you increase your reach. If you’ve seen consistent follower growth on LinkedIn, but not Facebook, it may be an indication that you need to double down your efforts there. Additionally, consistent follower growth can also justify the time and resources dedicated to your social strategy.

• Impressions: Globally, over 3.6 billion people use social media and the number is only projected to increase to 4.41 billion in 2025. If brand awareness is part of your social media goals, impressions are an important metric to track. Impressions tell you how many times a post shows up in someone’s timeline. If a post has high impressions count but low engagement rate, it likely means that your post wasn’t interesting enough for audiences to take action after seeing it and that you may need to spice up your content.

• Share of voice: Share of voice indicates how much of the online space your brand is a part of. It can tell you how many people are talking about your brand online as compared to your competitors. If being a leader in your industry is important to your business, you’ll want to keep tabs on how your share of voice shifts over time.

Measured Social Success

There’s no point in investing in social media if you’re not keeping track of whether that investment is paying off. Social media metrics help you prove the impact your social media strategy has on the bottom line. They can also guide you to improve performance, optimize budget and form genuine relationships with your audience.

There are several social media metrics worth tracking, but some of the most meaningful measurements include engagement, follower growth, impressions and share of voice. Depending on your specific goals, you can monitor additional metrics that are relevant to your business.

It’s easy to get confused about which social media metrics your business should stay on top of. If you would like advice on measuring your social media success, Mulberry Marketing Communications has many years of social media marketing experience and can guide you on the best direction for your content. Please feel free to contact us today to find out more.

Christina Alvarez is an Account Director at Mulberry Marketing Communications. An award-winning full-service B2B communications agency based in London, Chicago and Melbourne. She has extensive experience creating written work that finds interesting ways to make B2B content, personal.