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Understanding and leveraging social media analytics is vital for success. From platform-specific insights to cross-platform analytics and competitor analysis, we'll show you how optimize your strategy with data
Calling all social media managers! Get ready to embark on an exciting journey into the world of social media analytics. We're about to unlock the secrets that will fuel your growth and revolutionize your social media strategy.
As a social media manager, your role in harnessing the potential of social media platforms cannot be underestimated. However, to truly maximize your efforts and achieve tangible results, it is crucial to understand the importance of analyzing and leveraging social media analytics.
Finding the right platforms and audiences
Different social media platforms serve distinct purposes and tend to attract specific types of audiences based on their preferences and needs. Understanding these platform-audience dynamics is key to helping you find the right audience for your businesses goals and develop the right content strategies to effectively engage with your target audience.
Facebook, for example, has a large user base and diverse demographics. But it particularly appeals to an older demographic, including adults and parents. Businesses targeting a broad audience can leverage Facebook to share engaging content, promote products or services, and foster community interactions through groups and pages.
Meanwhile, Instagram attracts a younger audience, particularly millennials and Gen Z due to its visual-centric nature. It’s a platform where users showcase their creativity, lifestyles, and aesthetic preferences through photos and videos. Brands that prioritize visually appealing content, influencer collaborations, and storytelling through imagery can effectively engage with this audience. Features like Stories and Reels further provide opportunities for interactive and behind-the-scenes content.
Likewise, TikTok has gained immense popularity, particularly among Gen Z users, for its high-energy short form videos, creative trends, and entertainment value. It attracts individuals looking for quick, engaging content that aligns with their interests and hobbies. Businesses that can adapt their content to the platform's energetic and visually appealing style can effectively capture audience attention and engage through challenges and collaborations.
LinkedIn, on the other hand, is primarily used by professionals, job seekers, and industry experts as a professional networking platform. Its audience is focused on career development, networking, and industry knowledge. Businesses targeting a professional audience can drive interest through industry insights, thought leadership content, and job opportunities. Features like LinkedIn Groups and Pulse articles also enable engagement and networking within specific industries or interest areas.
What can social media analytics tell you
Social media analytics play a crucial role in understanding the effectiveness of your content and its resonance with your target audience.
Demographics data, such as age, gender, location, interests, and even behavior patterns, helps you evaluate whether your content is attracting the desired audience or if there are any gaps in your targeting strategy.
Engagement metrics, on the other hand, offer a deeper understanding of how your audience interacts with your content. You can identify which types of content perform well, which topics generate more interest, and what formats or delivery methods are most effective.
These insights allow you to assess your social media penetration and identify levers for strategy refinement, whether in content, audience targeting, shifting platform focus, or reprioritizing goals for your business.
HubSpot
Take HubSpot for example. HubSpot’s social media team found that they weren’t quite hitting the mark on getting leads through Facebook so in 2017, they made a decision to shift their Facebook strategy to prioritize audience engagement over lead generation. They created videos with headlines and topics that they believed their Facebook audience would genuinely appreciate, rather than solely focusing on topics that would generate sales. They also experimented with video design, formatting, and size.
The results were impressive. After implementing the new strategy, HubSpot saw a substantial increase in monthly video views, jumping from 50,000 to 1 million by mid-2017.
Slack
Slack, is another example of a business that understands the unique purposes of each social media platform and employs various content strategies to target specific audiences. On Instagram, they segment Stories as Instagram highlights to convey their brand story and use Reels to engage users. On Facebook, they focus fun and engaging blogs to drive website click-throughs, occasionally sharing humorous posts to showcase their human side. LinkedIn is approached with a more serious and professional tone, featuring blog posts and behind-the-scenes content that highlights the company's values, along with polls and social proof to establish their expertise.
Slack’s tailored approach maximizes engagement and drive actions on different platforms, while showcasing their brand in a cohesive yet adaptable manner.
How to piece analytics into strategy
Analyzing the social media analytics on each platform allows you to understand who is reacting to your content, and make informed decisions about when and what to post, which content formats to prioritize, and how to optimize to achieve platform-specific goals.
However, to gain a holistic view of your brand’s social presence and audience behavior, you’ll need to consolidate data and analyze your performance across platforms. Cross-platform analytics enables you to identify overall brand engagement, understand user journeys, and measure your brand performance across multiple channels. You’ll also gain insights into patterns, trends, and correlations that would otherwise remain hidden.
The last piece of the puzzle for optimizing your social media strategy is analyzing competitors and industry trendsetters. By monitoring competitors’ performance, you'll gain a deeper understanding of their strengths, weaknesses, and strategies, which in turn will help you identify gaps in the market and uncover new content ideas. Likewise, keeping an eye on industry trendsetters allows you to identify emerging trends, gauge audience sentiment, and adapt your strategy to stay relevant and competitive.
Here’s where using a social media management platform, like Sked Social, has awesome benefits when it comes to putting the big picture together. It helps you keep all your data in one place, compare how you're doing across different platforms, and gives you advanced insights about your performance versus your competitors and industry trendsetters. Plus, it saves you time and lets you easily share results with team members, stakeholders and clients.
Let’s take a look at five ways a tool like Sked Social lets you take stock of your social marketing efforts in a fraction of the time.
Simplifying social media analytics
Understanding social media analytics can be complicated because each platform has its own way of structuring and reporting data. The more social media platforms you need to report on, the more time-consuming it becomes to understand and gather. It's like searching for puzzle pieces scattered in different places. You waste precious time trying to find the data you need and making sense of each platform's reporting format.
But with a social media management platform like Sked, things get easier. Sked collects all your social media data and presents it in a simple and organized way. You get everything you need at a glance on one dashboard. It’s quick to see an overview of how you’re performing or dive deep to find the important numbers that matter most to your business.
Cross-platform performance insights
Using a social media management platform like Sked also gives you the benefit of being able to compare performance across platforms, giving you a clear understanding of where your marketing efforts have brought the best results.
You’ll be able to see and compare post performance, audience engagement and follower growth across your brand’s accounts on one dashboard. As well as compare against previous reporting periods. And with Sked, you’ll even get an AI-powered summary of your overall brand performance for the current reporting period.
Competitor and market insights
Going wide across accounts and deep into platforms is great for getting keen insights into what you’re doing right. But to gain a larger share of the market, you need to also know what your competitors and industry leaders are doing right.
By analyzing your competitors' actions, content, and engagement, you identify areas where to improve and differentiate yourself. You can compare your performance, identify gaps in the industry, and discover new opportunities to stand out. Similarly, keeping an eye on industry trendsetters helps you stay in tune with the latest trends and customer preferences.
With Sked, tracking competitors and trendsetters is easy. You can see their audience growth, posting habits, top-performing content, and engagement levels all in one dashboard. Sked's AI-powered summaries provide insights and ideas to match or counter their strategies.
By observing successful strategies and adopting relevant practices, you can refine your marketing, create more engaging content, target the right audience, and align your brand with evolving market demands.
Historical insights
Long data retention periods are vital for valuable insights in social media analytics, allowing you to measure the success of initiatives, evaluate different content types and strategies, and make informed adjustments over time. However, it can be challenging as platforms like Instagram and Google Business Profile have a limited 90-day lookback period, while others like LinkedIn are slightly more generous, offering a lookback period on some metrics of 180 days, depending on the content type.
Sked offers a two-year data retention period, enabling you to analyze and track the growth of your social media presence, identify seasonal engagement fluctuations, and understand long-term audience behavior. This comprehensive analysis empowers you to gauge content effectiveness, target specific demographics, create impactful campaigns, and adapt strategies based on emerging trends and shifts in audience preferences revealed through year-over-year comparisons.
Time-saving professional reports
If there’s one task that consistently eats up precious time and energy, it’s manual reporting. Social media managers spend hours each month meticulously copying and pasting screenshots into slide decks for internal team, or external client presentations. It's a never-ending cycle, and the more brands you manage, the more overwhelming it becomes.
Sked’s one-click PDF reporting is designed to help busy social media managers reclaim that valuable time. With just a click, you can generate professional top-line reports to share with clients and stakeholders. These reports give you a quick overview of your social media performance, including important metrics like followers, reach, impressions, engagements, and top-performing posts. It also includes a comparison to previous periods, making it easy to track trends and measure progress.
Grab a sample Instagram report here. Or chat with our team using the widget on the bottom right circle to request a report sample for another platform.
Amp up your ROI with real data today
Ultimately, social media analytics empower you to make informed decisions based on real data. They allow you to track progress, identify trends, measure the impact of your efforts, and adapt your strategies accordingly. By leveraging these insights, you can stay ahead of the competition, target the right audience, create compelling content, and drive meaningful engagement.
Sign up for a free 7-day trial on Sked to unlock the full potential of social media analytics and supercharge your digital marketing efforts. Take advantage of comprehensive analytics, streamlined reporting, and advanced insights to elevate your social media game and hit your ROIs in less time.
Collaborate effortlessly, save time and spend less
Why settle for a lackluster social media management tool when you could be using Sked Social? With unlimited collaborator access, streamlined approvals and advanced auto-post technology that lets you schedule to all major platforms, Sked Social offers everything you need.
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