Online business owners who ignore social media analytics are probably second guessing success. Your posts and social pages are a source of useful data that, if utilized correctly, will turn around your growth prospects for the better. The role of social analytics is to tell you what is working and what’s not. You can’t afford to keep pushing and allocating resources to strategies that don’t work.
Social data and metrics lets you track and evaluate your brand’s impact compared to that of your competitors. You can use metrics to plan better ways to engage your customers. At the same time, you identify tactics that enable you to optimize your social media strategy while monitoring your site’s performance. The metrics you can track are voluminous. However, there are core metrics that can help you change the direction of your business. Without such, you risk relying and eventually stagnating with ineffective marketing tactics.
Identify Your Intentions
Before you set your eyes on the right metrics to track or the Facebook share counter tool to employ, you need to point out your goals. Your business is unique and your objectives should too. Take time and assess what you need to do. If your goal is to drive engagement or brand awareness, you need to focus on driving up likers, shares and comments.
For those who want to draw qualified leads, you can concentrate on click through rates. You have different goals for your businesses and you need to keep up with new trends since the social media scene is evolving and your goals can too.
Which Platforms Are Best For You?
Social media platforms are abound. More are still cropping up. There are platforms that are generally suitable for all business. However, others tend to suit specific businesses better than others. Facebook for instance is viable for every business since almost 99 percent of the demographics are on this platform. Twitter is also a formidable platform. You need to evaluate other platforms and opt for the ones that a good chunk of your audience uses.
The only way to find out which platform will augur well with your brand is to do actual tests. There are social media analytic tools that you can use to your advantage. These tools will help you identify the platforms that help you drive more quality traffic and leads.
Monitor Click-Through Rates
In any social media campaign, assessing click through rates is crucial. The main agenda isn’t to get views or static likes. You want to get your prospects to visit your site, act and follow you wherever your brand goes. The CTR metrics will tell you whether your posts or content is effective. You need to track your CTR the same way you keep track of your paid ads and site content.
It’s important that you monitor your KPI and employ A/B testing you can weigh up results on one site and compare them to those from another site. If you realize that the CTR rates are okay on Facebook, you can decide to concentrate on a different platform to achieve such a feat. It’s advisable to test different types of content or posts. Your images, hash tags and video will perform well according to the suitability of the platform you are using.
Determine the Best Times to Post
Many marketers are of the idea that you need to post round the clock. There is usually a lot of misconception about how and when to post. Your marketing campaign needs to be visible, but you don’t have to stake out on Facebook or Twitter to achieve it. You have the leeway to use social analytics to find where your audience is and the best hours to chat them on your appointed platforms.
You can start out with Facebook insights, since it will help you know when your target audience is on Facebook. Analytics will help you know when to send those emails and when to post on your blog. As long as you above fresh and valuable content, it should be easy to find the best times to post.
Identify Valuable Followers
Your prospects and new followers on social media mean a lot to your business. However, you need to appreciate the fact that not all of them bring in value. Sometimes, it’s not the number of followers that matter, but it’s how well you have engaged them. You need to be sure that these followers are well within the demographics that resonate well with your brand. It’s easy to discern whether these followers match your target audience using relevant social analytics tools.
Other than engaging with influencers on high gear, it’s important that you track followers who are as enthusiastic about sharing your content. Even if they may not qualify to be influencers, their interest with your content can drive back quality traffic to your site. Even though social media is cost effective, you need to spend your energy and resources on people who will replicate value back to you. Eventually, individuals who are potentially useful to your brand are what you need. You can share their comments and make sure they feature somewhere in your posts.
With some of the above tips, you are likely to get social analytics working for you in way you hadn’t thought. Your content is your best tool and you need to put it to its best use.
