Companies devote a great deal of time and resources today into developing and executing social media strategies to deliver on the goals important to their organizations. They create well thought-out content that addresses these goals, which may differ based on the social channel as well as their industry, value proposition or ROI expectations.
For example, a company may use social media to build a community around thought leadership, or to increase brand awareness and trust among its clients or to help nurture prospects during the lead gen process. Or you may be nodding your head up and down to all three of these goals.
On the flip side, your clients are utilizing social media every day too – posting thousands of reviews and comments on a variety of platforms. As digital marketers you appreciate and understand the value of this feedback, and yet the sheer volume may make interacting seem like a daunting task. Who has that kind of time to create compelling social media content, then track, analyze and respond to customers? Let alone check out what the competition is up to as well.
Make Data Analysis Easier
You need to though. You have to up your game in the realm of social media because if you don’t you will leave a dearth of data unturned and underutilized for your organization. You simply can’t have a powerful social media strategy unless you have powerful backend social media listening and analytics in place to capture and make the analysis of all this data easier.
Currently every social media platform already offers you some type of metrics – there is Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, LinkedIn Page Administrator stats for engagement rates, YouTube performance indicators with filters for tracking certain types of data, and the list goes on. Each provides you with a basic overview of what’s happening on that channel. They tell you how many followers you have, the number of impressions or views your video, tweet or post received, how many times your profile page was viewed, the number of times your video, tweet or post was liked, shared or commented on.
Integrate Data from Multiple Channels
All good stuff. However, if you’re on all these platforms or Instagram and Pinterest too, this requires pulling metrics from a number of different channel sources in order to effectively measure overall success. Talk about time consuming. That’s why many digital marketers are looking to software solutions that offer them the capability to integrate many of these networks together and provide a single dashboard for evaluating data.
Because the value of social media is that it provides a real-time means for measuring audience insights and pushing targeted content that aligns with your brand, you need real-time monitoring along with that really good authentic content.
There are hundreds of platforms offering advanced listening technology and intuitive analytics that can help inform digital marketers’ social media strategies. To help you find a good fit for your organization, here are several of the main features offered by analytics solutions for you to consider:
9 Platform Components
Competitor Brand Analysis
Tracking competitors allows your company to have additional benchmark data. It also provides you a way to tap into additional audiences and potentially increase followers and interactions.
Content Engagement Analysis
Analytics platforms let you see how followers are interacting with your posts, find out which headlines are attracting the most followers, and generally help you build better content. This type of analysis provides you the information necessary for personalization and increasing follower engagement.
Follower Demographics & Analysis
Start to know a little more about your followers’ demographics and locations. Now you have the opportunity to route optimization based on target locations.
Third-Party & CRM Integration
If your company has outlaid the resources for a CRM, integration into an analytics solution may be highly important as it will give you the ability to convert social engagements into leads. Every solution offers different capabilities so verify what software integrations your company needs.
Influencer Identification
Identify which followers have the largest networks. You may want to engage them to be a brand advocate to promote company content or may simply want to tap into their follower audience to increase your audience.
Real-time Monitoring
Get early warning of negative feedback from events, advertising, and news affecting your clients and markets. Also, important for helping you deliver timely communication to benefit followers and demonstrate your company’s value.
Reporting
Reporting helps turn all the data into strategy, which can deliver the necessary ROI for your social media efforts. You want this tool to provide an easy way for demonstrating key data points from all social channels and to produce great visualizations that make information quickly understandable.
Mobile App
This may be valuable to SMBs that don’t have extensive teams dedicated to social media. Monitoring may need to be handled on-the-go at times.
Price
Platform pricing runs the gamut from free to monthly service fees for several thousand dollars. Set your budget and find a solution that offers the features your company specifically wants. Many also offer a free month trial.
Social media analytics offer companies the much-needed ability to tailor messages, manage multiple channels and social profiles, and gather valuable data on followers, engagement, content, and more. Some solutions also provide ML algorithms to advance audience targeting and to categorize content. For digital marketers this is a way to get a handle on your social media efforts and utilize findings for additional marketing activities and in other areas of the business.
