5 Techniques to Analyze Your Social Media Marketing Performance Better


Social Media Marketing

Social Media without adequate analytics is like a sailing ship without an anchor. You don’t want that.

Just the way quality post generation is considered a good Social Media Marketing practice, equally important is the process of tracking and analyzing the performance of those posts. Wondering how to do it, which metric to focus on ?

Worry not, this article will give you 5 effective ways to analyze your social media marketing practices better than ever before.

First thing first, why analytics ?

Well, lets just say that auditing key social media metrics helps figure out which social media practice works well your way and which doesn’t. It helps strategizing things better and often helps fasten the process of decision making. Even more, it helps a team of Social Media practitioners to understand whether their posts and efforts are going in the right direction, reaching the desired target audience, achieving the desired clicks or not.

All of this matters a lot in Social Media Marketing. Not to mention, being able to figure out which areas to improve is exactly what you expect from performing adequate Social Media Analytics.

Some key characteristics of performing Social Media Analytics:

a) To check the engagement on social posts
b) To review daily traffic
c) To check traffic share of organic and paid practices
d) To check details about the most engaged posts
e) To extract analytics data on weekly, monthly or a customized basis.

Number 1: Let’s get started with our very first Social Media Audit Sheet

Incorporating audit metrics in your social media practices may definitely vary as per the end goals and platform. However, there are some key metrics which everyone should analyze. But before we reach that stage, let us understand how important an audit spreadsheet can be, helping track all the data in this world, making things simple and steady.

Creating audit spreadsheet helps comparing data better. For instance, Google sheets is a great tool, allowing a team of professionals to get access a particular file, anywhere, anytime.

Even more, when using Google Sheets, duplicating documents for future edits gets extremely easy. One can view the history of each document for error checks as well.

Google Sheets are extremely secure and allow the owner of the document to change the permissions of a file. So in case you only want to give someone the access to simply view a file, Google sheet allows to do the same. Likewise you can give read, write and edit options to all Google Spreadsheets and sharing of the file gets even more easy because of cloud usage.

Now let us take a look at the contents of the Audit Spreadsheet in detail. Your spreadsheet should contain of the following data.

a) First column – list all the social networks here
b) Second column – number of followers you currently have
c) Third column – % change in followers
d) Fourth column – engagement
e) Fifth column – % change in engagement

Your audit sheet is now ready. Now track data on a regular basis using this format. Even more, you may duplicate this sheet each month for a comparative social media analysis.

social networks

In the next point, let us discuss what are the key metrics you need to track on a timely basis.

Number 2: Examining Follower Growth to Analyze Audience Behavior

One of the most crucial aspect of using social media analytics is keeping a check on the number of followers across different social platforms. Let me put one thing upfront, if the number of followers is big, better will be the engagement and traffic.

Likewise, you are also able to keep a check on the anomalies in the traffic behaviour using analytics tools thus getting better idea of what points one needs to work on for better results.

Talking of followers, well, you may figure out the count by simply taking a look at the numbers displayed on your social profiles. However, if you use social analytic tools, you may fetch better insights. With better insights, you get a better understanding of any outliers in your data.

For instance, in the graph below, you are able to figure out the growth of followers (in Facebook) on a daily basis. The hike in the graph tells you when you achieved the maximum number of followers and the drop shows when there was a fall in the traffic.

Data

Similarly, you may analyze all your social accounts and keep a check on the traffic of each and every post you publish.

Note:

Simply checking the total number of likes or views doesn’t really speak much about the post you publish and it’s effectiveness. Instead, what’s needed is the ability to dig in and extract the essentials out of it. You need to create an impactful report by keeping a track on key essentials which is only attainable using reliable analytics tools.

So be sure to add these details in your spreadsheet.

One more thing, switching to different social media platforms each time to extract data might seem sluggish. However, if you make use of any social media analytics dashboard (offered by various third party clients), for instance, Cyfe, you’ll be able to keep a track of follower growth across all the social networks you wish to keep a check on, in one place. This makes the process of tracking and monitoring data way too easy and thus helps evaluate ROI and success of your social practices.

spreadsheet

All of your social networks under one dashboard, Cyfe makes it easy!

Number 3: Track Impressions, Spot Irregularities, Fix em.

Impressions stands for the count of people who’ve viewed your social posts. Almost all the top social media platforms have their own built-in analytics to track impressions. However you can also use third party analytics tool for the same.

Case in point, taking Twitter as an example, you can keep a check on the impressions by simply switching to Twitter Analytics section and clicking on the Tweets tab to take a peek into the count of Tweet impressions on particular days. You can also take a closer look at what caused them so as to move spot irregularities in the reach and move ahead with better future practices.

Track Impressions

Now as you maintain your audit spreadsheet, make sure to create a page with details of impressions, gathering data of all the social platforms in one document.

Note:

Make of note of the fact that if you increase your post frequency, the impression data might also vary accordingly. And as the experts recommend, to accurately track impressions on a timely basis, it’s better to fix the number of posts.

Number 4: Track engagement to monitor ups and downs in interactions

All your effort goes in vain unless you fetch the right engagement. As a matter of fact, the above mentioned metrics should be proportional to the increase in engagement.

It’s easy, if your posts fetch better engagement in the form of likes, retweets, shares and comments, it simply reflects the fact that the content you share is likable. Your content reaches the target audience and thus it drives adequate engagement, that is the aim. And by keeping a track on the same, you are able to monitor the ups and downs in interactions. And once you’ve analyzed the engagement flow, you’ll be able to focus on implementing better techniques to draw best results.

Here’s an example of how Pinterest analytics helps keep a check on the engagement criteria. You are able to get your hands on much statistical data, (see pic below) using the in-built engagement analysis tool.

Brandwatch

Each social platform will offer different parameters to track user engagement and you’d need to explore each platform individually. You may make a note of the same in your spreadsheet for a comparative study eventually.

Number 5: Uncover inconsistencies in website UX: Review Clicks and Traffic

Clicks are the best form of engagement, liked by Digital Marketers the most. The more, the merrier. But as of now, let’s consider them to be a separate metric because they influence traffic to quite an extent.

As you analyze the clicks and traffic, keep a check at how many of them redirect the user from your social posts to your website (which you’d better connote as conversion). Also, create a column in the spreadsheet marking the traffic flow from your post to your website.

Note:

Not all clicks will convert into traffic, some people might bounce off your page while it loads. In case the difference between the clicks and traffic is too much, it indicates that something is not right with your site, perhaps the load time.

Google Analytics

As you uncover these inconsistencies and document them in the audit spreadsheet, you’d be able to perform better.You may use Google Analytics. It offers you a detailed dashboard allowing you to map a lot of things. To track the social media traffic, you need to click on Acquisition tab in your dashboard and then further click on Social and Network Referrals.

Conclusion

All the above mentioned metrics, starting from Impressions to click and traffic analysis, each of them are crucial while doing social media audit. As long as you maintain an audit sheet with all the aforementioned metrics, your analysis will be fruitful and thus you’ll be able to fix a lot of issues and enhance results as well.


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