Social Media Analytics Toolbox

Take a look at our Social Media analytics toolbox that helps guide our strategy.

With the start of a new year, it’s time to reflect on what worked last year and adjust strategy going into this year. Analytics play a huge role in that process.

Here are the top five social media metrics I analyze:

1. Engagement – rate, totals, top posts

2. Reach by post type

3. Followers – growth, demographics

4. Competitor data – fans, content volume, engagement

5. Impressions

Engagement

Engagements include metrics like reactions, comments, shares, message clicks, page actions, retweets, replies, likes, and saves. Engagement is one of the best indicators of whether you’re providing your fans with the type of content they love. Taking a deeper look into which posts received the most engagement (top posts), can help guide your strategy to give your fans more of what they want. Do your fans want more photos, videos, cows, people or mascots? Analyzing which posts receive the most engagements will help you better understand what it is that they want. Computing the engagement rate per impression (total engagement/total impressions) will help to understand whether you’re posting too much. Pro Tip: Asking your fans what they want is okay! Instagram and Facebook Stories and Twitter Polls provide the opportunity to hear directly from your fans.

Reach by Post Type

Breaking down reach by post type helps in understanding which type of media is performing best on each platform. Rather than focusing on the type of content, this displays how that content will perform best – whether that be a photo, video, link or plain text. Videos for the College of Agricultural Sciences received an average reach of 3,882 fans, while links were the closest with only 3,213. Videos will continue to be an important component in social media strategies for 2020.

 

Followers

Platform growth can change what your demographics look like while providing insights on whether your brand is reaching a new audience. Each platform provides information like age, gender, location, and times when your fans are online. Taking a deeper look into who your followers are can guide the type of content posted on each platform, the times to post and call to action for those posts. For the College of Agricultural Sciences, our most engaged audience on Facebook is women from 25-34 years old, while Twitter is men between 35-54 years old and Instagram is women between 18-24 years. Based on this information, I can adjust my language to better fit what each audience is looking for.

Competitor Data

Although you should focus on what makes you unique, it’s helpful to keep an eye on how your competitors and peers are doing. Analyzing the number of fans, content volume and engagement totals/rate can give a better picture of how the industry is doing and provide some insights on what’s working well for others. Pro Tip: Using engagements per impression with your competitors and peers gives a better look at where you sit and whether or not you should post more/less.

Impressions

Impressions are the number of times any content associated with your page was displayed (FYI – reach is unique views). This metric is helpful in analyzing how often your brand was displayed to various audiences. If your impressions and engagement have both increased over the year, that’s a good indication that your content is providing the value your audience is looking for. If your impressions have increased but engagements have not, it’s time to take a deeper look into why your users didn’t engage even though they saw the content.

Have any questions on these analytics? Connect on Twitter: @savannahgracew