Social Media Analytics should be the cornerstone of your Social Media Strategy; you'll use them to understand if your social media execution is working effectively, and to guide your future decisions to ensure the best possible Return on Investment. Understanding and leveraging your analytics will enable you to get the absolute most out of your time and marketing dollars.
There are a variety of important metrics to consider, so let's start by diving into them:
Engagement: Clicks, Likes, Comments
These are some of the most basic metrics that you should be tracking post by post. These metrics will give you a quick glimpse into how your content is resonating, and if you are reaching enough of your target audience. Leverage these metrics to figure out which content is working best, and which is not!
Awareness: Reach, Impressions and Shares
Clicks, Likes and Comments are one thing, but how many "other" potential customers see your content is another - and is arguably just as important! If a particular post has a high reach or a signifiant number of impressions and shares, it's likely that this piece of content is reaching a new audience that may not be familiar with your content! Sure, you want your usual followers to love what you post, but expanding your reach and impressions will help garner the attention of a wider audience.
Brand Sentiment & Feedback
Social listening tools are KEY here, as you'll want to know more than just how many people "like" your content. What are people saying about your brand? Are they happy with the content that you are posting, and how does it make them feel? There are fewer tools more powerful than your audience's emotion, so be sure to track Brand Sentiment to better understand them!
Customer Success: Response Rates & Reviews
You could have the best product out there, but if your customers don't feel looked after you may find yourself in some trouble. Tracking response rates and reviews can really help you stay on top of thing and can help improve brand loyalty over time if executed well!
Return On Investment: Conversion Rates & Referrals
Ah, the meat of it all - the Return On Investment. When we think "conversion", we typically think about a customer adding an item to their cart and seeing it through to payment - but did you know there are actually many steps of the conversion funnel that should be analyzed? For example, understanding how many customers will click on a social media ad and make it through to your website can help you understand the success of your paid media campaign - and may even help you detect bugs in the system that are preventing a greater turn out!
Is Social Media Engagement Important?
Social media marketing typically isn’t about engagement. Most marketers strive to optimize link clicks or impressions. Link clicks can drive sales, while impressions increase brand awareness. With this in mind, engagement is typically not in the forefront for most marketers. However, engagement is extremely important. Engaging content will not only reach more people (impressions), but it will also lead to a higher click-through rate (CTR). Think of a social media post that has no engagement. It’s somewhat siloed to only your followers.
Once one of your followers likes, shares, or comments on (engages with) your post, it will be extended to their audience thus increasing the reach. The more people that engage with your post, the greater potential reach it will have.
On a historical graph, that looks like this:
You’ll notice as engagement increases, so do impressions. The more engaging your post is, the more people you’ll reach. The other effect of posting engaging content is social validation. If a post has a lot of positive feedback, people are more likely to click on the link supplied which increases website traffic and hopefully increases sales.
Using dynamic content has proven to have an 89% higher engagement rate.Cloud Campaign gives you the power to dynamically share content to social media based off of the weather and trends. Try it out with your free 30-day trial.
Understanding your Social Media Analytics:
Analytics are only valuable if you can understand them. Let’s dive into Cloud Campaign‘s social media analytics to help you better interpret them.
Glossary
Reach / Impressions: The number of times a given post was viewed (not unique users) Engagement: Likes, comments, or shares Post Type: A type of post defined by its characteristics (ex: image post with short text containing hashtags and a link)
The Activity Feed
The activity feed is comprised of your most recent social media posts. Here you can see live engagement including likes, comments, shares, and reach.
Hovering over any of the ‘engagement bars’ will reveal more information. Both the absolute count and the percent of maximum for all of your posts.
For example, if 2 comments correlates to 100%, that means the most comments on a given post in the feed is 2.
Historical Analytics (Followers)
Choose between any of the accounts you manage to view that account’s historical analytics.
Choose the date range that you’re interested in or use one of our presets. Both the Business and Enterprise plan allow you to look back 1 year.
Click the cloud icon to download the analytics as a ZIP containing CSV files.
Click the share icon to create a client report with a publicly shareable link. The link is automatically copied to your clipboard.
In the top left, you will notice your total follower account and the percent change in followers. If the change is positive, the text will be green. If negative, the text will be red.
Just below the Follower numbers, you’ll notice deltas. Deltas represent change in followers during the specified time period.
This main graph contains line charts for both the number of followers and number of followees. Followers are people that follow your account. Followees are accounts or people that you follow.
This graph also contains a bar chart showing the deltas for each day and annotations if you’ve added any. Click ‘+ Add Annotation’ to create a new annotation to mark key events.
Historical Analytics (Posts)
The post engagement graph will show historical engagement for all of your posts during the specified time period including likes, comments, shares, and reach.
Hover over a given post to see the exact engagement numbers. Click on the icons in the legend to toggle any of the metrics.
To the right, you’ll notice the total number of posts that were published during that period. Plus any percent change if applicable.
The engagement section contains total engagement for all posts in the given time period including likes, comments, shares, and reach.
Insights (High-Level)
Use the dropdown to change the account in focus.
View high-level textual insights to get a quick understanding of how to better engage your followers. Learn what type of posts your audience responds best to, the best time to post, and more.
Insights (Post Types)
View all of the data backing our insights.
The first chart is post type distribution. Essentially how many of each post type has been published on social media to the account of choice.
The second chart is engagement by post type. Where your likes, comments, and shares are coming from. Which post types are most engaging to your followers.
Click the icons in the top right to cycle between likes, comments, and shares attribution distribution.
The bottom section contains engagement breakdown by post type. Hover over any of the ‘engagement bars’ to see exact numbers and percent of the total.
If you get stuck along the way or need any help understanding your analytics, feel free to drop us a message using the built-in chat. Simply click the chat icon in the lower right corner from any screen within the web-app.
How to Enable ROI Metrics for Social Media Analytics:
If you manage social media for your clients, it’s important to be able to convey the value that you provide. We’ve made this simple through client reports. Client reports are the one-click social media analytics you’ve been waiting for. And, they’ve become even more useful with our latest feature — ROI metrics. To add ROI metrics to a client report follow these simple steps:
1. Log in to Cloud Campaign and navigate to the reports section
2. Click ‘New Report’
3. Choose the desired date range and click ‘Toggle Advanced’ to enter marketing spend
Click ‘Generate Report’. Now when you share the report with your clients it will include ROI metrics such as cost per engagement, cost per impression, and cost per follower. View the report here: Sample Client Report
7 Social Media Stats You Can Leverage to Land More Clients:
As a marketing agency, more clients means more money. But selling a new client can be tough if you don’t have some numbers to back your claims. Use these seven stats to land more clients.
1. 80% of social network users prefer to connect to a brand over social media [Source, 2017]
Consumers like the option to connect with business on platforms they already use. Not being on social media means users are forced to put in additional work to connect with brands, and moreso, likely won’t put in the additional work.
2. Social Media has 100% high lead to close rate over outbound marketing
If companies want to conduct more business, they need to be on social media. Not only can your clients find more business, they’re more likely to close deals on the various platforms.
3. 79% of companies have seen increased traffic from only 6 hours a week invested in social media marketing [Source, 2016]
If 6 hours a week can increase traffic, just imagine what your marketing agency can accomplish with a dedicated marketing team in place. Increased web traffic means increased visibility and increased sales.
4. Users spend 33% of their internet time on social media [Source, 2017]
With nearly 4 Billion people on the internet, there is a huge potential to market on social media.
5. Custom content can generate 3x as many leads as traditional marketing methods [Source, 2016]
More leads = more customers = more revenue. The granularity of targeting on social media can yield extremely targeted leads.
6. Generating leads on social media costs 62% less than traditional methods [Source, 2016]
Lower costs with higher revenue yields greater profits for companies. And what company doesn’t want to be more profitable?
7. 38% of marketers prefer to use social media for business communications [Source, 2016]
While email and cold calls can be effective, many users preferred to be contacted over social media. The informality of the platform gears itself well for B2C companies.
With all of these new clients you’ll be onboarding, you’re going to need a new SMM tool that can scale with your company. Cloud Campaign is the easiest way to manage multiple brands at scale and includes a free 30-day trial.
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