What Are Social Media Analytics & Why Are They Important?

Social media analytics can be tricky to understand at first glance. However, it's critical to businesses to find out what is working and what isn't working for their brand, and can determine your next steps on how to grow your business from a social media standpoint. Let's break it down for you exactly what social media analytics are, their importance, and how to track them!

What Are Social Media Analytics?

Social media analytics refers to the approach of collecting data from social sites and even blogs to evaluate data and determine the next best business decisions for your social media(s). This goes beyond the basic analytics like 'likes' or retweets and focuses more on the in-depth descriptions of just how well your content is doing and how many people are reaching and engaging with that content. Social media analytics helps you measure your social media marketing strategy. These insights will help you gauge your social media reach by measuring several metrics.

To put it simply, social media analytics helps you find answers to questions like:

• Who is your target audience?
• What content works for your brand?
• Which social media platform is fit for your brand?
• Are your campaigns sending out the right message?

What Is The Importance of Social Media Analytics?

Social media analytics help you get a better understanding of your audience. That is great when you are on the hunt to reach the right audience. If you aren't quite sure what your audience is, analytics can help you receive that data which will help you find out. From audience age, gender, and location, social media analytics give you details on several audience demographics. Once you get a good feel for your audience, it becomes much easier to build effective strategies. For example, you don't want to target men for a mascara launch campaign.

Social media analytics also allows you to see which social platform is the best bet for your specific brand. For instance, with the help of social media data, you might discover that lesser chosen platforms like Twitter and TikTok might give your brand a better response than regular platforms. It all comes down to trial and error and keeping an eye on the analytics.

Analytics also help you detect what kind of content is working for your brand. Keep in mind the shares, likes, and comments you receive say a lot about how your content is doing and finding desired results. It also can help you see what's not working well in your content strategy.

Social media analytics can help you get ahead of your competitors. The data you get through analytics can equip you to thoroughly form effective marketing strategies. Knowing your competitors and your niche as well as what appeals to your target audience can give you an edge over your competitors. Several social media tools also have competition tracking solutions to help you watch competitors. Keep in mind, translating this information can be difficult to understand, so we always recommend hiring a professional company such as us, The Social Robin to do all the hard work for you and help you build great strategies.

Now that you've learned the basics of social media and why they are important to your business, now is the time to implement some new strategies and see what works best for you! Reach out to us if you need help and we would love to help you bring your social media presence to its full potential!  

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