Social media contains a wealth of data that is invaluable to marketers. Social media data is made up of collected information from social networks that shows how users engage with, view, or share content. Tracking and analyzing those metrics can help to inform a successful marketing strategy. Social data can help marketers to identify high-performing content based on audience, trends on different platforms, and the effectiveness of a brand’s social media activity.

Pixlee has compiled a list of the best ways to use social media analytics to help shape your brand’s marketing strategy.

Identify and Track KPIs

Before beginning your social media data analysis, figure out what are your social media key performance indicators (KPIs). Ideally, these KPIs should be in line with your overall business strategy. Once you’ve decided on your KPIs, choosing the right tool will help you to collect and analyze data efficiently and effectively. The best tools have a simple, user-friendly interface that is intuitive and easy to manage. Using media analytics, marketers can rationalize the ROI and prove the value of social media.

Identifying and prioritizing KPIs enables brands to leverage relevant data to measure and optimize social media posting. Data can help to inform marketers, for example, on which platforms are the best match for their brand and what kind of content has the largest reach.

Target Content Based on Interests and Trends

Social analytics provide marketers with insights into what content, products, and advertising are creating the most buzz and interest online. Brands can leverage this information to identify top content, brand influencers, and more.

Marketers should consistently track all chatter associated with their brand online: keywords, sentiment, language, etc. Measuring actual perception versus the desired perception for a brand helps marketers recognize whether a brand is positioned correctly.

Target Based on Platform

Core social media KPIs help marketers to analyze data and target the unique metrics from each social media platform. Marketers need to have a strong understanding of how well content performs on each social network.

Many platforms now offer native analytics tools to better enable marketers to track and analyze data. Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, and Google Analytics are a few of the platform tools available for social media analysis.

Facebook Insights allow owners of a Facebook business page to analyze some internal KPIS such as engagement, impressions, likes, post reach, and reactions. Twitter Analytics shows the engagement rate, number of followers, link clicks, mentions and more in a 28-day summary. Google Analytics can provide metrics on a variety of social platforms to help brands learn about product sales, leads, visit duration, and more.

Both tracking KPIs and social network analytics helps marketers find out what posts and content performs best and how to leverage social networks accordingly.

Personalize Content and Marketing

Data collection and analytics allow brands to customize content based on audience profiles. This provides the consumer with a personalized experience—which has been shown to be more effective than impersonal, brand-owned content. Using social network analytics, marketers can drill down on their audience and use data to drive engagement and conversions. Today’s consumers prioritize companies that seem authentic and trustworthy, and personalized marketing can provide that impression.

Data-driven content creation helps marketers to target current and potential customers, upping the ROI of social media posting. Social media users appreciate relevant, useful content and with so much information available, brands should use personalization to stand out from the crowd. The data available from loyalty programs, social media engagement, and post performance should influence the personalization of content and advertising.

Social data is becoming more easily available to marketers. With the tools available to analyze and track the information, marketers can access key insights into their target audience. Using these metrics, marketers can ensure that their social media content is effective and justify social’s ROI.

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