Understanding your social media analytics is key to understanding how effective your social media marketing efforts are. Having a presence on at least one social media channel is table stakes for most businesses these days because it’s a powerful tool for reaching customers, even if the rules feel like they’re constantly changing.

One way to navigate the turbulent waters of the social world is by conducting regular analyses about your content’s performance across channels.

How can you use social media analytics for small business growth?

Social media analytics show how your content and channels are performing, answering questions like:

• What content is resonating with my audience?
• Who is my audience?
• When is my audience most engaged?
• Is my social media ad campaign performing well?
• How active are my customers with my brand?

By having these answers, you can continue to refine your social strategy to better connect with your audience and build long-term relationships with your customers.

Defining the key metrics of social media analytics

Social media platforms like to call metrics different things, but the core KPIs exist across all of them. Overall, you’re looking at how many people see your content, who is seeing your content, and if they’re resonating with your content.

Let’s define the top metrics:

• Reach: The number of unique users who saw your content.
• Engagement: Likes, comments, shares, and other interactions with your content.
• Clicks: The number of clicks on links within your social media posts.
• Impressions: The number of times your content appeared on users’ screens.
• Followers: The total number of users who have chosen to follow your social media accounts.
• Brand Mentions: See how often your brand is mentioned on social media, even if it’s not directly on your accounts. (This can be tracked using relevant hashtags or brand name searches.)

Regularly measure these metrics and record them to identify trends across time, find unexpected patterns, and see cyclical behavior.

You may hear about vanity metrics, like impressions, that may make you feel good but are ultimately meaningless. I disagree. Any one of these metrics is not helpful on its own but combined together, they give you a comprehensive look at your brand’s social media presence. Go a step farther by looking at metrics like average impressions per post, engagement rate, and click-through-rate (CTR).

Understanding who your social media audience is

Not only can you analyze your content’s performance, you can also check out who your audience is with demographic data including:

• ages,
• locations,
• gender,
• and interests.

You can also take it up a notch and look at more metrics like:

• what platforms they use,
• when they’re most active,
• and how they interact with your content.

Regular reporting for social media analytics success

Just like every marketing platform, it’s key to have a regular reporting schedule to keep an eye on your social media performance. I prefer monthly, with more in-depth reports at quarterly and annual intervals.

Be sure to keep track of overall brand-level trends as well as the performance of specific campaigns, organic and paid.

If you’re interested in outsourcing your social media work or having marketing data geeks pour over your social performance with our Mighty Marketing Report, consider us for your social needs!