“If you don’t start in the right spot, you are going to lose the game before you even get started.”
-Mike O’Neil (@mikeoneilrocks)
Right? Well…absolutely! Social media has become the terrain and domain of the marketers who know how to derive the best out of their marketing platforms.
Social media analytics are the yardsticks that enable businesses to evaluate their performance and determine where they stand.
As social media influencer Mike O’ Neil states, we need to work in the right direction to achieve our marketing goals.
These goals can be rightfully set using the best social media management tools for small business.
With 95% of retail brands using social media channels for marketing, businesses need the best social media tracker.
Competition is tough and media analytics results can be leveraged in every aspect of a business; from maintaining relationships with stakeholders and clients to human resource management.
So what does this ‘magic’ tool do?
An effective analytics tool like the Social Media Analytics by SocialPilot is the power weapon that will enable businesses to devise their marketing strategies.
Analytics for social media provides volumes of data in the form of user engagement, page clicks, posts shared, the total reach and much more.
As an organization, you have to decipher these statistics to get a complete understanding of the customer preferences and the areas of business opportunity.
The main objectives of social analytics tools are:
- Getting feedback from customers about the products and services
- Track the social media marketing strategies
- Brand reputation management
- Lead generation
- Measuring the ROI on social media marketing
- Providing performance reports to all members of the organization, stakeholders, and clients
SocialPilot is a comprehensive platform that helps you automate and manage your social media marketing strategies. So how does SocialPilot Analytics help you achieve the data that you are looking for across various platforms?
- You can find all your platform analytics under one dashboard
- Monitor post performances and trending hashtags
- Send across PDF reports via email for your team to be on the same page
Now the question is: How to leverage social media analytics for businesses?
Let’s find out.
1. Consistently monitor performance
Social media has become such an intrinsic part of our lives that all are marketing decisions are based on reviews that we get from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other platforms. Customers consider these reviews organic and make their choices accordingly.
Companies need to constantly monitor the performance of their products to enhance their performance and work on upgrades. Social media listening is an important measure to improve your marketing strategies.
As a marketer, you can try out different strategies and if something does not work, assess the analytics for social media to analyze what went wrong and then work on the improvement strategies.
Let’s go by an example:
Travel industry works largely on establishing relationships with present and prospective clients over the social media. With an epidemic of travel agencies all around the world, how can travel companies leverage their spaces in the competitive environment?
Social media analytics could be pivotal for travel companies to determine their next course of action.
Travel is an ever-evolving/changing business and media analytics gives a greater vision of understanding and evaluating the changing dynamics.
The statistics of the marketing tools could help save companies millions of bucks by re-evaluating their performance strategies and tuning into the present customer needs.
This is particularly useful for small businesses that have limited resources and like to use them for the correct promotional activities.
3. Targeted marketing
A business must foremost analyze: Who is my target audience? Which area does this audience come from?
Once you identify these insights and recognize the future trends, you can target your marketing strategies on those lines.
All the data generated from the analytics for social media can then be compiled and reviewed to concentrate efforts towards a more tailored marketing.
One more thing, the analytics tools inferences sometimes have surprises in store for their businesses.
As a business, you have been targeting your efforts to tap women over 30, but hey wait!! The analytics depicts a different perspective. Even men in 20’s are interested in your product.
Your next move?
Channelize your efforts in tapping the segment “men in 20’s”. So here we see that the social media analytics tool was pivotal in reframing the company’s policy and enabled marketers to discover the untapped audience!
Currently, 33% of customers use social media platforms than the telephone to contact their brands(Neilson report)
Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook gather large amounts of customer feedback for the brands. These reviews help companies in analyzing the weak points and hurdles they have to cross to reach their customers.
It is the immaculate user experience that compels the consumers to come back for more. Businesses should take all complaints and problems into consideration and work towards resolving them before they start losing customers. This helps them in their overall brand reputation management.
The social media analytics tools will not just identify problem areas; they will help you in getting positive results by monitoring the new course of action.
14% of tweets to major brands are from consumers having problems in-store (Conversocial research)
A brand that responds well to its consumers and looks into their problems is always the consumer’s favourite brand. And of course, brands that do not respond will never develop a strong fan following.
So use your media analytics to find out about customer complaints and devise solutions thereafter. Also if a business promptly looks into user complaints, it would rectify the problem in time and save wastage and losses resulting from a failing venture.Incorporating these insights into your venture capital business plan can help ensure long-term success.
Using the best social media analytics tools will not only result in escalating profits but also save your business from losing valuable customers.
Social media marketing revolves around tweeting, pinning and sharing content. When you consistently track your post performances, you can ascertain the most engaging content.
Once you figure that out, repost that content where relevant. You can make use of tools like Zoho Social to help you ease scheduling.
Your social analytics tool is the yardstick which helps you compare all posts and select the most ‘socializing’ one.
Ideally, brands use various marketing platforms to post content and use social media scheduling tools to bulk post at the relevant times. But without using any metrics, it is impossible to identify the most shareable content.
With the ever changing times and trends, user preferences keep changing. So track your posts with the analytics tools and use the compiled data to increase your conversions, traffic and reach on social media.
6. Competitor analysis
The moods, behaviors and preferences of people change at unpredictable rates. What works today, will become obsolete by maybe…. midnight?
The crux here is that the analysis wheel has to continue moving. No customer activity should escape the analytics radar.
Depending on the scale of your business, you can carry out daily or weekly measurements.
These social analytics tools also help in comparing engagement levels with competitors.
You will know exactly where you stand by comparing your results with competitors.
You can analyze the social footprint created by your competitors across all social channels and use this data to add-on to your strategic efforts.
The hospitality industry uses analytics for social media extensively to evaluate and compare performances among competitors.
Starbucks has always been active in its social media marketing campaigns.
It looks into every aspect of marketing and leverages social media analytics to stay ahead in the competition. So does your company connect with customers the way this coffee chain does?
7. Influencer mapping
An online survey shows 22% of marketers see influencer marketing emerging as a rapidly-growing social marketing tool.
Influencers definitely create brand awareness. But is this awareness action driven? Is it leading to engagements and conversions?
Relax and take a deep breath:
Use your social media tools effectively to analyze and map your influencers. The world is so well-connected and some influencers are more powerful than others. Use their charm to lure your customers!
Further, you can use the analytics to identify the exact type of content that these influencers should share. Probe deep and gather insights from the statistics to find out how these influencers are improving your marketing reach.
Identify areas which are untapped by these experts and help them foray into those avenues.
8. Unleash the power of Facebook
Approximately 70 million small business pages are active on Facebook and out of them about 7 million pay for social media marketing on Facebook.
By far, Facebook is still the reigning social media king. 79% of online adults use Facebook (source- Pew Research Center).
The surprising fact here is that the young adults using Facebook have recently been joined by the older adults.
Using the social media analytics tools for Facebook is the best way to monitor, review, compile and analyze all Facebook results at one place.
You can also compare your Facebook performances against other social platforms.
Measure all metrics and check the progress of your posts by comparing previous records, to understand the behavioral psychology of your fans and followers.
Bottom Line
Monitor your audience growth, compare the results with competitors, analyze the engagements and shares; and discover the hidden secret of achieving marketing success.
This media analytics can help you establish a connection with the sentiments of the customers. Use these statistics to study the difficulties faced by consumers and take proactive measures to rectify them.
Social media is said to consist of seven layers.
The visible layers consist of actions and texts, which can be identified easily. Social media analytic tools allow marketers to unearth the invisible layers like hyperlinks and mobile data.
Hence leverage the Social media Analytics to transform the unprocessed data into clear and useful insights that have the potential to boost your business outcomes!
