Social media is a rich source of data for marketers and other decision makers in a company. Social media data can be described as a collection of information from social networking sites that shows how users engage with each other, how they view and share content. Tracking and analyzing such metrics can provide essential insights for making informed decisions.

A marketer can use social data to create high-performing content based on different aspects such as trends, audience and the brand’s effectiveness on the use of social media. Campaign180 has summarized the best ways that brands can use social media analytics to shape a marketing strategy.

Identifying and Tracking KPIs

You should first define your key performance indicators (KPIs) before starting to analyze your social media data. Make sure the KPIs you identify are in line with your overall business strategy. After defining your KPIs, choose the right tool that will help in data collection and analysis. Remember to choose a user-friendly tool that is simple to use. The social media analytics can enable marketers to rationalize the ROI and realize the value of social media in the business growth.

Identifying the right set of KPIs enables a brand to leverage relevant data to measure and optimize social media posting. The collected data can provide important insights for marketers. For instance, it is easy to know the platforms that are the best match for the brand and the type of content that is preferred by the target audience.

Targeting content based on trends and interests

Social media analytics will provide insights on the type of content, products and marketing campaigns that can create the most buzz and more interest online. This information is essential for brands since they can be able to identify the right type of content, influencers among other essential components of an effective digital campaign.

Therefore, one should consistently track all the relevant data associated with their brand’s online activities. Some of the important elements includes language, tone, sentiment and keywords that can be used to measure actual perception versus the desired brand perception. The outcomes can be used by marketers to determine whether the brand is positioned strategically.

Targeting based on platform

Identifying core social media KPIs enables brands to analyze data and identify the unique metrics for each social media platform. Therefore, marketers should have a detailed understanding of how each content type performs on different social media networks.  

Most of the common social media platforms have in-build analytics tools that helps marketers in tracking and analyzing data. For instance, Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and Twitter analytics are among some of the platforms tools that can help marketers with social media analysis.

Users of a Facebook business page can use Facebook Insights to analyze some internal KPIs such as likes, reactions, post reach, engagement and impressions. Twitter Analytics can reveal the mentions, number of followers, engagement rate, link clicks, and other details in a 28-day summary. Google Analytics can also be used to provide important metrics on various social media platforms to enable brands to learn more about leads, sales, visit duration among other features.

Personalize content and marketing

Brands can customize their content based on their audience profiles from the collected and analyzed data. Social media users following such platforms will start getting personalized experience. This is a more effective strategy than the use of impersonal brand-owned content.

Marketers use the social network analytics to understand their audience and use the collected data to drive engagement and conversions. Most consumers prefer companies that seem authentic and trustworthy. Companies that create personalized marketing content provides such an impression to the target audience.

Data-driven content creation helps brands to target the current and potential customers. These efforts will increase the ROI on social media posting. Social media followers of such brands prefer relevant, useful and reliable content. Marketers using such concepts are making their brands to standout of the competition. Personalization of content used for advertising can be found in various places such as loyalty programs, social media post performance, and engagement rate.

 

‍

...
Social media marketing