Social Media Analytics Help Track Your Marketing Results
It’s important to track your results to determine how successful your social media efforts are. The basic social media analytics software is good for tracking data such as likes, clicks, shares and other types of engagement.
If you want to plan more effective social media campaigns it’s important to understand your audience. You need to find creative ways to benefit from analytics by using a comprehensive social media monitoring or listening strategy. Let’s examine a few of the ways this can help your business track your success.
Social Media Analytics Help Engage Your Audience
It’s difficult to keep up with the social media activity that impacts your brand. You should at the very least monitor your own accounts and respond to direct questions and comments. It is likely that there are many conversations going on all over social media that affect your industry and your business. How can you possibly keep current with all the topics of interest being discussed on the many available platform options.
People may be asking pertinent questions on Quora, tweeting about a news story or posting relevant photos on Facebook or Instagram. If you were able to listen to social media on a large scale it would allow you to insert yourself into some of these discussions, gaining new followers and customers.
Engaging allows you to answer questions and make helpful suggestions. It’s best to do this in a low-key manner rather than overtly selling your own product.
Social Media Analytics Identify and Engage Your Top Customers
You also need to identify influencers and loyal customers who support your business. Social media analytics are key to tracking your most valuable customers and brand advocates.
Monitoring social media, informs you when people are touting your products. This helps you build stronger relationships with your best customers. You can sometimes include them in your marketing efforts.
An influencer who’s fond of your brand might review your latest product on his or her YouTube channel or Instagram account.
Social Media Analytics Help Monitor Your Competition
Your business needs to use social media analytics to help track your competition. You can learn a lot from your competitors about dealing effectively with your target audience.
Social media analytics can tell you which strategies are working for you, and which aren’t. you can see who is responding to your posts and what they are saying. Your company might learn valuable tips by “spying” on a larger and established business in the same niche or industry.
The easiest way to track your competitors on social media is to simply follow them. Following people on Twitter, can help you gain more followers yourself.
Facebook provides a useful tool that lets you track your competitors’ pages. Using their Pages to Watch feature, you can access analytics from other Facebook Pages. You can use other social media analytics software and services to get detailed data about your competitors. Some of these tools let you search your competitors’ posts and replies.
It’s also useful to keep track of which social media sites your competitors are using. This isn’t hard to find out, as businesses openly advertise their links. If you notice that a competitor is active on Instagram and you don’t yet have an account there, it’s important to understand how successful they are. If they have lots of followers and engagement, that’s a clue to make that part of your marketing plan.
Social Media Analytics Can Improve Customer Relations
This is where social media monitoring overlaps your reputation management. Review sites such as Google, Yelp, Angie’s List and others provide the opportunity to monitor your reviews and respond to them.
Many of your customers will also talk about you on social media. If someone tweets a complaint about your business or makes a comment on another site, you need to know about it and have the ability to respond.
This gives you an opportunity to regain a customers trust. If all you can do is apologize, you’re at least showing the customer and everyone else who sees your comments that you care.
With the growing number of social media sites, it’s important to monitor all mentions of your brand. If you’re mentioned on a review site, a blog-type site such as Tumblr or one of the large social media platforms. You need to know everything being said about your brand.
Social Media Analytics Can Predict Your Future
Today, it’s critical to be on the leading edge of your field, niche or industry. That’s why it’s necessary for you to monitor discussions about the latest trends and news. This applies to every industry in our fast paced society.
If you have a restaurant, you need to keep up with the latest food trends. If people are suddenly raving about a new dish, beverage or dessert. You might want to add it to your menu.
If you’re in fashion, you surely want to be current on what people around the world are wearing. It’s the same for any industry. When people get interested in something new, they post their thoughts and images about it on social media. Monitoring this activity gives you an edge over your competitors.
As social media expands, it increasingly becomes important to use analytics tools to track your campaigns. In addition to tracking your basic analytics, it’s also great to go beyond this and monitor your competitors and their discussions that are relevant to your business.