Social media data is a rich source of information and can be used by many people and areas of your company. The data helps you to make better and faster decisions on what to post, helps you get more fans and followers, track the success of your social marketing campaigns as well as predict the future and measure the ROI.
How to Get Social Media Data for Analysis
So, you might wonder, “even if you have all of this social data from various social media platforms, what use does it offer? This is where the fun begins.
Having access to raw data provides you with the opportunity to understand your customers better, and develop an effective content strategy. When you obtain data, you can know the interests of your audience and tailor the content you create for real people.
Here are five marketing goals that social media data collection can be used for:
1. Content optimization
The Content Marketing Institute reports that 57% of marketing professionals agree that creating on-page content is the best SEO strategy. At this time, every business is aware of how important SEO is to reaching customers through internet marketing.
It should come as no surprise that maximizing audience engagement is one of the key goals of many traditional and internet businesses.
Content optimization has shown to be the most effective strategy for creating high levels of engagement with both current audiences and potential consumers. Utilizing modern technology, it’s easy to optimize your content for both customers and enterprises.
Collecting data from social media makes sure you have enough information to meet your audience’s needs based on their preferences. It is simpler to determine which social media sites are most popular with your audience by gathering data.
Social media data collecting also makes sure that you are fully aware of the content types that your audience like, the best times of day to post, and the best ways to increase reach. Use Popsters, a social media content analytics tool, to make such jobs easier.
2. Social media strategy development
The nicest thing about developing a social media strategy is that it effectively insures your business for future advancements. You can be sure that your company has a backup plan in place for unforeseen changes to social media platforms by putting a media strategy in place.
You can find out what your customers discuss and post about by gathering social media data. This means that since you are already aware of their issues, you can quickly find solutions. For companies who want to know what their customers think of them, Twitter is a crucial medium.
Utilizing a social media strategy guarantees that your material stays genuine while addressing your audience’s needs. An estimated 80% of consumers believe that “authenticity of content” has a significant impact on their decision to continue with a company.
3. Better SEO strategies
The total picture of social media marketing includes SEO significantly. Although it is tempting to believe that merely creating more content would result in greater interaction, this is not necessarily the case.
Social media data makes it possible for you to create the correct strategies needed to keep your current clients and attract new ones. In this approach, you may obtain the necessary information to produce the content required for every given situation thanks to the data that has been gathered.
On the majority of social networks, engagement, hashtags, and keywords are some of the fundamental concepts.
Social networking networks are utilized in conjunction with search engines like Google and Bing while conducting searches.
According to estimates, Facebook alone processed more than one billion search requests in 2012.
4. Brand image management
Did you realize that poor customer service costs American brands $41 billion annually? Social media platforms are a great resource for learning what people are saying about your business. You may find out what people are saying, whether positively or negatively, about your brand using data gathered from various social media sites.
This guarantees that you can come up with practical solutions for keeping your clients happy and addressing their problems. With the help of Facebook messaging, some businesses have been able to attract new clients by learning more about their target market’s wants and preferences.
5. Easily spot effective social media influencers
Of course, word-of-mouth and popularity are good ways to find social media influencers. Finding an influencer who exactly matches the requirements of your business, though, could be trickier. Social media data collection comes into play here.
Through their social media posts, social media influencers have the ability to affect their followers’ purchasing decisions. When used properly, brand influencers can play a significant role in your marketing plan.
According to research, even if two brands are stating the same thing, 92 percent of consumers will trust a personal recommendation. It is not surprising that a lot of businesses lately switched their advertising operations to social media.
Influencers, for instance, can assist in educating your clients about your items.
In essence, you may choose the ideal influencer using social media data to better represent your business and expand your clientele. Influencers can help you by helping you to develop pertinent postings, offering market insights, igniting a dialogue about your brand, identifying trends, and granting suitable access to your company.
In order to get and analyze social media data from their clients, marketing organizations must overcome a special set of obstacles.
First, you need a clever method for tracking data. Compared to manually combing through each social media channel’s native metrics, it must be quicker and more trustworthy.
Second, make sure your calculations are correct. The substantial amounts of data you gather from
Thirdly, you must align yourself with your clients. Working together to find the social media metrics and KPIs that meet their demands is crucial because each of them has different objectives.
And finally, you need to summarize all the information you’ve gathered into a report that even your clients with the least data literacy can understand.
To demonstrate the effectiveness of your efforts and translate data insights into actionable takeaways and next steps, you must complete all of the above.
It seems like a large-scale endeavor. But you can accomplish all of these objectives with the appropriate social media data collection technology.
In this tutorial for marketing firms, we’ll explain why and how to gather, examine, and display social media data.
You’ll learn some of the most important metrics to track, how to create a social media report, and how to choose the right social media analytics tool.
Do you want to see how multi-client analysis works in quintly? Check out our made-to-measure social media analytics solution for agencies.
Why should you collect and analyze social media data?
Social media data is the information that is collected from a company’s profiles across different social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Snapchat.
It helps you understand how people consume and engage with content through likes, shares, comments, reactions, clicks, and more.
Collecting and analyzing social media data can help you improve your marketing efforts, stay on top of emerging trends, and offer your clients proof of your results.
And, it can help you continuously refine and improve your strategy. When you are guided by data, you waste less time on guesswork and minimize your risk of making mistakes.
You can learn so much from social media data, so let’s talk about some of the key insights you’ll be able to offer your clients.
The most effective channels
Most brands have numerous profiles on a wide variety of social media sites. However, not all are equally effective.
For example, your client might have lots of followers and high engagement rates on Instagram, but their Facebook page brings little value.
This information will shape your strategy, but you’ll need to know more before you decide whether to double down on Instagram or bring your Facebook campaign up to scratch.
Audience identity and behavior
Figuring out which channels to focus on is easier once you know who your audience is.
Collect data from social media to discover what kind of people make up the brand’s audience. This will also tell you which channels they prefer, so you can decide which channels deserve more attention.
Similarly, knowing followers’ time zones and when they are most active online will help you plan when to post.
What type of content works best
Not all social media posts are created equal. Maybe your client’s audience prefers images to text, or would rather watch videos than read blog posts.
As you collect data from social profiles you’ll be able to see what type of content attracts the most interest and produce more of it.
If you pay attention to how the audience reacts, you’ll get better at creating content tailored to their needs.
How past campaigns performed
Analyzing the results of past campaigns is essential for optimizing your social media strategy.
Of course, what worked yesterday might not work tomorrow. But you’re more likely to succeed with your next campaign when you base your decisions on data.
Besides, marketing agencies need to demonstrate their value to their clients. Comparing your campaigns to previous ones can help you validate your success and show your clients their return on investment.
How your competitors perform
Brands on social media don’t exist in a void: they’re part of a competitive landscape.
Understanding how your competition performs on social media can help you spot their strengths and weaknesses – and your opportunities.
By comparing your social media data to that of your competitors, you’ll be able to learn from their mistakes, spot holes in their strategy, and use that information to get ahead.
What Are Social Analytics Tools?
Social analytics tools help you understand how your content is performing on social media.
They allow you to see which types of posts are popular, which types of users are engaging with your posts, and what other content is trending at the moment.
Social analytics tools can be used to help manage your social media accounts, measure the impact of campaigns, and build better strategies for engagement.
Social analytics tools are the best way to make sense of your social media presence. They help you understand what kind of content works well on different platforms, which audiences are engaging with your brand, and what kind of content they want to see more of. You can use these insights to create better content in the future, as well as to tailor your marketing strategy and make sure you’re always reaching the right people.
In other words, social analytics tools tell you how well your content is doing on social media platforms—what’s working and what isn’t. This information is crucial for any business that wants to grow its audience and get more people involved in their brand.
Social analytics tools are a way to track social media campaigns and see how they’re performing. They can help you figure out what is working, so you can keep doing it, and what isn’t working, so you can stop doing that.
You’ll want to use social analytics tools if you have a business or organization that relies on social media for publicity.
If you’re using social media for marketing purposes, then knowing what works and what doesn’t will help you reach your goals more effectively. Social analytics tools can also help determine whether or not your content is being shared as much as expected; if it isn’t, then maybe it’s time to change things up!
If you’re trying to build an engaged audience, then you need to know what kind of content they like and when they like it—and that’s where social media analytics comes in. Social media analytics tells you exactly how many people interacted with each post on your page, which ones got the most engagement, and what time of day is best for posting.
Analytics can be used to track your own engagement with followers, as well as the engagement of others. It can also help you understand how people are finding your posts and whether or not their content is driving sales for you. It’s important to track your social media metrics in order to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns, identify areas for improvement, and see how much engagement each post gets.
Social Analytics Tools
1. Keyhole
Keyhole is the first item on our list of the top social media analytics tools. The platform provides a stunning, thorough, and simple dashboard that tracks all of your social media activity.
Keyhole’s user-friendly technology genuinely helps you understand the thoughts of future clients and engagements. To help you decide what and where is most effective, you will now have access to comprehensive reporting that has been streamlined.
This platform offers a huge number of functions. The quantity of impressions, reach, posts, and engagements that particular accounts or hashtags are receiving will be visible to you.
Keyhole can help you there as well if you need to figure out which key influencers have the most followers and the highest interaction rates. In conclusion, you
2. Sprout Social
Sprout Social’s expertise in tracking and reporting on cross-channel social media analytics is what really elevated it on this list. With the help of this platform, you can compare all of the outcomes from various networks at once or get in-depth into the reports and analytics of a single network.
You can track anything from Facebook impressions to Twitter link clicks with the help of Sprout Social’s numerous features and tools. Having said that, tracking data for sites like LinkedIn and Pinterest are also integrated because, as we all know, social media platforms are rapidly developing.
The platform provides both pre-built and bespoke reporting possibilities. This means that you will have a variety of options.
3. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is another of the top social media analytics tools available right now. This platform has a strong reputation in this industry and has long offered reliable social interaction services.
You can fully manage postings, collaborations, scheduling, and analytics with the aid of Hootsuite. Your social media management team will be able to automate posts with the tools it offers, schedule posts appropriately, access a ton of analytics and insights, and calculate key performance indicators from all the marketing content.
Hootsuite’s ability to swiftly and simply interface with all social media networks, such as Facebook and Instagram, is yet another noteworthy feature. This implies that viewing analytics doesn’t require switching between different platforms. rather, you can.
4. Zoho Social
We are all aware that Zoho has a ton of fantastic products, including one of the greatest CRM systems. With the inclusion of Zoho Social, they also bring a solid platform for managing and reaching on social media.
Through its user-friendly publication calendar function, the platform enables you to effortlessly plan out and produce posts. Additionally, you can quickly keep track of every campaign and make tailor-made reports that are simple to read and understand.
From the convenience of the Zoho Social dashboard, interact in real-time with your social media audience and actively engage your followers. Check out Zoho, particularly if you currently use their platform for other tasks.
5. Buffer Analyze
Buffer is a different name that you might be somewhat familiar with. Additionally, they feature strong yet incredibly easy-to-use social media analytics tools with their Buffer Analyze software. It has all the functions and resources you could possibly need for managing and monitoring your social media feeds.
You can easily schedule post timings and manage numerous social media accounts at once, just like with many other programs on this list. All of this enables you to focus on client involvement to the nth degree.
Buffer Analyze is undoubtedly a platform you should think about using because of the integrated social media analytics capabilities that enable you to increase reach, engagement, and sales.
6. Brand24
You might not be familiar with Brand24, which is unfortunate considering they offer one of the greatest social media monitoring tools available.
Our is a paid tool that offers a 2-week free trial (like all the others on this list). This implies that before making a final choice, you can dip your toes in the water and thoroughly investigate the platform.
The key aspects of social analytics monitoring include getting a ton of social analytics from various platforms, viewing engagement and influence metrics, finding trending hashtags, and viewing a variety of significant hashtag statistics.
Don’t forget to check out Brand24; it’s a platform you won’t want to miss. With their comfort
7. Cyfe
One of the greatest social media management analytics tools is Cyfe, a company dashboard tool. It can sync all of your data from all of your platforms and marketing tools in one location.
The topic of analytics extends beyond social media to include advertising, email, monitoring, sales, SEO, and website analytics.
The enormous variety of integrations that may be included in a single dashboard makes Cyfe stand out. You may sync and combine data and statistics from 19 different social media and other types of accounts using the platform.
No matter how many accounts you have open at once, this enables you to use data and make wise social media engagement decisions while relaxing in the comfort of a single panel.
8. CoSchedule
CoSchedule is likely the greatest social editorial calendar available, in addition to being a fantastic social media analytics platform. It excels in this area since it enables you to evaluate how well your social media posts are performing.
CoSchedule will provide suggestions for enhancements and recommendations to you across all channels using this data.
Not only that, but the calendar also provides information on the ideal time, day, and kind of content to post.
You should give CoSchedule a close look if you need social media analytics for everything from social engagement to social sharing, as well as everything in between.
9. Brandwatch
Brandwatch completes our ranking of the top social media analytics tools. Comparatively speaking to the other tools on this list, the platform operates a little differently. It gathers mentions from blogs, news websites, discussion forums, social media sites, and other publicly accessible sources from all over the internet.
After combining all of these mentions with other analytical tools that are already there, it generates comprehensive reports in either an easy-to-read HTML or PDF format.
Additionally, the site strives to offer information on a variety of topics, including influences, places, image analysis, and demographics.
If you wish to add mentions in your reporting, take a look at Brandwatch.
10. Buffer
Buffer is a great tool that will help you in two main ways. You can write a few of posts at a time and choose which social profiles to send them to, and then Buffer will spread them throughout the day or week so that you don’t have to be at a computer all the time in order to have a social media presence. It also shortens your links and tracks engagement so you can see how many people clicked on them.
Why You Should Use Social Media Management Tools?
Actually, there are several justifications for employing social media management solutions.
You can use the ability to track the success of all social media posts across all channels in addition to the obvious tracking and indicator performances for marketing.
This power allows social media marketing teams and managers to more precisely identify the posts and/or paid campaigns that are creating the most discussion and engagement.
Teams can work on developing plans they are confident will succeed in the future with the help of this expertise and insight.
What Features Should You Look For?
One size probably doesn’t fit all when it comes to social media scheduling tools and software. Many of your final decisions will be influenced by both your personal preferences and the actual needs of your business.
Despite this, no matter whatever platform you ultimately choose, there are still several things you should make sure you have access to. Here are some key characteristics to consider.
Competitor Analysis
Let’s face it: you want to be able to monitor both your own social media analytics and those of rival efforts. It is crucial that the social media analytics platform you choose has this feature included for this reason.
You will learn what is and isn’t working for your competitors as a result.
Follower Analysis
Yes, it’s crucial to be able to observe how your followers respond to your content. However, you want to ensure that you can go a step further and learn more about the geography and demographics of your followers.
What works in one location and population might not in another. Improved engagement type knowledge is essential in this case.
Content Engagement Analysis
Similar to follower analysis, this is. It’s crucial to understand who is truly engaging with a post in addition to how much engagement it receives.
This enables even more precise targeting of customised articles and strategies, enabling your company to really connect with some segments.
Attribution
When followers are more precisely defined, you can reach out to them more directly to promote business material or posts with people like influencers and potential brand champions.
Remember that it will also be important to determine which followers have the most extensive networks.
Reporting
Custom reports and the ability to provide clear and concise reporting standards have always been a challenge in this arena.
Social media analytics tools will help improve the reporting process by giving you access to a dedicated reporting tool instead of just the typical spreadsheets and other notes. All of this is particularly useful when it comes to key metrics across the board.
Importance of Social Media Analytics
They help you understand your audience
Taking steps to understand your audience using social data can help you in so many ways. For example, analyzing your past posts can help you find your unique best time to share.
Timing is an important part of social media marketing. If you post when your fans are online and at their highest level of alertness your posts will drive more engagement, traffic and sales.
Therefore, you should dissect your social data and find your unique best time to post on social media.
Some social networks let you do this easily through their built-in analytics.
On Facebook, you can find it by going to the ‘Post’ section in your insights.
You’ll then see two graphs at the top of the screen.
They will show you the days and times at which most of the page’s fans are online.
If you post content at these times, reach will be high.
They show you what your best social networks are
Not all social networks will work perfectly for you. Just because Facebook has over 2 billion users and Instagram has over 800 million users doesn’t mean they will drive the best results.
There might be smaller networks like Pinterest or Flickr that can help execute your strategy better.
The only way to confirm which social networks work best is through experimentation and using your analytics to measure how much engagement, traffic and sales you are getting.
This data can be utilized to focus more on social networks that are working for you and eliminating ones that aren’t.
You can also use the data to prioritize the amount of time you spend managing each social network. More time can be spent on the top performing networks and lesser on ones that bring in smaller results.
To figure out which social networks are driving the highest engagement, you should use a social media dashboard tool like Cyfe. It connects to several social networks and you can place data from all of them in one single dashboard to compare performance.
Here’s a screenshot of one of my dashboards containing data from different social networks.
Cyfe also has a feature known as mashups which can be used to mash data from different social networks to create one graph that compares performance.
Social data can help you create better content
When you track your social networks, you will understand what content drives the best results.
On networks like Facebook and Twitter you will be able to see whether images, links or videos do better. While on visual-centric networks like Pinterest and Instagram you can check what type of images perform best.
To figure out what content is performing best you can use your social media page’s analytics. Some social networks like Facebook have built-in analytics that shows what types of media perform best. You can view it in the ‘Posts’ section of your analytics on Facebook.
As you can see in the screenshot below, links are performing best on this page.
You can also use analytics to check how your blog performs. You can see which content is shared more, the number of visits each social network sends, how much time they spent and how many of those people converted to subscriptions and sales.
To check your content’s performance on social media, you can use a tool like Buzzsumo.
And to check the amount of traffic a social network is driving you can use Google Analytics. This tool will also display other metrics like the amount of time these people spent on your site, the number of pages they visited, the bounce rate, etc.
Help you Understand competitors
Your competitors are also creating content and running social media strategies. This will result in their own unique data.
If you analyze this data, you will be able to figure out what is working and what isn’t. It will help you avoid the mistakes they are making and only focus on techniques that bring results.
To figure out which social networks are working best for your competitors you can use Similar Web.
Just add the URL to any website and it will show you the percentage of the traffic your site receives from social media and the social networks driving it.
Then you can spy on your competitors’ top performing social media and content using Cyfe and Buzzsumo.
For example, on Cyfe you can create an Instagram widget and choose to track a competitors account instead of your own. You just add their username and select the metric.
Here I chose top posts by ‘Likes’ and I am able to view them.
I can click on each post and it will take me to the post on Instagram so that I can take a closer look.
Social metrics can help you create a better strategy
You will not create the best strategy in your first attempt. You are bound to make several mistakes and use tactics that don’t work.
But if you study your social media analytics regularly you will be able to figure out what these mistakes are. Hence, when you optimize your strategy you can eliminate them and fortify it.
To figure out these mistakes using any good social media analytics tool will do. But along with it you should use social media listening to check the impact your strategy is having on people.
Using social listening you can view in real-time what people are saying about your business online. This can help you modify your strategy to better connect with current and potential customers.
For executing social media listening you can use a tool like Sentione. Just sign up for an account and add in keywords like your product name, company name and other relevant keywords and the software will track all the mentions and list them out. It will also display the data in the form of graphs.
You can use this data to modify your strategy and create better content in the future.
Social media analytics shows you how a social media campaign is performing
Once you launch a social media campaign you should regularly track it. You can check if it is panning out the way you intended it to.
If things aren’t going according to plan you can make changes to your campaign and rectify it. And if results are very damaging you can nip it in the bud.
Conclusion
Social media is a game of numbers, and a core part of succeeding in this arena is knowing how to get your hands on this data. Whether you’re looking for customer insights or trying to better understand the behavior of your target audience, social media analysis can really give you the edge. Try these methods out for yourself and see just how much social media data can do for you.