Social media analytics is the grand finale for our “22 in 22 social media tips!”
We’ve got one more nugget of social media wisdom for you this year — but it’s an important one. And very much unglamorous … and it has to do with tracking the results of all your hard work.
Because we are working with humans, the ability to predict your post’s popularity can be challenging at best without diving into social media analytics. These data nuggets provides insight into your audience’s triggers and will lead to better content in the future.
Bring back those SMART goals
One of the first tips we dropped for you early in 2022 was “establish SMART goals for your business and your social media marketing.” We have continued to refer to how important this is throughout the year because it will make a huge difference in how you track your progress and what you can measure it against.
Remember, your SMART goals are a reliable yardstick; you establish them by intentionally figuring out what it is you want from your social media marketing. Keep a consistent eye on your metrics to see how posts and campaigns are performing over time and how they measure up. How many people are engaging in your content? If one of your goals was simply to reach more people and gain more followers (who can then be translated into consumers) you will want to track that progress often to make sure you are headed in the right direction.
Social Media Monthly Monitoring!
Don’t wait for an annual check in with your social media accounts. Instead, monitor after every campaign or once a month to get a frequent reading of how your brand is performing.
Each platform offers its own tools to track your successes and failures. If you see that you are performing particularly well with a certain type of content, produce more of that. Afterall, you are trying to engage followers, not robots, and people will favor more of what they want when it comes to the entertainment and informational value of a social media platform.
There will be other times that you see your content NOT performing so well. As with everything in life, making mistakes is a great chance to adapt and create something new and more exciting. If you want to go the extra mile, surveying some of your social audience could be a worthwhile cause, especially if you find yourself performing poorly over time. Asking your followers directly what they want to see is an obvious way to make sure you are engaging them with something they enjoy.
Social media marketing doesn’t mean much unless you are willing to do the mundane work of tracking your progress. And this won’t mean just checking in to see how many likes you received on a post. Metrics on each platform will check for various points that will tell you whether you are succeeding in running successful campaigns and creating engaging content. By measuring your successes and learning from your failures, you will be on your way to gaining more followers and establishing your brand across social media platforms.
