Social Media Analytics: A Guide for Beginners

Page Insights Once you’ve clicked on the business page you want to monitor, the Insights tab is your go-to place for all things analytics. Followers and likes: If one of the goals of your campaign is to increase the number of people who follow or like the page, you’ll find this information in the Follower and Like tabs. Audiences: Keep tabs on your audience in this section of the analytics dashboard. Insights and metrics about your account include: Impressions: the number of times your posts were on screen Reach: the number of unique post views Website Clicks: The number of clicks on the link included in your profile Profile Visits: The number of times your username is clicked on Posts: In the posts tab you can analyze the likes and comments on each image, and also the number of unique accounts who saved your post. Unique views: Find out exactly how many people are engaging with your snaps. Updates: If your social media strategy involves posting content on LinkedIn, this section will allow you to track the reach of each post and analyze engagement. 6 social media analytics tools to measure success Now that you know which metrics to track on each platform, it’s time to add a few tools to your social media toolbox. Hootsuite analytics Hootsuite’s social media analytics tool allows marketers to measure the success of their campaigns in real-time. With easy-to-use dashboards and the option to create an unlimited number of reports, marketers can analyze Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram metrics in one place, with metrics like Posts, Followers, Engagement, and Traffic. Unmetric’s social media analytics platform, Analyze, collects data from all major social media platforms, and allows marketers to download automated reports with the click of a button.

Author: Katie Sehl / Source: Hootsuite Social Media Management

If you know what your social media goals are, then you’re ready to choose the right metrics to measure success. The next step in proving ROI is having the knowledge and tools to do that efficiently.

That’s where social media analytics come into play.

Social media analytics is about gathering data from your accounts and campaigns, and then using it to track and improve performance.

In this guide we’ll look at the various analytics that each of the major networks offer. And then we’ll recommend a few of the best tools to help you easily measure performance across multiple channels.

Bonus: Download a free guide that reveals how to increase social media engagement with better audience research, sharper customer targeting, and Hootsuite’s easy-to-use social media software.

Facebook analytics

Marketers who run a Facebook Business page have access to the comprehensive Facebook Analytics dashboard. Developed with insights from Facebook’s two billion users, the platform offers recommendations on how to reach the largest audience on social media.

Page Insights

Once you’ve clicked on the business page you want to monitor, the Insights tab is your go-to place for all things analytics. The overview section offers a summary of the page’s performance. Here you can choose to a time range of one day, one week or the last 28 days.

Promotions: If you’d like to boost a few ads, but can’t decide which ones, this section will help you identify the posts that might be worth boosting. You’ll also find advice on how to zero in on the right target audience.

Followers and likes: If one of the goals of your campaign is to increase the number of people who follow or like the page, you’ll find this information in the Follower and Like tabs. Here you’ll be able to analyze the page’s popularity over time, and see where the new Follows and Likes are happening.

Reach: On Facebook, reach measures the number of people who had any posts from your page appear on their screen. If someone decided to hide posts from your page, you can find that info here, too.

Page views: Here’s where you’ll find where your page traffic is coming from. You can also measure the views for each section page, including About, Photos, Home, etc., which will help you understand what areas are most popular.

Posts: The posts tab shows you how your page posts are performing, and also offers insights on the best times to post and the types of posts that are most successful.

Videos: If your social media strategy includes video content, here’s where you’ll be able to track the top performing videos, which are ranked by how many minutes they were viewed. You can also drill down to see how many minutes were viewed on each video.

People: Learn about your fans and follower demographics, including everything from location, gender, and language information.

Depending on your business and objectives, other stats that Facebook provides include the number of check-ins to your page, your average customer response time, and the number of people who called your business directly from the page.

Twitter analytics

The analytics dashboard provided by Twitter offers a month-by-month summary of your account’s performance. Captured here is an overview of your follower count, tweet impressions, profile visits and mentions.

Monthly summary: Highlights from each month include your account’s top tweet, top follower and top mention. This is a good place to get a snapshot of your best performing content.

Tweets: In the Tweets tab, track the engagements and impressions on your tweets over a selected period. If you’ve promoted any tweets you can track those analytics here, too.

Audiences: Keep tabs on your audience in this section of the analytics dashboard. This is where you can learn about your audience’s demographics and thematic interests. You can also add a comparison audience to see how your followers differ from other users.

Instagram analytics

Instagram Insights are available for Business Profiles and accounts with a high number of followers. In addition to analytics on your content, Instagram Insights will also provide information about who your followers are, when they’re online, and more.

Insights and metrics about your account include: