Social Media Analytics Tools: A Best Practices Guide

Websites no longer hold the key to a business’s health online. It’s all about social media and social media and understanding social media analytics tools. Billions of people use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube to find businesses, services, and products each day. Since the cost of inbound marketing is quite low, and in some cases free, business owners are preferring to go the inbound route to gain popularity while lowering their marketing expenses. Companies as small as Tesco and as large as Coca-Cola are utilizing social media platforms to solidify their brands, increase brand loyalty, boost sales and reach out to international consumers.

However, not every business does well with social media. This is usually due to businesses not knowing who their audience is. Since screen names and comments don’t give an insight into who the audience is, businesses use social media analytics tools to find out. Social media analytics determine the who, when and hows, leaving businesses to get on with the actual advertising side of things.

With so much conflicting and jargon-riddled information on the web about how to use these tools, I thought it’d be best to give you a nice, no nonsense guide on how to utilize them correctly. For more information, read on.

What are Social Media Analytics Tools and How are They Used?
The information provided on a business’s social media page, doesn’t give enough details for marketers to know how the business is doing. That’s where social media analytics come in.

Social media analytics tools provide information about the following:

• What things are trending in specific industries
• How many people are visiting a business’s social media page
• How long a visitor stays on the social media page
• How many people click links from the social media page to the business’s actual website
• What people are saying about the business
• How many people are talking about a business

Marketers leverage this information to create better sales and advertising strategies. Social media data is also utilized to mine customer sentiment, which helps improve customer service and support.

Social Media Analytics Tools: Best Practices
Social media analytics tools only work well if they’re utilized properly. Here’s a few tips on how to get the most out of these tools.

Create a Goal Before You Choose a Tool – There are so many tools to choose from, and each has its own unique highlight. In order to chose the correct one, you should create a goal and select a tool that best helps you meet that goal.

Some common goals include:

• improving revenue
• enhancing customer service
• establishing thought leadership
• getting feedback on new product launches

Use Social Media Analytics to Plan Communication– Knowing what conversations people are having in your industry, gives you an advantage over of the competition. Social media data exposes what people are talking about, why those conversations are engaging them and how often they respond. By having this information, marketers can plan the communication for a business’s social media page; they’ll also know who to target and what to say to get a response.

Use Them to Generate Leads – The lifeline of every business is its customers. Sales teams and marketers work together to create the best possible strategies to gain more customers. These strategies often include phone, email and social media marketing. Most internet leads come from inbound marketing methods such as simple Google searches or from mentions on social media pages. Businesses can also generate leads through their own social media pages by utilizing helpful social media data.

Use Comparison Tools – These tools don’t just analyse one profile for changes, it monitors social media analytics of competitors as well. The obvious benefit here is knowing what a competitor is doing right. This is invaluable information that simple market research just can’t yield.

Have a look through the many tools that are available, and determine which one has the right fit for your industry and company goals. Which tool do you use to leverage social media data and how has it worked for you?