Social Media Analytics Guide to Level up Your ROI

What is social media analytics? 

Social media analytics refers to the practice of gathering data from social media platforms and analyzing it — to understand and optimize content performance and engagement. This involves tracking a multitude of metrics, such as likes, shares, comments and overall reach, to gauge performance and inform social media strategy — offering invaluable insights into audience behavior, preferences and trends.

👥 Who needs social media data analysis? 

• Marketing teams: To tailor content that resonates with their audience, optimize campaign performance and measure ROI. 

• Brand managers: For monitoring brand reputation, understanding market position and identifying brand advocates or detractors. 

• Product developers: To gather feedback on existing products and insights for new product development. 

• Customer service representatives: To improve social media customer support by monitoring and responding to customer queries and complaints on social media. 

• Sales professionals: To generate leads and understand customer needs through social listening. 

• Executives and business owners: For strategic decision-making based on market trends, competitor performance and customer satisfaction. 

🎯 It’s needed when: 

• You want to identify trends in customer behaviors to tailor your content 

• There’s a need to monitor competitors and stay ahead in the market 

• You seek to measure the ROI of your social media campaigns 

• You require insights to optimize future campaigns and increase conversions 

How social media analytics helps in improving ROI 

Here are four ways social media analytics reports can help improve your return on investment (ROI): 

1. Targeted content creation: By understanding which types of social media content resonate most with your audience, you can produce more of what your followers want to see. This leads to higher engagement rates, which in turn boosts the visibility of your content and the potential for social media conversions. 

2. Audience analysis: Social media analytics provide deep insights into your audience, including demographics, peak activity times and preferences. These insights allow for more effective targeting in marketing campaigns, ensuring the right message reaches the right people at the right time. 

3. Competitive analysis: Analyzing competitors’ performance on social media can uncover gaps in their strategies that you can exploit. Additionally, it offers a benchmark for performance, guiding your brand on where to focus the improvement efforts for a better ROI. 

4. Campaign optimization: Real-time data and feedback from social media can help you to tweak your campaigns on the go. Adjusting strategies in response to what the data shows can lead to more efficient use of resources and improved outcomes, enhancing the overall social media ROI.

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How social media analytics work 

At the heart of every successful social media strategy lies a powerhouse of data, waiting to be harnessed — this is where social media analytics steps in.  

In a world where over 4.9 billion people use social media (according to latest social media statistics), the amount of data generated is colossal. Social media analytics works by collecting this vast data from your social media channels, applying advanced algorithms and then translating it into actionable insights. 

Beyond this, social media analytics can reveal insights beyond surface-level metrics like likes or reposts. It delves into understanding the sentiments expressed in comments and conversations, identifying the reach of social media campaigns and even spotting potential viral content before it takes off. 

Curious about how social media analytics can do more than just count likes?  

Take Citibank's The Moment #itsabouttime campaign, for example. It dug into people's feelings about the gender pay gap and got everyone talking with its heartfelt message. By capturing real reactions and sparking vital conversations, the campaign leveraged analytics to resonate deeply and drive engagement. 

Want to see more examples of such impactful stories? Head over to this blog to explore more. 

Now let’s break down the workflow of social media analytics into four stages. 

Stage 1: Setting up social media analytics using a tool 

For demonstration purpose, we will depict the steps using Sprinklr that can process 500M conversations from 30+ channels daily. To follow along, you can sign up for Sprinklr’s 30-day free trial. This allows you to explore the full capabilities of the platform without any commitment. 

Step 1: Sign up 

Head to Sprinklr's website and find the option to start a free trial or sign up. Fill in the required details to create your account. 

Step 2: Connect your social media accounts 

Once logged in, link your social media profiles. Add all the accounts you wish to monitor and analyze. Sprinklr supports 30+ digital channels and provides the flexibility to add new channels within weeks. 

Step 3: Set your goals 

Define what you want to achieve with your analytics. Sprinklr allows you to customize your dashboard to focus on key metrics like engagement rates, audience growth or campaign performance. 

Need help with goal setting? Check out these tips on social media goals [2024]. 

Step 4: Customize your dashboard 

Tailor the analytics dashboard to suit your needs. Highlight the metrics that are most relevant to your goals for a streamlined view of your social media performance. Sprinklr dashboard allows you to curate custom metrics based on industry-standard norms and varied business use cases. 

Step 5: Schedule automated reports 

Opt for automated social media analytics reports within Sprinklr to get regular updates. Choose the frequency that suits your review cycle. 

Stage 2: Tracking key metrics in social analytics tool 

In the realm of analytics, keeping tabs on the social media key performance indicators (KPIs) is essential for understanding how your content resonates with your audience.  

Here are some of the top social media metrics you should monitor: 

• Likes 

• Comments 

• Shares 

• Impressions 

• Engagement rate 

• Follower growth 

• Click-through rate (CTR) 

• Conversion rate 

These important social media metrics can be tracked using native platform analytics, where each social media platform provides its own set of analytical tools. For instance, Instagram Insights offers a detailed breakdown of likes, comments and engagement rates for individual posts and overall account activity. 

For a more integrated view across multiple platforms or a deeper dive into one platform, tools like Sprinklr come into play. Sprinklr's dashboard amalgamates data from various social channels, presenting a unified view of all the key metrics. 

This centralized approach not only saves time but also provides a comprehensive overview of your social media performance, allowing for cross-platform performance comparisons and deeper insights into audience behavior and content effectiveness. 

Stage 3: Analyzing social media data for insights 

Analyzing social media data goes beyond mere number-crunching; it involves delving deep into the data to unearth actionable insights that can inform strategic decisions.  

Here are some important analyses you should consider: 

Sentiment analysis 

Social media sentiment analysis involves examining the tone and emotions behind social media mentions and conversations. This analysis helps you understand how your brand, products or services are perceived by the audience.  

For instance, using Sprinklr's social listening, you can generate reports that categorize mentions as positive, negative or neutral, revealing public sentiment trends. These insights can guide content strategy, customer service improvements and product development. 

Watch how AI-Powered social listening can be used to boost your social media strategy 👇 

Post engagement analysis 

This analysis dives into how users interact with your posts, considering metrics like likes, comments, shares and overall engagement rates.  

With Sprinklr's engagement reports, you can identify which content types resonate most with your audience, what times are best for posting and which platforms yield the best social media engagement. 

Interesting Read: How to Measure Social Media Engagement Effectively 

Audience analysis 

Understanding who your audience is crucial. Analyzing audience demographics —such as age, gender, location and interests — allows you to tailor your content and messaging to better suit your audience's preferences.  

Using audience insights, you can get detailed demographic reports — helping you segment your audience and create more personalized, effective marketing campaigns. 

Competitor analysis 

Keeping an eye on your competition is vital. Competitor analysis involves tracking competitors' social media performance to benchmark against your own.  

With tools that offer a competitive insights and benchmarking feature, you can compare your engagement rates, follower growth and content strategy effectiveness against those of your competitors. This insight can highlight areas for improvement and opportunities to differentiate your brand.

Influencer impact analysis 

Influencer impact analysis helps you measure the effectiveness of influencer partnerships. By monitoring the reach, engagement and conversion rates of influencer-driven content, you can determine the ROI of your influencer marketing efforts. This analysis can also identify which influencers align best with your brand’s values and target audience. 

Finding it tough to keep tabs on all your influencers?   

Managing influencer campaign analytics manually on traditional spreadsheets is error-prone and time-consuming. Plus, all that channel-switching can wear you out!  

Sprinklr’s influencer marketing platform simplifies it all, streamlining your process with a single, unified platform.   

🌐 Your influencer campaigns, harmonized across 30+ channels, all from one dashboard

💡 Finding influencers who vibe with your brand isn't just easy, it's practically automatic with multi-layered AI technology and algorithms 

📊 Real-time insights? Absolutely. Track, tweak and triumph with data that speaks your language    

UNIFY YOUR INFLUENCER TRACKING TODAY

 

Good to know: 25 Influencer Marketing Statistics and Their Implications for Your Brand 

Stage 4: Optimizing strategies for higher ROI 

To maximize the ROI from social media efforts, you can leverage the power of analytics to refine and optimize your strategies.

Here's how you can use social media analytics tracking to refine your approach for better results: 

Utilize high-engagement content 

Dive into your historical data to identify which types of content have garnered the most engagement. Look for patterns in topics, formats (such as images, videos or text posts) and tone that resonate with your audience. 

By focusing on creating more content along these lines, you're likely to see a consistent or even increased level of engagement, driving up your ROI.

Address and adapt to user sentiment 

Sentiment analysis can reveal how your audience feels about your brand, products or services. If you discover areas where sentiment is negative, use this feedback to make informed adjustments to your content or approach.

This might involve addressing concerns directly, changing communication strategies or shifting the focus of your content to better align with audience expectations and preferences.

Optimize posting schedules 

Analyzing your data can also help you pinpoint the most effective times to post your content on social media. Look for trends in engagement rates relative to posting times and days of the week.

By scheduling your posts for these optimal times, you're more likely to reach your audience when they're most active and engaged, thereby maximizing your content's impact.

Struggling to hit the mark with your post timings? 

Imagine having a tool that analyzes your audience's most active hours and suggests the ideal times for posting. That's exactly what a Smart Scheduler for social media does. It removes guesswork, providing insights on peak engagement periods and helping to space out your posts effectively. With this approach, timing becomes one less thing to worry about. 😉

Also Read: How to Schedule Social Media Posts in Bulk: 5 Easy Ways 

Refine targeting with audience insights 

Use demographic and psychographic data from your social analytics to understand your audience's characteristics and preferences better.  

Tailoring your content and messaging to match these insights can lead to higher relevance and engagement, contributing to improved conversion rates and ROI. 

Iterate and test new strategies 

Finally, treat your social media strategy as an ongoing experiment. Use A/B testing to try out new ideas, content formats and campaigns, always measuring their performance against your established benchmarks. 

This iterative approach allows you to continually refine your strategy based on what works best, ensuring your social media efforts are always aligned with achieving the highest possible ROI. 

Best tools for social media analytics 

When it comes to understanding and optimizing your social media presence, having the right analytics tools is crucial. Here's a rundown of some of the best tools available, including few native analytics tools — each offering unique insights to help you maximize your social media strategy: 

Sprinklr 

Sprinklr is a comprehensive platform that provides in-depth analytics across all your social media channels from a single dashboard, with features including: 

• Unified dashboard: Offers a single view for all your social media metrics, making it easier to track and compare performance across platforms. 

• Advanced listening: Enables tracking of brand mentions and industry trends to gauge public sentiment and identify emerging patterns. 

• Customizable reports: Allows for tailored reporting on key metrics like engagement rate, audience growth and campaign performance. 

• AI-powered insights: Utilizes AI to deliver actionable recommendations from billions of data points across 30+ channels — helping to refine content and engagement strategies. 

• Benchmarking: Compares your performance against competitors, offering insights into your market position and growth opportunities. 

Google Analytics 

While not exclusively a social media tool, Google Analytics is invaluable for tracking how social media drives traffic to your website. It can help you understand the effectiveness of your social media campaigns in contributing to your site's overall goals, such as e-commerce conversions or lead generation. By setting up goals and tracking referrals from social platforms, you can see which networks are most valuable for your business. 

Native analytics tools 

If you are looking to dive deep into the performance of your content on individual platforms, native analytics tools offer insights directly from the source.  

Here's a closer look at what some of the major social media platforms offer: 

Facebook Insights 

Facebook Insights provides a comprehensive overview of all aspects of your page's performance, including detailed metrics on post engagement, likes, reach and audience demographics. This tool is essential if you are aiming to:  

• Understand your Facebook audience  

• Measure the impact of your content  

• Optimize your Facebook strategy for better engagement and reach 

Instagram Insights 

Available to Business and Creator accounts, Instagram Insights offers a wealth of information about your followers and how they interact with your posts and stories.  

Key metrics include:  

• Content engagement  

• Follower growth and activity times  

• Insights into your audience's demographics  

This data is crucial for tailoring your Instagram content strategy to what resonates best with your audience. 

LinkedIn Analytics 

LinkedIn provides analytics for both personal profiles and company pages, offering insights into the performance of posts, articles and shared content.  

For company pages, LinkedIn Analytics breaks down metrics such as:  

• Page views  

• Follower demographics  

• Engagement rates  

This tool is particularly valuable for B2B companies looking to establish thought leadership and engage professionals in their industry. 

New trends in social media analytics 

The landscape of social media analytics is continually evolving, driven by advances in technology and shifts in user behavior. There are several key trends that have emerged and reshaping how businesses approach social media data analysis: 

• Broadening impact of social metrics: Beyond just marketing, social media metrics are now pivotal in shaping insights for customer service, human resources and sales, reflecting their growing influence in overall business performance. 

• Holistic view with cross-channel analytics: As digital footprints span across various platforms, businesses are harnessing cross-channel analytics to paint a complete picture of their online influence, enabling them to fine-tune their messaging and resource allocation for maximum impact. 

• AI — the new social listening prodigy: Artificial Intelligence is set to revolutionize social listening, turning what used to be a labor-intensive process into an automated, insightful experience. This leap forward promises not only time savings but also deeper, actionable insights. 

• Visual analytics: The rise of visual content calls for sophisticated video and image analytics, providing brands with the tools to dissect and understand the nuances of audience interaction and the effectiveness of their visual storytelling. 

• Influencer analytics: As influencer marketing continues to flourish, analytics platforms are evolving to offer specialized tracking and performance metrics, empowering brands to quantify the success of their influencer partnerships and optimize their strategies. 

• IoT and predictive analytics: The integration of IoT with predictive analytics is offering unprecedented foresight into consumer trends, enabling businesses to stay a step ahead in the ever-changing social media landscape. 

Ready to supercharge your social media campaign performance? 

Social media analytics provides businesses with essential insights into the effectiveness of their social media content. This data aids marketers in improving their brand’s social media profiles and in coming up with strategies to boost its overall revenue. 

With Sprinklr's social media suite, you can efficiently manage, analyze and optimize your social media strategies for streamlined growth and long-term success. You can even try it for free and see how it works before deciding if it’s the right fit for you.