Insights & Analytics - What You Will Learn
What happens on social media after you hit the Post button? If you’re smart about what you’re doing, you are watching your analytics and insights to make sure you can learn as much as you can from them. After a post goes live, it’s going to show up in only so many feeds, get likes and comments from only so many people, and do only so much to help your brand gain prominence.
So, what sorts of things do you learn from social media analytics and why is this insight important? As with any other type of advertising, you need to have a way of measuring a social media post’s success, especially if it’s one that you are paying to boost.
Social media analytics are your way of knowing who your followers are and what type of content is being best received by them. This will help you create more content that your audience wants. Ultimately, you’ll have a stronger following.
Most social media platforms analyze the same stats, although the way that info is presented can vary. Here’s what you’ll learn from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter:
Actions on Page: How many people came to your page and clicked on either your contact information or your page’s Call To Action button.
Page Views: The number of times your page has been looked at by web visitors. This is significant because it’s not necessarily related to your posts that are showing up in people’s newsfeeds. These views are not limited to Facebook users — this number also includes somebody who is logged out of Facebook but comes to your page via Google search or from a link on your website.
Page Likes: How many people liked your page within the designated timeframe. Note that this is people who liked your page (that is, started following your page), not how many people liked your individual posts.
Post Reach: How many people have seen something you posted because it showed up in their newsfeed. This number will vary, but Facebook provides you with a percentage reflecting how this week’s reach compares to that to previous weeks. If your reach went up 200%, you know that means twice the number of people are seeing your post compared with previous weeks.
Post Engagement: How many people liked, commented, shared, or in any way interacted with your posts over the course of the designated timeframe. As with your reach, your engagement is going to vary. Compare how one week did with a previous week to get a better idea of whether your Facebook posts are doing better or worse.
Individual Posts: You will also be able to take a look at the success of individual posts — how many people each post reached (again, how many feeds it showed up in) and how much engagement it got. The other thing you can look at is the demographic breakdown of who liked or commented on each post: male, female, age range, geographic location, etc.
Likes, Comments, Messages, and Saves: Pay attention to likes and comments, but you’ll also notice that you’re told how many people sent your post in a direct message and how many people saved your post to view later.
Reach and Profile Visits: When you look at these numbers, you’ll see how many of the people your post reached were not accounts that were following yours. You’ll be able to check how many of those non-followers saw your post via hashtags and via the Explore tab.
Promotion Results: If you paid to promote a post, pay attention to the number of people who discovered you and visited your profile as well as the number of followers you gained from that promoted post.
Number of Tweets: How many tweets you’ve sent out in the last 28 days and whether that number is up or down compared with previous months.
Tweet Impressions: How many times your tweets have shown up in people’s feeds.
Profile Visits: How many times people have come directly to your Twitter profile.
Mentions: How many times another user has tagged your handle in one of their tweets.
Top Tweet: What tweet of your in the past 28 days got the most engagement and made the most impressions.
Top Mention: Which tweet with your handle tagged in it got the most engagement.
As you’re looking at the analytics of your posts or overall weekly/monthly presence on any social media platform, remember that performance is all relative. What’s successful for your brand’s social media presence might be better or worse compared with another brand. Set benchmarks for what you consider a good, great, and poor post, and aim to see engagement and number of followers increase from month to month.