How To Use Social Media Analytics To Create The Best Content

We’re living in an era where we can do almost
everything online. Some people – take bloggers and social media influencers,
for example – even have too much fun sharing bits and pieces of their lives on
social media in hopes of entertaining or enlightening an audience.

It’s not far-fetched to say that brands and
company pages have become a part of this circle of online content creators.

If your company is hoping to become a better
content factory in the hopes of attracting a bigger audience, ask yourself this
question: How can I make the best content
for my audience?

Thankfully, there’s a
“not-so-secret” feature that lets you learn about how well your posts
are doing beyond the number of likes and shares.

This is called social media analytics.

Understanding social media analytics is
essential because it helps you understand data. By learning how to analyze
data, you will be able to get insights that’ll tell you how you can create
engaging content—or simply how you can
create content that works for your audience.

Steps to use social media analytics to
create the best content

Set your goals

The first step to creating the best content is
knowing what you want to achieve. The
root of your content should ultimately come from the goals you set for yourself
or your brand. Having your goals in mind can help you know what type of content
to produce.

This process involves going deep into your purpose and your audience. Remember, posting online almost always a two-way
street. You shouldn’t just be doing this for yourself. Other people would also
have to benefit from your content.

Once you’ve set your overall marketing goals,
assess it if you could narrow it down further until it’s specific enough. The
more specific your goals are, the more you’ll know what type of content can
meet your goals. At the very end, your goals should be SMART.

• S: Specific
• M: Measurable
• A: Achievable
• R: Realistic
• T: Time-sensitive

If you don’t know where to begin, it’s
perfectly normal! You might get an idea by looking into the top goals of social
media marketers:

Source:
Deloitte

Understand the strengths of each
social media network

While it may sound fun to be present in every
platform you can get your hands on, it might not help you reach the specific
goals you’ve set. Choosing the platforms to be in should also be in line with
your goals.

For example, if blogging is your chosen
medium, you may want to build a true, self-hosted blog, the most
flexible option that gives you the control you need to be able to create
conversion campaigns in the future, for example.

Once you’ve started your business’s blog, you
can then amplify it through select social media networks to get people to visit
your website. Sharing snippets of your blog on a dedicated Facebook page or
Twitter account can help drive people to your blog.

Starting with social media can work, too,
depending on your goals and audience. What
social media network do they visit most? What type of content do they like the
best?

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn are
the most popular social media sites, but each has its pros and cons. Make sure
you look into each platform first before deciding where to post your content.

Source: Coschedule

Get your analytics tool stack in place

Depending on what platform you’re in, you
should build your social media analytics tool stack. Think of these tools as
your very own Jarvis – your partners in this journey in creating the best
content for your audience. With the right set of tools, they’d be able to tell
you what you’re doing right and wrong.

Most social media networks have built-in
analytics, such as Facebook Analytics. But if you want to go the extra mile and
fill in the holes that most built-it software misses out on, you can stack other tools available online.

Generate a social media analytics
report

Social media analytics may sound intimidating
at first, but trust us when we say that it’s going to shed some light on your
craft.

In the world of social media analytics, you
may encounter different terms and metrics that you might have seen before but
never bothered to understand. If it’s your first time, except that it takes
more time to create a social media analytics report and a little more time to
master and interpret.

Before creating your report, it’s essential to
familiarize yourself with some of the basic metrics, which differs per platform.

Next, select the metrics that best support
your goals.

Source: Coschedule

Once you’ve chosen what metrics to focus on,
you can start crafting your report. We’ve selected a simple one; you could try
to give you a glimpse of how your page is performing online. All you need to do
is to input the numbers you see on the social media analytics tool you’ve
chosen:

Source: Coschedule

After filling up the table, it might seem like
it’s just a jumble of numbers that don’t make sense. These numbers say a lot
about your performance.

The next step is to set a baseline for performance for each metric on each channel. The
purpose of establishing a baseline is for you to determine if you’re
underperforming or exceeding your expectations: you’re underperforming if your
numbers are under the baseline; otherwise, you’re doing well.

You can set a baseline by following these two
steps:

1. Get the baseline: Use a calculator to find the average performance for a specific metric for the past 90 days (example: total likes garnered for the past 90 days / total number of posts).
2. Set the goal: Determine the metric’s numerical goal by choosing a reasonable range upward from the baseline.

Creating a report shouldn’t just be a one-time
thing. It’s ideal to do this on a monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis to
effectively monitor the health of your page.

Interpret the data you’ve collected

Of course, all the numbers won’t make much
sense if you don’t know how to interpret it.

While the numbers make some aspects of the
interpretation objective (example: high number of likes usually means the post
is performing well), it still requires a bit of subjective analysis, especially
in extracting insights from your data (example: what made Post A perform better
than Post B?).

Grab a notebook and jot down your observations
based on these guidelines:

1. Check for spikes and valleys in your data.
2. Identify what period or dates did these spikes and valleys occur.
3. Determine what content caused these spikes and valleys.
4. Isolate your best performing posts from the least.

Next, start analyzing what made these posts
the best and what made others your weakest. You can revisit these posts and
focus on certain areas that can help you identify why it performed that way.

Engagement
Received (Likes, Shares, Comments)

1. What type of “reactions” did this post garner? (Example: Facebook react)
2. If this post was shared multiple times, what did the user say about it?
3. What were the types of comments this post received?
4. Why did I get such comments for this content?

Copy/Caption

1. What is the length of this caption?
2. Was the copy too vague or too straightforward for the audience?
3. When was this post published?
4. What kind of sentiment did the copy/caption aim to express?

Image:

1. What type of image format is this? (Examples: single image, album, carousel, GIF, etc.)
2. Was this image aligned to my branding?
3. Was this image optimized for this platform?
4. Was the image uploaded in high-resolution or not?

These are just some of the questions you can
ask yourself when analyzing your data. Of course, if you can think of more
queries that can perhaps deepen the understanding you have or your posts, then,
by all means, do so. However, you need to always check if it aligns with the
numbers from your table.

If you habitually do this for your platforms,
you’ll have a deeper understanding of which factors influence your content’s
performance. It also helps you understand what types of content your audience
prefers seeing on your page.

Develop content based on the data

It’s now time to create content that will
engage your audience.

This is usually the exciting part for all
content creators, but now that you’ve analyzed data from your past work, this
step becomes even more rewarding.

You more or less know the type of content that
tickles your audience’s fancy based on the report you’ve made. Seems pretty
easy, right?

Earlier, we mentioned that the digital world
allows you to do almost everything online. With this amount of power,
restrictions have to be made to create a sense of order for everyone traversing
this world. Some restrictions are good, while some can also be quite limiting.

67% of internet users reside in countries
where any indication of negative criticism towards the government, military, or
ruling family is subject to censorship.

Having said this, it’s important to note that
some social media content can be censored, so familiarize yourself with the
restrictions so that you don’t end up with content that’ll just be put to waste
(and even get you in trouble).

Try to avoid any topics that point to or might
lead to censorship, so your content is seen by the widest possible audience in
your market.

Monitor and evaluate the results

As you do your social media analytics report
every month, quarter, and year, keep assessing the results and find ways to
improve and refine your content. The digital world is fast-paced, so as content
creators, you have to also be agile in enhancing your content online.

Keep track of your results in a document (or write them down if it’ll help you remember), and always, always backtrack to the goals you’ve set in the beginning.

Integrate Social Media Analytics Into
Your Life

If your business’s goal is to create more
meaningful, valuable content that resonates with an audience, then you should
embed social media analytics as part of your content creation system.

While it may be a challenge to learn at first,
the good news is, the more you get a more in-depth knowledge of it, the better
you can interpret your data. Being an expert in analytics does take a while to
master, but you can guarantee that it will be rewarding.

So use these tips listed above to make sure
you’re on the road to creating more consistent, valuable content for your
social media.