Get The Best Social Media Analytics and Reporting

Social media analytics allow you to compile data on your social media accounts. Find out how important social media analytics are for marketing.

Social media is an important tool for businesses, with the majority of businesses today having some kind of social media presence. Social media plays a vital role in marketing. Not only is it an excellent way to offer promotions and advertise your products or services to new customers, but it is a good way to get information about your customer base. This helps with future marketing campaigns, since you can tailor your ads around your most prominent audience.

You can track information about your viewers by studying social media analytics. Social media analytics is a collection of data from your account. The exact information you get varies depending on the site and tools you use. Some of the basic information available across all social media sites includes the number of users that viewed or interacted with your page. You can then look at the individual accounts to get useful metrics, including the age and location of who is following your account.

How to Use Social Media Analytics

Social media analytics is an important marketing tool, but only if you understand how to use the information it provides. One of the strengths of social media analytics is it updates in real time, so you do not have to wait until the end of a marketing campaign to see whether or not it was successful. This gives you an idea exactly what your customers are interested in.

Based on your social media analytics, you can shift the focus of your business. You can look at what posts generate the most attention and base future advertisements on that model. You also learn more about who is looking at your page. Some of the most important information you can learn about your audience includes:

• Age.

• Location.

• Profession.

• How often they engage with your content.

If you run social media accounts across multiple sites, you can also use your analytics tools to see which sites are getting the most attention. The longer you run your social media accounts, the more data you have to work with. This allows you to compare different marketing campaigns and see which ones were effective with your target audience.

Unlike traditional marketing campaigns, you have a much larger pool to draw on. With a normal marketing campaign, you only get information from your customers. While this is helpful information, social media allows you to track all the users viewing your site.

If you notice a particular demographic is viewing your pages but not purchasing your products, this suggests your ads are working to get their attention, but something needs to change with the product itself. You could use this information to offer a digital discount code to your followers. This not only makes them feel appreciated, but may convince them to become a customer.

Hootsuite Analytics

Hootsuite is an easy-to-use analytics tool which provides detailed information on who is viewing your social media accounts. In addition to reporting on clicks, comments and shares, you can also track who is viewing videos you post and how long they engage with the video. There are additional tools which let you track if your videos are being shared and where users find your content.

Hootsuite supports multiple social media sites. You can either view the individual accounts or look at your total metrics across all platforms. Hootsuite allows you to export your analytics into a more convenient format, such as Excel, PowerPoint, PDF or CSV. This is especially helpful when you are gathering data for a report.

Hootsuite Analytics provides a free 30-day trial to get familiar with the program and see if it is a good fit for your business. There are three types of accounts available, each with a monthly cost. The base plan is a professional account. This costs $49 a month and supports up to 10 social media accounts for a single user. The next tier, team, costs $130 and offers 20 social media accounts for three users. The third account, enterprise is fully customizable and intended for larger businesses. You must contact Hootsuite directly for details.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a great analytics tool if you use multiple social media sites. The program has separate options for each site, providing detailed information customized for the chosen platform. This is helpful because some social media sites have more options to engage with content than others, so many generalized programs are unable to track this data.

Because it was designed specifically for businesses, Sprout Social also has excellent options for generating business reports. You can easily sort information and export data into other file types. The program is more advanced than other options, so it has a steeper learning curve compared to other analytic tracking tools.

Sprout Social offers a free 30-day trial. A standard account costs $89 a month for each user. You can have up to five social media accounts on a standard account. A standard account also comes with a social media calendar, which allows you to draft and publish posts at specific times. A professional account is $149 a month per user and allows up to 10 social media accounts. You also get access to greater trend analysis tools for Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

HubSpot

Many users prefer HubSpot because it has a simple UI. HubSpot allows you to take your data and automatically convert it into graphs. You can also arrange reports to compare multiple social media campaigns. HubSpot’s analytical tools are included in their marketing hub package, which includes other helpful software. The bundle includes programs for customer service, tracking sales and scheduling employees.

Despite including so many programs, HubSpot is one of the most affordable programs on the market, with a starter package costing only $45 each month. There are additional packages which are much more expensive, but these other packages only expand on other software. If you are only interested in social analytical software, the starting bundle is all you need. HubSpot provides a limited free trial. You can also get a 10 percent discount if you pay annually instead of monthly.