Using Social Media Analytics to Analyze Social Media Performance

Social media offers huge opportunity to initiate growth in business. This is the platform which offers you the path to acquire conversion through reach and engagement. Being able to use social media properly gives you the power to build your brand.

However, the catch is – sometimes despite putting your best effort, social media strategy does not work. Even when you are doing everything right, your effort might not always yield a result.

Do you even try to measure the performance of your social media strategy? Do you even try to find whether your social media effort is yielding a result or not? A majority of the marketers don’t even try to monitor the performance of social media strategy. When asked the reason, they state that measuring the performance is too difficult and time-consuming. They rather focus on the strategy building part. However, if you don’t know the problem regarding social media promotion, you will not be able to create the right solution.

Here comes the importance of social media analytics. If you can use this tool carefully, you can generate social media reports which will help you measure the performance of your social media strategy.

However, before you start using the social media analytics, you need to understand the importance of the tool. You need to understand why this tool is so essential for the success of social media strategy.   

Why Social Media Analytics

Every day more than 3 billion people come online for various reasons. Majority of these web visitors use their smartphones to browse. To find the target audience you would have to use the social media analytics. In case, you are targeting the teenagers, you would have the need for social media analytics even more.

In case, you are not putting right effort in creating social media strategy, you are setting yourself up to lose potential customers. If you cannot find the pain point, you are not going to fix the loose end. This is why before you create your online promotion strategy; you need to have a social media analytics strategy ready at hand.

Measuring the result of social media effort is essential for the business growth.   

Custom Report

To generate a custom report, you need to use Google analytics. This tool can help you keep an eye on the social media performance. With the help of this report, you can easily create the future growth strategy.

However, there is one setback of Google analytics. The tool will not give you a wide range of information. Yes, you will be able to generate the report on traffic. The reports will only show you how much traffic your social media profiles are attracting. But, to go beyond that you would need to use more than Google default analytics.

There are some challenges of deriving the right social media traffic report.  

Customer Monitoring Report

The first thing you need for a successful social media growth strategy is the understanding of the traffic. You need to understand where are they coming from. If you don’t trace the source of traffic, you will not be able to use the source for more traffic.

Google analytics can help you trace the source. But, without the understanding of the customer behavior, the result can be really misleading.

For example, you might have a web visitor who comes to your website through online research. But, this person does not buy anything from you on the first visit. Several visits later, the same person goes through your Facebook paid ad and buys something. In this case, you will find it difficult to trace the real source of the conversion. You will not be able to clearly understand what caused the sudden buying decision.

This is why to get an in-depth report, you need more than default Google analytics tool.

Dark Social

This is another cause of worry for the marketers. When dark social takes place, the marketers find it difficult to trace the source of the traffic. Even the best version of analytics will not be able to trace the source of traffic when the visitors are sharing the links through private chat box or emails.

You will just find that the traffic is coming to your website. But, you will never be able to trace the source of the traffic even with the analytics. This is the limitation of analytic tools which even the pro digital marketers are not being able to overcome.

However, you need to understand that the rise of Snapchat and WhatsApp have made it essential that you trace this traffic. It is essential that you know where they are coming from. Unless you know the source of the traffic, you will not be able to understand what has dragged them to your website.

Another essential reason to trace this traffic is – people will continue to use smartphones. This means people will continue to share links through their private chat boxes. The dark social will grow with time.

This is the reason why you should try to make an attempt to trace the traffic that is coming from dark social.

If you want to trace dark social, you need to create a segment for that. This means you would have to isolate the other segments. Once you have segmented the traffic section, you need to identify the traffic. You need to find the direct traffic. This means you need to first isolate the traffic that is coming to your website by directly typing your URL in the search box.

To identify the traffic, you need to go beyond the homepage. The fact is your homepage is the direct URL. This is why it draws the direct traffic. So, you need to make it a point to rule out this page and focus on the other pages of your website. See which page is drawing the attention of the web visitors. You will have an idea about what to offer them for engagement.

Cohort Analytics

This is the analytic tool which offers to segment the similar type of visitors. This report will show you what the visitors are looking for.

The idea here is to collect the data about the number of traffic and the time they are spending on your website. Once you have figured this out, half of your job will be done.