Social Media Analytics: What your Followers can teach you about your Customers
“80% of companies say they deliver ‘superior’ customer service,” while only “8% of people think these same companies deliver ‘superior’ customer service,” according to HelpScout. You think you know what your customers want, but most of you don’t actually know.
How can you take the guesswork out of understanding what your customers want?
Many of your competitors use Social Media Analytics to uncover insights from all your social media channels. These insights have been found to help you make better marketing decisions, improve customer satisfaction, improve your social media listening strategy and increase profits. Through the use of analytical tools you can derive metrics from your social media followers and find out more about what they really want and how you can provide it for them.
Social Media Analytics harvest available customer data and can help you find:
- Positive or negative mentions of your brand
- Audience size
- Customer profile information
- Devices customers are using
- Customer engagement
- Customer reviews
- Trending topics
- And more!
By gathering and analyzing historical and trending information, evidence shows that your business will be in a better position to identify and capitalize on meaningful patterns, and predict the most successful future strategies.
For instance, if social media analysis shows customers frequently engage with and share video content, you may want to create more video content for your customers to consume!
Your Social Media Analytics Toolbox
To get the most out of your social media insights, you want to use the right tools.
- Use Google Analytics to track conversions and referral traffic from all of your social media networks. Simply go to your Google Analytics account → click Overview → All Traffic → Channels → Social and you’ll see data from all your social media accounts.
- Social Media Monitoring Tools: Most social media monitoring tools come with built-in social insight tools that pull together information from each social media channel to make analyzing your data easier.
- Platform Analytics: Most social media platforms come with in-depth social media analytics. You can utilize these analytical tools to begin your journey toward understanding your customers with greater insight.
How to Use Social Media Analytics to Learn More About Your Customers
Facebook and Twitter have powerful analytical tools to help you learn more about your customers. Below, I will describe how to use these tools.
How to view data on Facebook Analytics to find out more about your customers:
- Sign into your company’s brand page
- Click on the Facebook Insights tab
- You’ll see your homepage which displays the following data:
- Actions of page
- Page views
- Page likes
- Reach
- Engagement rates
- Video engagement
Pro Tip: You can move all of your data from Facebook Analytics to an Excel or .csv file to view your insights with ease.
- There’s a sidebar below “overview” which displays data such as:
- Promotions
- Likes
- Reach
- Page views
- Actions on page
- Etc.
How to use Facebook Analytics to improve your social media marketing strategy:
Customer Personas: Check your Facebook demographics to see if they match your customer personas. If the two are similar, then your customer targeting efforts are working.
Engagement: Check Facebook Analytics for engagement rates.
- What is the difference between the number of your overall followers and engaged followers? This will help you determine if your Facebook fans are engaging with your posts.
- How many likes are your posts receiving? Posts with a lot of likes have resonated with your followers.
- Are customers mentioning your brand on Facebook? Check comments to see positive and negative reviews customers have left about your brand.
- How many shares have your posts received? Check shares to see the “virality” of your posts.
Page Views: Your page view count reveals how many people are checking out your brand on Facebook. If a lot of people are viewing your brand via Facebook, then you know it’s a popular channel people use to find out more about your brand.
Video Views: Determine the number and length of views on all your video content to see if they’re resonating with your audience.
Active Times: When are your customers on Facebook most active? Finding out will help you determine the best times to post on Facebook.
How to view data on Twitter Analytics to find out more about your customers:
Twitter Analytics
- Log into Twitter Analytics
- You’ll see your homepage which displays the following data:
- Tweet impressions (aka how many people saw your tweets)
- Profile visits
- Follower growth
- Mentions
- Top performing tweets
- Click the Tweets tab to find:
- Overall daily impressions
- Impressions and engagement rates on individual tweets
- Click the Audience tab to find out more information about your audience including:
- Age
- Gender
- Interests
- Household income
- Products they buy
- Etc.
How to use Twitter data to improve your social media marketing strategy:
Audience Interests: Use Twitter analytics to find out the top 10 interests of your customers and harness this information to hop on trends, create campaigns, etc.
Customer Personas: Use Twitter’s demographics to find out if your followers match your customer personas. Twitter gathers information on gender, occupation, income, marital status and even the buying patterns of your followers.
Engagement: Check your engagement rate on Twitter to determine which posts strike a chord with your audience. You can find out which tweets received the most engagement by checking your top performing tweets.
Mentions: Use Twitter to find out when customers are mentioning your brand.
Referral Traffic: Check Twitter to see how much of your audience is visiting your blog/website via Twitter.
Profile Visits: When you receive a lot of new visitors on your Twitter page, it means potential customers are using Twitter to check out your brand to see what you’re about.
Follower Count: Track your follower growth using Twitter. This way you can see if your marketing efforts on Twitter are having an impact on your ideal audience.
Conclusion – Make sure your Social Listening Strategy is taking advantage of the Insights at your finger tips
The content from your social media channels can reveal a treasure trove of customer information. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to start creating a superior brand experience and tap into all available resources.
Pro Tip: Besides Twitter and Facebook, social media platforms such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+ and Instagram also have built-in analytics tools.
Click here to see how Online Moderation can help you organize your social media insights for better analysis.
