How to interpret in-built analytics tool of major social media

In a world full of hashtags, tweets, handles, posts, likes and shares, it’s vital to use social media correctly. Everyone is bombarded with tons of messages via social channels like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and YouTube on a daily basis.

So how can a business leverage these avenues to its advantage? You need to stand out from the rest and make a statement at the same time. Even if you’re unique and creative with your ideas, how do you measure the success of your social media strategies and campaign? Well, that’s where social media analytics tools will help you a lot. These tools will enable you to gather data so that you can determine if a specific strategy has worked or failed. These tools will aid you in developing better and successful campaigns. Most social networks offer the ability to analyze your efforts from their own platform. They may not have a very detailed view, but they are a good start.

Facebook insights

According to the Facebook newsroom, more than a billion people are active on Facebook every day. This could be a great starting point to advertise your products and services. Once your company page crosses 30 fans, you can use Facebook Insights platform to analyze various metrics.

It displays a very detailed measurement of your posts and the engagement they have earned. Audience analysis can help you determine who is engaging with you. It comes with a breakdown of demographics as well as location. As shown in the image below, the ‘Your Fans’ metrics gives you an idea of the age group and gender of people engaged. You can also see the country, city, and language of the followers.

Facebook gives you the ability to choose who to show ads to based on what they have shown interest in, what Facebook pages they like, their demographics and many more other options.

There is also a breakdown of organic and paid reach. This is a very good way of understanding the reach and value of your Facebook ads. Some other interesting metrics that you can analyze are views of your videos, actions taken on your Facebook page as well as the reach of your posts.

Pinterest analytics

According to Marketing Land, Pinterest has more than 50 billion pins and growing. So, if you’re looking to use Pinterest for your business, you certainly need to know what will work and what won’t. Pinterest’s in-built analytics account is available to anyone who has a business account. All you need to do is register your website with Pinterest. You can easily convert your existing Pinterest account into a business account at business.pinterest.com as well. This will help them track traffic between your Pinterest account and your website. Pinterest Analytics helps keep track of a range of metrics. From pin activity, audience activity to the specific pins that are driving traffic to your website, you’ll be able to analyze all data.

Twitter analytics

Twitter has 310 million active users every month, this is a social media channel you can’t ignore.What’s great about them is that they also have an in-built analytics tool that you can use for free. It’s available for both businesses as well as individuals.

Twitter analytics lets you track the number of followers, mentions, visits to your profile, tweet impressions as well as your tweets. You can also view monthly statistics for most popular mentions, tweets and followers in that month. You’ll also be able to click on any one of your tweets to see its engagements, retweets, likes as well as impressions.

Youtube analytics

You’re probably aware of the effect of viral content by now. With vlogs and podcasts gaining popularity, videos are certainly the most engaging type of social content around.

YouTube analytics is able to show where your video is getting traffic from. The best part is that it has various filters. You can easily track and see if your videos are more watched or liked over a specific data range or in a specific region.

The engagement report illustrates the specific elements of your videos that are effective and the ones that are not. You will know the more popular playlists, cards, playback location etc.

If you only have time for one metric, that metric should be “Watch time” which is the total minutes spent viewing the video. It is the clearest indicator of how engaging your content is, which is why it is also one of the key metrics for YouTube’s algorithm.

Google analytics

Primarily a web analytics tool, Google Analytics gives you a breakdown of the social sites that are driving traffic to your website. You need to click on Acquisition->Social. Here you’ll be able to view which social sites are referring the most traffic to your website.

If you ask us, we think this is probably the best tool you can get your hands on. It will tell you which social strategy is worth your time and which ones aren’t converting as expected. You can focus your time and energy on only specific social media channels that seem the most promising

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Kelvin is the principal of Emarsity, an academy which coaches Internet Marketing skills.

About the author

Kelvin Koh brings with him close to 10 years of digital marketing experience. He worked as a senior digital strategist for a top SEO agency in Singapore, and is also a very experienced internet marketer and search specialist. Since then Kelvin has been providing over 6 years of search consultancy services to MNCs and SMEs.

Some of his most notable SEO work includes Huawei, Fuji Xerox, Singapore International Foundation, Raffles Design Institute. Kelvin went on to attain his Advanced Certificate in Training and Assessment (ACTA) with WDA. He is also a certified PA trainer.