Day-to-Day Social Media Use
As of 2021, approximately seven-in-ten Americans use social media! Based on that statistic, I think it would be safe to assume that you are one of them! Social media has become a modern staple in our day-to-day lives. Wake up, check social media. On lunch break, check social media. Getting ready for bed, check social media, and repeat. Regardless of your go-to, favorite social media platform, it’s likely that at some point you’ve wondered how many people saw your post but didn’t leave a like or comment. Also, it’s pretty common to wonder why the girl you graduated high school with gets so many likes, comments, and shares on her posts and you get little to none. Let’s think about this at a deeper level.
What is Social Media Analytics?
Social media analytics provide insight into all of the interactions that your posts get. Hootsuite defines it as, “…the collection and analysis of data points that help you measure the performance of your social media accounts.” Depending on the platform, this can include the number of accounts that your post reached, the number of likes, comments, shares, saves, retweets, the number of people who watched the entirety of your video, and much more. As you can imagine, analyzing this data can provide profound insights for people or businesses who are trying to reach more people and increase engagement with their accounts. Today, most social media platforms provide a source for analytics (sometimes referred to as “insights”) but often this feature is only accessible for business accounts.
What is Social Media Analytics Important?
Understanding what works well and what doesn’t when it comes to your social media strategy can sometimes be one of the defining factors for success. Understanding social media analytics can provide information to help understand what type of posts work well for your audience, what time of day is best to post, and even the tone of the post! Tuning social media content to fit a specific audience also has the potential to help achieve larger business goals and objectives if done properly.
Social Media Analytics and Business
Businesses can utilize social media as another marketing tool to promote their services or products to customers online, using a platform that they already frequently visit. Author Carol Feigenbaum explains, “Social media analytics helps brands get in on emerging trends by informing them about products and services that customers want. Additionally, the actionable insights produced help pinpoint market opportunities thereby minimizing risks to ensure your product launch is a success.” By understanding what customers enjoy seeing, businesses are able to utilize this information to craft posts that fit their wants and needs. This can boost engagement with the existing audience and also has the potential to boost organic reach through shares, mentions, comments, and more. Feigenbaum explains, “Social media analytics allows brands to learn what their audience cares about and what influences their purchasing decisions. These insights allow marketing departments to craft more personalized and relevant experiences. The opportunities here for brands are enormous with the additional benefit of real-time feedback allowing for adjustment mid-campaign.”
Analyzing a Social Media Post
Let’s take a look at the ever-famous, ScrubDaddy TikTok account. ScrubDaddy is known for great audience engagement on TikTok and caters to what they are looking to see with each of their posts. Additionally, they take a step back from a professional tone and use a more personalized tone to interact with their audience. This can create a more “humanized” presence for the brand as well.
In this video post, the brand is utilizing a trendy TikTok sound in the background from the current Stranger Things season. By doing so, it allowed the audience to have a more personalized experience with the post rather than a post of just the brand simply promoting the ever-so-popular smiley sponge (which they still did in this post)!
Let’s look at some of the analytics. This post was posted on Thursday, July 21, and got 96.2K likes, 668 comments (many of which they reply to), 2327 saves, and 1426 shares.
However, in this post, the brand is just promoting all of the products that they sell. They do not use a popular sound and are just simply explaining all of the different types of products.
This post was posted on Wednesday, July 6, and got 43.9K likes, 894 comments (again, many of which were replied to), 2118 saves, and 505 shares. While the comments on this post may be higher, the likes saves, and shares were all lower in comparison to the first post.
Just from analyzing this bit of information and comparing the content of each post, it is clear to see that the ScrubDaddy TikTok audience prefers trendy posts over promotional posts.
Moving Forward
Social media analytics can provide valuable insights for brands to promote their products while also interacting with their audience to give them content they enjoy seeing. Consider looking into your social media analytics and seeing how your audience interacts with your content! You may find something out that you may have never thought of before. Good luck, and happy analyzing!
CRyder Design 
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