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Social Media Stats That Can Change Your Business

You’ve created the social media accounts for your business, and you’re ready to get started with social media advertising, but where to start– and how do you know what works? What kind of content does well and what to avoid? Are you wasting your time on one network and need to focus on another? How do you even measure success?

There are simple ways to answer these questions and many more; it all begins with making a simple social media report.

A social media report is a document that helps you track key metrics (KPIs) from your social media sites so that you compare them on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. These reports allow you to understand the types of content that perform well, what people relate to it the most, and find ways to use this information to reach your goals!

Facebook

Facebook is the behemoth of the social media marketing world, which is why small businesses can’t afford to ignore it. With 1.37 billion daily active users on the platform, the audience targeting options are endless. Facebook can often be the most difficult to work with due to its complex algorithms and ever declining organic reach. Here are the things I would focus on tracking to start:

 

Reach

Reach is one of the top metrics to track because it tells you how many people are seeing your posts. It can be broken down into organic reach and paid reach so you can organize the two. This information can be found on your Facebook Page by going to the Insights tab, then selecting Reach. In this dashboard, you can see things like post reach, likes, comments and shares and the total reach of your content.

 

Likes

Page likes are a metric that some people value while others don’t. The steady decline of organic reach can make this subject deceptive. The reality is, you always want the number of likes to increase. Organically reaching 2% of 10k people is much better than 2% of only 500 people. The Insights tab also has a section called ‘Likes,’ where you can see how many your page has and when they increase or decrease. You can also see information about where these likes came from, such as from page suggestions or after visiting your page.

 

Engagement

To see what kinds of posts do well, take a look at the engagement. This information can be found in the ‘Posts’ section in the Insights page. By default, this covers a 7-day period, but you can export a Facebook report for data covering customized date ranges and more. Inside this area of the dashboard, you can see what content has received the most engagement, and its reach. This is also a great place to get to know your audience and learn the best days and times to post. We recommend making note of your top performing posts each month based on engagement. After a few months, you’ll start to see if trends develop and what types of content consistently does well.

 

Traffic To Your Site from Facebook

Facebook gives limited information in regards to traffic to your site. Find out how traffic the platform is directing your way, how much time users spend on your site and more in Google Analytics. If you haven’t already set your account, this is a must! It’s totally free and an amazing source of valuable information you can use to monitor growth and see what is working and what is not.

Once you’ve created your account, and connected your website, go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels > Social. Here you will see all your social media traffic. Make a note of these numbers in your report, noting the increases and decreases in numbers.

 

Instagram

Instagram is very popular due to its focus on visuals and rapidly growing audience. Using the site for advertising can be a little more challenging due to the inability to share links outside of the one in your bio. Additionally, the growing presence of algorithms has created varied results for marketers.

Even if you’ve switched your Instagram account to a business profile, you’ll find you only have access to very simple analytics. The available numbers only track engagement over the past week, so they’re often not the most helpful. There are other apps and services available that can give you more insights to your posts performance, but here are the things you can track within the app to see what is working.

 

Followers

Take note of the number of followers your account and pay special attention to any content that leads to a spike in the numbers. You will also notice that you lose followers daily. This is often due to bots, that follow accounts then unfollow them in when the recipient doesn’t return the favor. It is annoying sure but do keep in mind you’re looking for quality over quantity.

 

Top Posts

Use the dashboard of your business account to find out which individual posts received the most likes, comments, saves, impressions, reach and engagement. Take note of the top 5, and compare each month to see what the posts were and what figures they received

 

Link Clicks

Your Instagram Business account allows you to see how many people have clicked the link in your bio in the past week. You should be able to see how much traffic is coming from Instagram in your Google Analytics account.

 

Pinterest

Pinterest is a social media and can be a goldmine for many bloggers and small businesses. It’s important to remember that Pinterest isn’t a social media site, it’s a visual search engine. For this reason, visuals are the key to success along with optimizing your description to read well but be full of keywords. You can easily update your Pinterest profile to a business account and access a wealth of information in their analytics!

 

Followers

Followers aren’t as crucial on Pinterest as they on other sites since you don’t have to follow someone to see their content. But it can still be a useful metric to measure, especially when combined with other stats.

 

Impressions

In the Pinterest Analytics tab, you can also check impressions for your pins and also for your Pinterest profile. Impressions are how many times people have seen your pins or boards. Check the same metric for all the pins you have pinned under the ‘Your Pinterest Profile’ tab.

 

Clicks

Know your click rate. Check the clicks to your websites from your pins. These are shown alongside impressions and saves and help you see which pins have sent the most traffic to your website.

 

Traffic

Check the traffic from Pinterest through Google Analytics in the same way as you do on Facebook and Instagram. Follow the same path, and you will see Pinterest alongside Facebook, assuming you have had traffic from the site.

 

So Now What? – Analyzing Your Efforts

Now that you have a better understanding of some key metrics to track, you can better understand your efforts on each social media platform! Some are more useful than others, but by using them to create a simple social media report that you can update weekly or monthly, you can understand what is working and what isn’t.

Your report can be anything from a simple Google Doc to an elaborate presentation – it all depends on what works for you and who needs to view it. Once you start measuring your social media strategy, you can then refocus your efforts from a data-driven viewpoint and adjust to see more success from social media.

Berlin Green

Located in Oklahoma City, OK • travels worldwide

Freelance creative & marketing professional specializing in helping brands of all sizes effectively communicate with their messages with creativity and authenticity.