Are you trying to know your customers responses to your brand or promotional content? 

How will you understand your target audience’s preferences and interests? 

Only social media analytics will help you find the answer to your questions. 

Innovative tools for analytics play a key role in improving your ROI and making better business decisions. However, there are both positive and negative aspects of social media analytics.

What is Social Media Analytics?

Social media analytics is a valuable tool for gathering data from different social networking channels. It lets you gain insights to facilitate the improvement of your SMM campaign performance. Using analytics tools, you can take advantage of big data and data mining technologies. 

Analytical data is the key to optimizing the social media campaign. You will be able to understand the effectiveness of your social media activities. 

Comprehensive data analysis enables you to tweak your strategy and content. Advanced tools give you an analytical report based on your brand outreach, conversion, and audience engagement on social platforms.  

For instance, the number of comments and likes on a Facebook post defines your audience’s engagement level. So, based on the number of clicks and likes, you can gauge the performance of your social media content.

You May Also Read : Types of Social Media Analytics 

Objectives of Social Media Analytics

There are various objectives and purposes for using social media analytics :

Identify the content’s performance and test audience behavior–

While planning the social media strategy, you make different assumptions about the audience’s needs and preferences. 

But how will you validate your assumptions? 

Use social media analytics to track and measure audience engagement. 

Measure your campaign’s ROI–

You have invested a significant amount in social media ads and other resources. Tracking your ROI is one objective of using analytics tools.

Make important business decisions

An analytical report on social media campaigns simplifies your decision-making process. For instance, audience sentiment and market trend analyses influence your decisions on customer service, budgeting, and resource planning.

Track your competitors

Analytics tools help you identify your competitors’ activities on social platforms. You can understand your target audience’s behavior and reaction to particular content.

Advanced tools can be a great resource for your SMM campaign. It gives an idea of the most effective factors for your promotional activities.

5 Advantages of Social Media Analytics

If you have started your SMM campaign, social media analytics can give you many advantages. 

• Better Understanding of Target Market 

Social media data analytics give you a clear picture of your target market. Without understanding this market, you cannot develop the right strategy. 

By interpreting the data, you can identify those who have interacted with your social media activities. 

Some of your social media followers may not be your customers, though they have an interest in your brand. You can easily make customer segmentation if you learn about the target market.

• Improved Product Pricing

Pricing enables you to define the actual value of your products. With social media analytics, you will find it easy to create a reasonable pricing model. 

Data analysis lets you identify your customer perceptions, competition level, and product lifecycle.

Using the analytics tools for a social media campaign, you can understand the demographic details of your target audience. Besides, the data lets you build psychographic profiles of your potential customers. 

These factors are highly important for developing your product pricing strategy. Retailers can then set the price points of their products for different segments. 

• Give Better Opportunity for Innovation

Social media data is the best resource for new product development and innovation. Use the data for detailed customer insights, access knowledge, and to co-create new ideas. 

Indeed, some organizations have already started using social platforms to gain fresh insights into new products. But not every company knows how to use social platforms for innovation. You must have clear objectives and a marketing strategy to avoid this problem.

Based on your potential customers’ needs and pain points, you may integrate new features into your existing products. 

What’s more, you can innovate and launch new products to meet your customers’ needs.

Social media users often express their opinions about brands, services, and products. 

Advanced social media analytics tools closely monitor their comments and generate a report. With proper data interpretation, you can improve your offerings.

• Help Tweak the Existing Strategy for Better Results 

Social media analytics tool enables you to know what is working effectively and what is not delivering the result. This is how you can improve your marketing strategy and move forward to beat your competitors. 

Even your business decision-making process would become easier.

Analytical data informs you about 

• The demographic profile of your target audience
• Hashtags used by them
• Time of day when they are highly active on social platforms
• Preferred video posts and images
• Type of social media content that draws your audience’s interest

These details help you adjust your campaign strategy efficiently. Besides, you can track clicks, shares, and comments to measure engagement and boost sales.

• Help Avoid Mistakes Made By Your Competitors

Which social platforms do your competitors use? 

What strategies have your competitors applied for social media marketing? 

Have those strategies provided them with the best value? 

With analytical data on social platforms, you can solve your queries. 

What’s more, you can even discover your rivals’ mistakes. How?

Many customers leave their reviews on different social platforms. You can go through these reviews and detect the negative sides of products from other brands. 

If you are aware of your competitors’ mistakes and limitations, you can take advantage of them. 

So, product feedback from your competitors’ customers will help you gain actionable insights. You can devise the best strategy for your brand based on your rivals’ weaknesses and strengths.

After nailing down your competitors’ biggest mistakes, you may also tweak your messages. 

For instance, you have learned from analytical data that your rival has failed to address the customer’s issue. On the other hand, you can design your product in a way that solves the problem.

There are more ways to take advantage of the gaps in your competitors’ initiatives. 

3 Disadvantages of Social Media Analytics

Social media analytics also has some disadvantages, which includes : 

• Doesn’t Inform How to Improve Our Strategy

Advanced social media analytics give you accurate data on your potential customers. You learn about their reactions, understand the target market, and analyze brand mentions. Thus, the analytical report only enriches your knowledge about your target audience. 

However, how do you use the data to optimize marketing? Analytics tools cannot solve the problem. In this scenario, you need to apply your own tactics to make the best use of the data.

• Real-Time Processing is Not Possible

Many analytics tool providers claim that they can perform real-time data processing. But, speedy analytics may give you a low-quality outcome. 

However, to process data in real-time mode, there should be a narrow focus. So, the analytics tools may provide you with inaccurate insights.

• External Tools are Needed to Analyze Campaigns Effectively 

Advanced analytics software is equipped with a range of features. But you will still need to integrate some third-party tools for better campaign analysis. 

There may be issues of reliability while choosing these external tools. For instance, you can integrate Google Analytics 360, HubSpot Marketing Hub, and several other tools. With successful integrations, you can gain clear insight into your target market. 

How Konnect Insights Analytics Can Help You?

Konnect Insights is a unified platform with built-in BI tools and an intuitive dashboard to provide you with insightful data. There are more than 3000 third-party integration options available with Konnect Insights. 

This platform gives you real-time market intelligence, and you can refine your strategy accordingly. You have no chance of missing any online conversion about your brand. So, it is easy to listen to your potential customers’ words using the software. 

Other amazing features of the application include : 

• Response management
• Social Analytics
• Social CRM
• Surveys and feedback
• Social publishing
• Crisis management

Available with a free trial option, Konnect Insights has affordable premium plans for marketers.

Conclusion

A social media marketing program is undoubtedly an excellent strategy to promote your services/products. 

However, without social media analytics tools, you cannot launch a data-driven campaign. There is no need to run the campaign blindly. Analytics enables you to spot the latest trends in the target market. 

Besides, you can understand conversations and learn about customer sentiment. Analytics tools let you uncover your competitors’ mistakes. Although there are some limitations, you can get a lot of benefits from social media analytics.