Social media marketing is all about collecting data to understand the type of content that customers engage with the most. As a part of marketing, we have to identify the influencers who can promote brand ideas and products.

The social media space is so vast that it is impossible to retrieve this data manually. So, marketers employ a variety of data acquisition and tracking tools to collect the data. 

Social media offers data that can be used for a variety of purposes. In this article, we will discuss the best ways to collect social media data. We will also reveal some social media data collection tools and figure out how to get social media data using them. 

What is Social Media Data?

Before understanding how to collect social media data for social analytics, let us know what exactly social media data means. Social media data is any form of statistics or raw data obtained through social media outlets. 

Personal information that is obtained from the social accounts of people is called data. Likes, comments, shares, and any other online activity are also counted as data. 

It is legal to obtain data that is available on public platforms. Unethical social media data collection methods like hacking are not legal in most countries.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn are popular social media platforms. Apart from these, other online communities and forums can also provide customer data. 

Different types of data are available on different social platforms. The number of active followers, hashtags, engagement rates, etc. are crucial data on Instagram. Facebook’s key data includes likes, followers, comments, and shares. 

Therefore, the social media data collection method may vary from one platform to another. It may also depend on which data type is relevant for your business. 

Read more: What Is Social Media Analytics

Why Do You Need to Collect Social Media Data?

Social media data collection is not done merely to flaunt the popularity of a brand by acquiring more likes, comments, and followers. The main purpose of collecting social media data is to understand the emotions of end users. These are the main reasons for collecting data via social outlets:

1. Understanding Customer Perception

By collecting customer data, we can gauge whether the customer’s perception is positive or negative. The importance of social media data can be understood by the simple fact that the audience likes to associate with brands that are doing good business. 

The converse of the above statement is also true. In simple words, if your numbers on social media are great, it can help you get good business. 

However, things are not as simple as they seem to be. As a smart marketer or business owner, understand how to use social media data to improve your marketing strategies. 

2. Building an Effective Content Strategy

Collecting data is just one part of the process. You can realize the actual value of data by interpreting it and using it for your marketing campaigns. 

To build an effective content strategy, you must tap into customer emotions. When you start understanding their requirements, you can shape your content strategy. 

To manage all of this, you must have the raw data at your disposal. Various social media data collection strategies have surfaced in recent years. We will talk in detail about these strategies in later sections. 

Continue Reading: 12-Step Guide on How to Track Social Media Analytics

What is the Use of Social Media Data?

To evaluate the likes and dislikes of end users, you must first focus on social media data collection methods. Once you understand their sentiments, you can use them to influence their buying habits. The key uses of social media data collection include:

1. Content Creation

To create appealing content, you must analyze customer preferences and think of new content strategies. People prefer short video clips, reels, and memes these days. To get such insights, search for which types of posts receive the most engagement. 

The above task can be done manually. Yet the manual process is time-consuming, and customer preferences evolve rapidly. Automated analytical tools and platforms can make your task easier. Once you start using them, you will understand how to gather social media data for analytics. 

2. Fine-tuning Marketing Strategies 

Data-based marketing strategies work in your favor on most occasions. Decisions taken in haste can affect your marketing strategy.

You can get answers to some of these questions while using social media data collection methods:

• Which social platform is most suitable for your business?
• What is the demographic profile of your potential users?
• Which type of content do your users engage with the most?
• Which types of posts can be boosted to achieve your marketing goals?
• Which part of the day are your audiences most active?

Once you get answers to these questions, it will be easier to create engaging and meaningful content. An engaging piece of content will make your posts popular. It will also help you attain your marketing goals, like increasing reach, conversion, and brand awareness. 

You can experiment with a couple of marketing strategies to see which of them works in your favor. By using A/B testing, you can figure out a better marketing strategy. Now, use the outcomes of your experiment in your future campaigns to develop better posts and content! 

Learn more about: 7 Incredible Benefits of Social Media Analytics To Stay Ahead of the Curve

3. Competitor Analysis 

To create unique and impactful content, you must analyze the marketing ideas of your competitors. Competitor analysis can help you improve your marketing strategies. At the same time, it can help you avoid the mistakes of your peers. 

Innovative content ideas can be found, and you can repurpose them in your own way to impress the audience. It may also help you find the reason behind the failure of your marketing tactics.  

4. Finding Common Issues of Customers

To excel in business, you must convert common issues faced by your customers into business opportunities. To identify these issues, you must collect relevant data from social communities and platforms. After identifying the customer’s issues, you can fix them and promote the solutions through your marketing materials. 

5. Influencer Marketing 

Influencers can help you create brand awareness without being too aggressive or promotional about it. First, you must find the best influencers who can complement your marketing strategies and goals. For that, you can use social media data collection tools and vet the right influencers.

Content marketing platforms provide you with useful data about influencers. Once you shortlist the influencer, connect with them and create engaging posts for your audience! 

How to Collect Data for Social Media Analytics? – 5 Best Ways

It is possible to convert social media results into real business. For that, understand how to collect social media data for analysis. Now, interpret the data and find new ideas and cues to impress the end users. 

Some of the key data that you must collect via social media platforms include:

• Demographic details of your users
• Daily post’s reach and impressions
• Total campaign reach
• Number of customers who visit your social profiles
• Customer sentiments regarding your brand
• Social share of voice

Retrieving raw data like likes, comments, reach, profile visits, etc. is easy. However, tracking customer sentiments and social share of voice can be a bit complicated. 

To analyze customer sentiments, you must hire a social listening specialist. The social listening specialist will analyze the raw data and draw meaningful conclusions and insights from it. 

Social share of voice is a metric that lets you compare your brand awareness with that of your competitors. You can use website traffic, brand mentions, and other forms of data to determine your share of voice. 

Learn about: Types of Social Media Analytics For Improving Campaign Performance

Now, let’s dive deeper into the actual process of social media data collection! Here are the best ways to collect social media data:

1. URL Tracking 

URL tracking helps you determine the prominent sources of your website’s traffic. You can create custom URLs for your marketing campaigns. These URLs must contain the UTM codes.

UTM codes are small bits of code that you add at the end of the URL. It tracks the source of the traffic and helps you identify the social platforms that are ideal for your marketing strategies. 

You can use URL builders to develop custom URLs for your social media campaigns. Once you create the URLs, place them in your ad posts and track them using Google Analytics. 

2. Social Media Management Tools

A social media management tool is a piece of software that tracks all your social media handles and promotions. It allows you to customize your campaigns and set the right metrics for measuring their performance. 

Konnect Insights is an omnichannel customer experience management suite. It contains all the social analytical tools and BI (Business Dashboards) that you need to manage your social media data. 

Using the social media data collection tools offered by this platform, you can retrieve customer data. You can also integrate with third-party apps to manage and streamline content and data. Visit the website today and learn more about our intuitive features and data collection capabilities! 

3. Surveys and Polls 

Knowing customer opinions matters when you develop content for them. A straightforward way of collecting opinions or feedback from your customers is by conducting surveys or polls. 

A survey is a set of questions that have possible answers as alternatives. The customers just have to choose the right answers for each question.

You can ask them to elaborate on their answers if they wish to. In the end, evaluate all the survey forms and use the customer insights to fine-tune your marketing or content strategies. 

Polls allow you to get public votes for a certain problem or idea. For example, if an ice cream parlor wants to launch a new flavor, it can simply conduct a poll. The poll will provide a bunch of flavors as answers. The customers get to choose their favorites. Finally, you can count all the votes and make your decision. A social media data collection method can be as simple as this! 

4. Social Media Listening Tools 

Social media listening tools use AI (artificial intelligence) and other technologies to tap into customer emotions. They track customer conversations and deduce meaningful insights from them. 

Social listening tools use brand mentions, tags, and keywords to track important conversations. Platforms like Konnect Insights allow you to listen to your customers’ opinions and complaints. These platforms allow you to evaluate conversations and make data-based decisions to strengthen customer relationships! 

Read about: 20 Benefits of Using Social Listening Tools for Your Business

5. Social Platforms 

Social platforms are also great means of social media data collection. You can create a brand page or account on any of the social media channels. Following that, you can keep posting from that account or page regularly. The engagement, responses, and conversations received through these posts can help you collect key customer data and insights. 

Conclusion 

These were a few of the best ways to collect social media data. Use social media data collection strategies that are quick, accurate, and efficient in tracking customer data. The tools you use must be equipped with data intelligence and social listening capabilities. By choosing the best tools or platforms for social media data collection, you can improve your social media marketing strategies!