It is just so easy to step inside the realm of social media and do whatever you want to do. However, if you are a business who wants to make the most out of social media to market your products or services, you have to make data-driven decisions on your social media marketing strategy. This means that you have to do your homework, research, and analyze things before and after pushing your marketing efforts. A traditional business owner would look for a place where he can put his business and consider several factors such as demographics, accessibility and parking, and competition. This also applies when putting your business on social media.
Fortunately, there are a lot of reporting and data analytics tools online that could help you track your results, adjust your strategy, and ultimately achieve your goals. A social media report is very useful for social media managers, marketing and sales departments, and even content creators. Here’s how it affects your social media strategy:
I. Identify the right persona and audience
Before you create effective content, you have to research your target customer and use that information into creating a customer persona. Your brand may get lost and waste time and effort in creating content for everyone. Do not think that everyone needs to see your post because not everyone will be interested and have the capability of buying your products or services. Filter your target audience more so you can create specific offers and design more personalized content that they can easily capture their attention, relate with, and convince them to engage with your brand and buy from you.
You may start researching from scratch or with existing customer data and consider questions such as their age, marital status, economical background, income, interests, and even how they spend their money. The better you know your target audience is, the better and more specific content you will create for them.
II. Finding the right social media platforms
How can your data help you choose the right platform? Simple. It can tell you the demographics of your audience, understanding how they behave, and where they are hanging out. For example, if you have a business-to-business (B2B) company, LinkedIn is the ideal place to target your potential clients. If you’re into e-commerce then go to Instagram. Investing in the right platform will make a greater impact on your marketing efforts. Traction is more important than just being visible everywhere. Once you identify where your target audience resides, the greater the chance you’ll get the engagement from them and ultimately convert it to sales.
III. Improving social campaigns, their effectiveness and reach
Numbers do not lie. This is what you can expect from your social media analytics. It contains your KPI such as reach, engagement metrics, likes, and followers count and mentions. Using this data, you can illustrate the progress of your social media campaign and can also tell you what’s not working and what you must maintain from your strategy. If you have a well-designed content that really looks amazing but the number of likes and engagement tells you the other way around, you may need to tweak something on your caption or just delete it and create a new one.
IV. Benchmarking against your competitors
Benchmarking lets you know the performance of your social media campaign compared to what is standard. Using this method against your competitors evaluates your success compared to them by using metrics. Your social media goal’s success can be subjective without weighing your social media reports based on what is standard in the industry. Your data avoids you from guessing on what success looks like. You’ll be more confident with your strategy when you see that your metrics such as engagement rates, reach or views, follower counts, and growth rates are keeping up with your competitors.
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