This week on #bufferchat our community discussed social media analytics and everything you need to know to be data informed. Read on to discover all of the awesome insights shared during the chat!
Catch our weekly Twitter chat, #bufferchat, at TWO times every Wednesday for valuable industry insights and to meet hundreds of other smart marketers and social media enthusiasts. Same topic, same place, just at different times – feel free to join whichever chat time works best for you!
4 pm AEST (Sydney time)
9 am PT (San Francisco time)
This week’s stats:
Bufferchat #1 (4 pm AEST): 10 participants; reach of 1,012,289
Bufferchat #2 (9 am PT): 42 participants; reach of 1,074,394
Q1: What’s your process for gathering social media analytics? Do you have a set schedule?
From the community:
A1: We do a monthly report along with tracking analytics weekly. If we’re running a campaign or trying a new strategy we’ll keep an eye on analytics daily. #bufferchat
— the DRIVE (@theDRIVEblog) April 18, 2018
A1: I review in-depth weekly analytics every Monday morning and track them on a spreadsheet I created for all marketing results. Throughout the week, I’ll check on the status once in a while but it’s less formal then. #bufferchat https://t.co/navFoKIOa7
— Ashley Hoffman (@ashhmarketing) April 18, 2018
A1. Yep. I produce weekly reports to see what’s working and then a higher level monthly report that gets circulated across the business to get the bigger picture. Mondays are the day for the weekly retrospective reports and 1st day of the month for the bigger baby. #BufferChat
— Miss Sophie (@letsdostuffs) April 18, 2018
A1: We look over them daily, but we have a dashboard that is updated each Monday for the previous week. That way we have time to analyze and strategize before everything is completed for the upcoming week #bufferchat
— Skylar Taylor (@skylarptaylor) April 18, 2018
See all the great answers to question 1 here!
Q2: Do you have any favorite tools for measuring your social media analytics?
From the community:
A2: really love @googleanalytics and Data Studio. Facebook’s native Insights are good too. We’re in the process of setting up funnel events, which are incredibly useful #bufferchat
— Waleed Zuberi (@wzub) April 18, 2018
A2: @grytics! I manage a Facebook group for #communitymanagement and this way I can see who is the most active and who I should give shoutouts to and ask to craft content for us #bufferchat
— Bryn Hafemeister (@brynhafemeister) April 18, 2018
A2. Yep! Love the native tools on each of the major social networks. Our primary ones are @TrackMaven, @Zoomph, @tradablebits, @crowdtangle, and @AnalyticsCloud (Omniture) to tie it all together. #bufferchat pic.twitter.com/lDUomFhNJW
— Geoffrey Blosat (@GeoffTBlosat) April 18, 2018
A2) We use Google Sheets to keep track of engagement and activity tracked through social channels along with Google Analytics to measure blog traffic. We also use @Buffer to predict our tweet scheduling based on the best times for the audience #bufferchat
— Ben Hollom FCIM (@benhollom) April 18, 2018
A2: Big fan of @simplymeasured but also any tool that can measure your influence within an industry vs competitors that’s accurate and not based just on audience size. It’s so important with analytics to apply great amounts of context ? #bufferchat
— Liam Batch (@liamonsocial) April 18, 2018
See all the great answers to question 2 here!
Q3: How do you use social media analytics to guide your marketing strategy?
From the community:
A3. We used social media analytics to explain why we were “closing” one of our accounts. We are able to show that the target audience was not there for us. #bufferchat
— Traci Poole (@Traci_Poole) April 18, 2018
A3:
– Helps to know where the audience is (location)
– What kinds of posts / content they react well to
So I know what to post more, what not to post. And trying to add a “local” perspective if and when necessary #bufferchat
— Nureen (@nureenv) April 18, 2018
A3: 1. Best time to post 2. Who are we reaching, why are they interested, and is there another group we’d like to reach? 3. Always asking: what does social media do for our brand, our company — in other words the existential “what’s the point?” #bufferchat pic.twitter.com/JAZIAbZzS1
— Nu-Designs (@nudesigns) April 18, 2018
A3 I mostly use analytics to see what people are gravitating towards to. I remember one client had more engagement in polls than to any of their posts so I tried focusing on more polls to re purpose them elsewhere. #bufferchat pic.twitter.com/uKfd0OI0bX
— Annoyin’ Observer (@SirKingofGifs) April 18, 2018
See all the great answers to question 3 here!
Q4: Have you ever made a big shift in your social media strategy because of analyzing data?
From the community:
A4: I have found it most effective when trying to convince clients of the merits of content marketing. Sometimes there is a reluctance to invest but when you show them the numbers they start to understand the value. #bufferchat
— Pippa ? (@PippaRogers82) April 18, 2018
A4: We haven’t had to make a big shift yet. However, we’ve made plenty of micro shifts. Example: We learned our audience on IG was more male than female and our page engagement is up at 3am, 3pm, and 9pm. That data was unexpected. #bufferchat
— Joanna Easley (@jo_easley) April 18, 2018
A4: Not a big shift as such. We adopt the Kaizen method of continuous improvement; testing and making small changes to enhance performance. This allows us to avoid strategic drift and ensure our social media stays on brand. #bufferchat
— Little Tzu Marketing (@wearelittletzu) April 18, 2018
A4. Yup! We previously used lifestyle imagery on Instagram, but engagement was low and passive. Instead, we realised UGC was performing better and switched to over 80% UGC on Insta. Engagements have doubled, tripled and quadrupled since! #BufferChat pic.twitter.com/Ve0ok7iy9R
— Lisa Boyles ??? I like big gifs & I cannot lie (@lisaboylesmedia) April 18, 2018
See all the great answers to question 4 here!
Q5: Would you say that social media analytics help you create better content? Or help you decide where to allocate social media resources?
From the community:
A5: Seeing which posts are visited most via Google Analytics tells you what visitors to your site are interested in. With that info you can go away and create more content on the subject – make that post into
? Graphics
? Video
? Audio#bufferchat
— Suze Cooper ✨ (@minicoopersmum) April 18, 2018
A5: It’s helped us experiment more! It’s been a “the more we know, the more we realize we don’t know” kind of year with our analytics. We’re trying to keep learning and challenging ourselves to grow with each post. #bufferchat
— Jules Kim (@julesykim) April 18, 2018
A5. Absolutely! We know where the clicks are coming from, what are examples of content that really hits it off with our fans, and we can observe & study what works best for our competitors. Definitely makes us better. #bufferchat pic.twitter.com/7EI9dJs0AL
— Geoffrey Blosat (@GeoffTBlosat) April 18, 2018
A5: Absolutely! A/B testing is crucial to finding what works in your social media strategy. Then you can budget out your hours for what’s most effective (graphic design, blog writing) #bufferchat
— SEO.com (@seocom) April 18, 2018
See all the great answers to question 5 here!
Q6: If you could wave a magic wand and have any analytics feature you wanted, what would it be?
From the community:
A6: Real talk- I would like the power to prevent people from following you just looking for a follow back then unfollowing you. The fluctuation in numbers makes me crazy. #bufferchat pic.twitter.com/bqkf0WhWLq
— Joanna Easley (@jo_easley) April 18, 2018
A6: Rather than a feature, I think we would just like a marketing tool that combined all marketing efforts including social media plus workflow, everything we need to know AND was within budget ?. Or better integration between tools to save us tool-hopping. #bufferchat. pic.twitter.com/6yOTqsz5ar
— Little Tzu Marketing (@wearelittletzu) April 18, 2018
A6: The ability to predict what customers are looking for and provide them a tailored solution that meets their exact needs #BufferChat pic.twitter.com/b49iNrZRt4
— Ravi Shukle (@ravishukle) April 18, 2018
A6. Ooooh, I’d like 2!
Engagement to on-site conversion
(all in one platform – not flitting between social analytics and GA)
Also engagement scores for followers/customers – so you can demonstrably see with just 1 simple number how loyal/engaged that person is. #BufferChat pic.twitter.com/4fOeo4bnTc
— Lisa Boyles ??? I like big gifs & I cannot lie (@lisaboylesmedia) April 18, 2018
See all the great answers to question 6 here!
Thank you so much to our awesome community for sharing such great insights in this chat!
Do you have any comments or answers to these questions? Leave your thoughts in the comments! We’d love to hear from you!
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