Critical Social Media Insights You Need to Know to Improve Your Strategy

While social media analytics is a crucial part of every social media strategy, there are some metrics you can initially miss. Hopefully, with the right knowledge and tools, we’ll get to the bottom of the most important social media insights that can be turned into actions that eventually lead to more sales and brand recognition.

If you are here, you are probably already analyzing social media data but are curious if that’s enough. I’m so glad you are willing to expand your knowledge! In this article, you will find the most important social media metrics to track and the means to measure and analyze the data.

As a social media marketer, you are expected not only to write creative posts but also to use analytics tools in order to extract valuable insights from social media. We all know about impressions, reach, and engagement metrics, but how about we go deeper? With this article, you will master social media insights crucial to achieving steady growth. Let’s do this.

Table of contents:

1. Basic social media insights you should know
2. Social media insights for advanced marketers
3. Benefits of leveraging social media insights
4. Social media analytics tools
5. Ways to improve your social media marketing strategy
6. FAQ

Basic social media insights you should know

Before we jump into the advanced section, let’s just briefly walk through the elemental social insights every social media marketer should know.

It’s possible to jump right into advanced analytics, but in my opinion, you should first gain a brief overview of your social media before you try to dig deeper. You should be aware of the general state of your social channels, how many people actively participate in discussions, who your audience is, and what the conversion rate is.

If you feel like you already know about the basics, you can skip to the next part – advanced social media insights.

Engagement metrics

Let’s start with the key metrics all major social media platforms provide.

On all social media, you will be able to see how many people have seen your posts and how many people reacted or commented. These metrics have slightly different names across different platforms; for example, Twitter calls it simply “views,” whereas, on Facebook, you will find the data under “impressions.”

There’s no definite way of saying how many views of your posts are a good indicator, but you can use these metrics to reference all your actions. For example, you can measure if the reach/views/impressions increase while you put more effort into your social media strategy.

Unfortunately, many specialists believe that organic traffic is more or less dead on social media. On average, your posts will reach around 3-5% of your audience. Don’t get discouraged from posting, though. That’s why I said your organic reach can be used as a reference to your actions.

Another key engagement metric you can measure is the engagement itself – reactions, comments, and shares. You can easily compare your social media performance in this area to your competitors with a similar followers count. Engagement is an insightful metric. The more reactions and comments you get, the more chance is to get viral.

Now, posting engaging content is the tricky part. If there were a golden rule you could follow to have your posts go viral, social media marketing life would be so much easier. Sadly, there are too many variables in the algorithm it’s impossible to always engage your audience in meaningful discussions.

We have prepared guidelines for posting engaging content on TikTok and Twitter; take a look. A lot of these tips are universal across all social media networks.

• How to Increase Engagement on TikTok?
• How to Get More Engagement on Twitter?

Audience demographics

Let’s focus now on the audience demographics, where you can gain some valuable insights about who visits your social media channels.

It’s important to know who your social media audience is because you can tailor your message specifically to the people who visit your page. Bear in mind that it might be a slightly different group of people than your general target audience. This is why social media audience insights are so important.

Each social media channel attracts a slightly different audience. For example, Linkedin analytics shows it’s focused primarily on a “professional” network with most members above 30 years of age. “Professional” meaning people use Linkedin mostly for work-related content. They share their job updates, career successes, work-related articles, insights, etc. On the almost opposite is TikTok, where most users are under 30. They post funny videos, trivia, life updates, etc.

Looking at the example of Linkedin and TikTok, you shouldn’t use the same content marketing strategy on both networks (and that’s a good social media insight). Your message should be tailored to the specific audience you have on each channel.

Paid campaigns

If you are using social media ads, you should also know how to interpret the most important metrics for paid campaigns.

Many inexperienced marketers rely too much on Meta suggestions when they set up Facebook and Instagram ads and end up with poor conversion. Don’t get me wrong, this is a great start, but you need to be aware of your goals and the ad performance to gain maximum revenue.

Whether you are aiming to boost brand awareness or increase social media conversions, you should look at different metrics. If your sole purpose is to reach as many people as possible, then you should measure impressions and engagement metrics. If your ads are more sales-oriented, try to minimize the CPC (cost per click) rate.

All major social media networks have built-in analytics tools, but if you manage more than one channel, I strongly recommend using advanced social media analytics tools. The advantage of third-party tools is that they can consolidate various metrics and show you overall impressions, reach and more data, and turn them into valuable insights.

Social media insights for advanced marketers

Let’s not proceed to more advanced insights that will elevate your social media campaigns to the next level. In today’s saturated marketing world, it’s not enough to rely on basic analytics. You need to really dig into all the data available and have a deeper understanding of your actions and audience. Here are some consumer insights you can use in your future marketing campaigns.

Sentiment analysis

So what if a lot of people talk about your brand online if it’s mostly a negative sentiment? If you were relying only on the engagement statistics, you could say that your campaign was successful. After running a sentiment analytics tool, it turns out it’s mostly a bad word. This is why you should not stop at the basic metrics and dig deeper.

Sentiment analysis allows you to discover if your brand is mentioned online with mostly positive or mostly negative connotations. Analyzing consumer sentiment will tell you more about your brand health and awareness and help you to navigate PR campaigns better.

Read more: How to do Social Media Sentiment Analysis?

Audience segmentation

It’s mostly useful for ads targeting, but you can use it in day-to-day social media management as well.

Do not think of your audience as one homogeneous group. Instead, segment them into different subgroups based on various factors like age, location, interests, behaviors, etc. In a similar way to building buyer personas, you can create separate social media personas that reflect behavior on your social channels.

Using the audience segmentation social media insight, you will be able to target your ads more precisely and thus increase conversion rates.

Social listening

To achieve a deeper understanding of your social audience, implement social listening tactics in your routine. Social listening is a procedure of tracking online conversations to gain insights about your brand’s reputation, customer sentiment, trends, and competitors, which can inform marketing strategies and customer engagement.

By implementing social listening into your strategy, you will be able to quickly find all online conversations about your brand, product, or niche. Use the advantage to start social selling or discover more valuable insights about your marketing.

Using influencer performance as an indicator of social media health

Influencer marketing still plays a huge role in social media marketing. And yes, you can gain a lot of social media insights from influencers.

Firstly, if you already have influencer marketing campaigns set up and work closely with internet personas, you can directly ask them what they think about your brand or marketing efforts and adjust accordingly if the insights seem true.

Secondly, you can observe users’ reactions to your influencers’ posts and (similarly to social listening tactics) discover consumer insights about your brand, product, or industry.

Customer retention and loyalty

You can measure customer loyalty and retention through social media engagement. It might not be an obvious metric, but it’s certainly beneficial to watch.

You can use Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure how likely your customers are to recommend your products to their friends. This will show you how loyal customers are to your brand.

You can use audience analytics to measure retention and how many returning social media customers you have.

Predictive analysis

Now, this is a little bit futuristic. With the advancement of AI, you can actually predict future trends and customer interactions. It’s usually never 100% accurate, but you can use various tools like Bloomreach, Improvado, or Looker to have a general understanding of where the marketing trends evolve the most.

All digital strategies should include some form of future predictions, so why not use advanced AI to help yourself a little bit?

Benefits of leveraging social media insights

Your ability to properly understand social media metrics is fundamental if you want to bring your marketing strategy to the next level. Here’s what you can benefit from when you correctly interpret every social media insight.

1. A better understanding of your audience. Insights can provide valuable data about your audience’s demographics, behaviors, interests, and more. This allows you to create content and campaigns that resonate with your audience.
2. Content marketing strategy improvements. By analyzing what type of content gets the most engagement, you can refine your content strategy to deliver more of what your audience likes and less of what they don’t.
3. Optimize posting times. Insights can show you when your audience is most active, allowing you to schedule your posts for these times and days and increase engagement.
4. Measuring success. You can measure the success of your social media efforts and see if you’re meeting your goals by tracking key performance indicators (KPIs).
5. Identify trends. Tracking your performance over time can help you identify trends in your audience’s behavior and in the performance of your content.
6. Competitive analysis. Social media insights can help you understand what your competitors are doing, what’s working for them, and how you can differentiate yourself.
7. Better ad targeting. Insights can help you create more effective ad campaigns by providing data on who your audience is and what they’re interested in.

Social media analytics tools

Long gone are the days when marketers had to do all the work manually. There are thousands of online tools that can help you automate your work and gather valuable consumer insights. Here’s a list of my personal top tools that can make your job easier and more productive.

Brand24

Brand24 is an AI-powered social listening tool that collects publicly available brand mentions (or any given keyword, actually). You can use it to discover who’s talking about your brand or products online and take notes or jump right into the conversations. Collecting brand mentions will help you to measure brand awareness, engagement, and the overall condition of your brand. But that’s not all.

Brand24 also provides valuable insights about your social media reach. Additionally, you can use the tool to find the most influential social profiles in your niche or perform a competitor analysis.

We offer a free 14-day trial, so you can see what the tool can do!

Buffer

Buffer has to be my favorite social media management tool. Its simplicity makes it very intuitive, but at the same time, it offers some advanced analytics features.

First and foremost, it’s a management tool, so you can prepare and schedule posts for various social media channels via Buffer. It’s mostly useful for social media marketers who manage more than one profile or many channels at once. But that’s, of course, not everything. We are talking about the analytics tools, after all.

Buffer analyzes your posts and creates advanced reports based on the activity. The reports are super useful for gathering social media insights, so don’t miss out on the opportunity to grab the free trial and test the tool.

Brandwatch

Brandwatch is an advanced social media intelligence tool for enterprises. While it has a very advanced analytics section, it might not be the best choice for smaller agencies or individual users. It’s still worth mentioning, anyway.

Brandwatch is an all-in-one suite for consumer intelligence, social media management, and influencer marketing. It provides detailed analytics about your social media that can be turned into actionable insights. What’s worth mentioning is that Brandwatch is an official partner of Meta, Twitter, and TikTok, meaning they work closely with each other to provide the best user experience.

Unfortunately, Brandwatch doesn’t offer a free trial for anyone. If you want to test the tool, you need to contact their sales team to discuss solutions.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is another very popular tool for social media managers. The tool offers management and reporting features.

You can easily schedule posts on multiple social media platforms, analyze data, manage social media ads, and more! Hootsuite also provides integrations with all major networks, so Facebook posts, YouTube videos, or Pinterest pins are no problem. But that’s not all because the tool offers 150+ apps that can be added to your suite (for example, Canva, Shopview for Shopify, or Google My Business).

Their most recent addition is OwlyWriter AI, which will help you to come up with engaging posts.

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We also prepared a longer list of social media analytics tools if you are interested!

Ways to improve your social media marketing strategy

By analyzing social media data and discovering valuable insights, you will be able to boost your social media strategies and reach more goals. Here’s what you can do to improve your social game:

1. Set clear goals. Understand what you want to achieve from your social media marketing efforts, be it increased brand awareness, higher website traffic, or improved customer engagement. KPIs (key point indicators) should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound).
2. Know your audience. You can use your social media insights to understand the audience’s demographics, interests, and behaviors. Tailor your content and engagement strategies to meet their needs and preferences.
3. Create quality content. Provide value to your audience through high-quality, relevant, and engaging content. This could be informative blog posts, captivating images, engaging videos, or interactive polls and quizzes. Don’t get discouraged if your content doesn’t perform well. That’s not an excuse to do a lousy job!
4. Post consistently. Consistency is key in social media marketing. Determine the best times to post for your audience and create a regular posting schedule.
5. Engage with your audience: Social media is all about building relationships. Respond to comments, answer questions, and engage with your followers’ content. Encourage user-generated content and discussions.
6. Use social media advertising. Paid advertising can help expand your reach and visibility, targeting specific audiences based on demographic and psychographic data.
7. Monitor and adjust. Continuously analyze your social media performance. Use the insights derived from your analytics tools to adjust your strategy, content, and engagement methods as necessary.
8. Stay updated. Social media platforms and trends change rapidly. Stay updated with the latest features, trends, and algorithms to maximize your strategy’s effectiveness.

Frequently asked questions

What is an example of social insight?

Social insights are actionable conclusions derived from data collected on social media platforms. An example might involve a business looking at their audience demographics on Instagram.

Let’s say, after analyzing Instagram insights, a clothing retail company finds out that 70% of their followers are women aged 18-24, mostly based in New York and California, and they’re particularly active on the platform between 6 pm and 9 pm.

This information serves as valuable insight in several ways:

1. Content development. Knowing that their audience is predominantly young women, the company can tailor their content to appeal more to this demographic. They might focus on showcasing women’s clothing in styles and settings that resonate with this age group.
2. Posting schedule. Since their followers are most active between 6 pm and 9 pm, it would make sense to post during this timeframe to increase visibility and engagement.
3. Product development and marketing. Knowing where the majority of their audience is based (New York and California), they might consider launching region-specific clothing lines or marketing campaigns.
4. Ad targeting. The company could use these insights to target Instagram ads specifically towards women aged 18-24 in New York and California, likely increasing the effectiveness of their advertising.

These insights derived from the data help the company make informed decisions about their social media strategy, product development, and marketing efforts.

How do you create social media insights?

Creating social media insights involves collecting data from your social media platforms and analyzing it to derive actionable conclusions. The process varies slightly depending on the platform and the type of insights you are interested in, but here are the general steps you would typically follow:

1. Set up analytics
2. Determine what metrics to track
3. Collect data
4. Analyze the data
5. Report findings
6. Implement changes
7. Monitor and adjust

Remember, social media insights are most useful when they’re used to inform your strategy and improve your social media performance. They should be part of an ongoing process of monitoring, analyzing, and adjusting your social media strategy.

How do you analyze social media insights?

Analyzing social media insights involves several steps:

1. Defining goals. Know what you want to achieve, such as improving engagement or understanding your audience.
2. Identifying metrics. Choose relevant metrics for your goals, such as reach and impressions for awareness, likes, and comments for engagement.
3. Collecting and analyzing data. Use analytics tools to collect data and look for trends and patterns.
4. Benchmarking. Compare your performance over time and against competitors.
5. Reporting and implementation. Visualize data, make decisions based on your findings, and adjust your strategy accordingly.
6. Monitoring continuously. Keep track of trends and adjust as necessary. The goal is to make data-driven decisions to improve your social media strategy.