It’s all about the numbers.
It is beyond important to use data to develop your social media strategy. At South Made we always talk about the difference between posting to post and posting with purpose. Every post, image, caption should have a specific rationale behind why you push it out. Using your social media analytics to help determine When, Where, How and Why to post What is crucial.
When Instagram changed the algorithm it seemed like it was harder to reach your target market, get more followers and collect likes. According to Later “Instagram posts are no longer getting the amount of exposure they used to. Now, it’s rumored that only 10% of your audience is actually seeing your posts in their feed.” Which brings us to the first reason to use analytics.
Figuring out when your audience is active and engaged will help your content perform best. If your prime demographic is using social media platforms first thing in the morning you should have a post live then rather than noon when they’re not online. Using data, you can hack the algorithm to increase your reach and get more likes and followers by finding your best time to post on Instagram.
But remember, it’s not all about the “Likes”.
The only way to confirm which social media network is best for your business is through numbers and experimentation. Even though Facebook has over 2 billion users and Instagram has over 800 million doesn’t mean you will get results from those platforms.
This can also help you figure out which platforms you should be spending more time managing. If you spend more time using the top performing network and less on the ones that bring in smaller results you can maximize your results. If you are selling products for example you may want to consider using Pinterest and Instagram over Twitter and Linked In.
By consistently monitoring your social media analytics you can better understand your audience and create better (more engaging) content. But creating better social media content isn’t just about analyzing your posts, it’s about your competitors too.
To figure out what content is performing best you can use the built-in analytics (like Facebook) to decide what type of media performs best. For instance do you need better images or is video content best? Again, not just your content but your competitors or similar businesses. Figure out what your prime demographic is drawn to and you will see results.
We know our image posts (pictures of the team etc) outperform any other content (including video) we push out. But, we don’t want a feed filled with just our faces. We need to also show examples of our work and maybe even more important, give the brands we love and work with extra exposure. So again, it’s not just about the likes. Pictures of our team collect more likes on Instagram than anything else, but they don’t send traffic to our website necessarily. If that is the goal we need to do something else. Oh I know, like a blog. We used the data we collect through our analytics to help us decide when to post, what to post and how to post.
Don’t have time to do all this analyzing. That’s why we’re here. Hiring a social media manager can help you see results faster and free up some of your time so you can focus on the other areas of building your business.
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