Social Media Analytics ere s a whole world out ere!

Social Media Analytics there's a whole world out there!

By Rachael Ireland, PR Account Manager at ICG

I attended a great Social Media: Awesome Analysis' conference yesterday, which was organised by Downtown in Business and delivered by Tom Stables and Nathaniel Cassidy of 3ManFactory.

With over one billion users on Facebook, 500 million on Twitter and 200 million on LinkedIn, social media has become an integral part of businesses these days, but it's surprising just how many companies aren't using it to their advantage.

If your business has a social media presence but you're unsure of whether it's working or bringing in business, then read on to learn about the goldmine of insights available to help you focus and refine your strategy and increase your return on investment.

Facebook Insights

Your company page needs to have at least 30 Likes' to start seeing insights and once you do, this free tool allows you to measure your page's performance. You can also find demographic data about your audience i.e. if you want to attract local business but according to your insights your audience is based on the other side of the country, you probably need to make your posts more targeted.

Facebook insights also allow you to see how people are discovering and responding to your posts and it highlights the time of day your audience is most active (if your page gets the most traffic in the evenings/weekends, you should consider scheduling posts).

Don't be afraid to experiment with different types of posts. Try posting photos, polls or questions to see what your audience responds to best.

Another top tip is to change your settings to allow people to tag themselves in your photos this will encourage people to share your photos and increase talkability.

LinkedIn Insights

Company page administrators have access to LinkedIn analytics which can help users better engage with their followers and monitor their success. Similar to Facebook, you can track your engagement rates and demographics will not only allow you to tailor the type of content you share on your company page, as well as the tone in which it's delivered, demographics will also help you determine targeted status updates.

Topsy

This is a free tool which allows users to search and compare content posted on Twitter and the social web. By clicking on the View Trends on Topsy Analytics' button, users can compare the reach (number of people your post reaches) of up to three Tweets on an easy to read graph.

Klout

Klout is a website that uses social media analytics to rank its users according to online social influence via the Klout Score' which is a numerical value between one and 100. In just a few seconds you can discover your Klout Score, main influencers and knowledgeable topics when I tried it my top three topics (much to my relief!) were PR, Marketing and Manchester go on, see what your Klout rankings are!

Mail Chimp

Designed to improve the way you send emails, this email marketing service can identify average open rate, click rate and subscribe/unsubscribe rate particularly useful for email marketing campaigns.

Social Bro

Specifically for Twitter, this all-rounder allows users to identify the best time to Tweet, track competitors, monitor hashtags and keywords and a whole host of other useful insights definitely worth checking out.

And finally, my personal favourite

Bitly

Not only is this a URL shortening tool, Bitly.com allows users to track how far your link has gone simply by putting a + on the end of your link.

In addition to this, by entering www.bitly.com/social_media_dashboard users can access all of their social media activity, which is summarised on one page and can be refined and compared by date range. Although the setting up process is slightly lengthy, it's worth it in the long run.

LINK:	http://www.icgonline.co.uk/blog/2013/10/30/social-media-analytics-ther...
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