Native analytics are built into the back end of social platforms to provide insights on your following and engagement, and the performance of your content. Twitter offers metrics for all; for Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, you need a business page to access the information. But all native analytics are essentially free analytics.
With all of the measurement options that exist, it can be easy to forget that the social platforms themselves track loads of data—but native should nevertheless be a part of your measurement plan. To that end, here are some tips to best utilize native analytics:
Make the most of follower demographics. All platforms will give you valuable information about your followers, which you can then use to better align with your target demographic, geotarget campaigns or illustrate to company leaders the overall effectiveness of your targeting.
For example, Twitter's native analytics platform will show you a follower's interests, occupation, gender, education, marital status and buying style.
You can also track how your following has increased over the last 30 days, and also how many new followers you’ve received per day. If you notice a particular day has either gained or lost you several followers, be sure to check what you tweeted that day to try and determine the cause.
Facebook's Audience Insights can help you detect trends in your page’s audience, and see how it compares to other audiences on Facebook. Facebook's Page Insights provide data on everything happening on your brand’s page. If you want to track your content, engagement and follower growth, look there.
Use reach or impressions to repurpose content. This metric measures awareness, and puts a number to appearance in a feed or eyes on a piece of content. But it’s important to remember that followers don’t equal reach and that reach does not equal impressions.
Twitter allows you to see recent tweet performance, as well as a 28-day overview of cumulative impressions. Capitalize on this information by repurposing tweets that gained the most impressions, or creating tweets on a similar subject.
Your reach will tell you how many people are seeing your content. If you see it declining, it may be because there’s been a change in the platform's algorithm. But you also need to look at what content helps you get better reach through engagement and the platforms' longterm preferences. Native video on Facebook, for example, will get significantly more reach than posts sharing outbound links.
Use engagement to guide content strategy. Engagement quantifies actions taken—likes or reactions, retweets or shares, post clicks or URL clicks. This can tell you a lot about your relationship with your audience, and can also indicate if your content has “stopping power.”
If your Tweets are receiving little engagement, you may want to rethink your subject matter and format. For instance, you may want to add photo or video to your content mix, which tends to generate more engagement.
Facebook Page Insights offers a look at engagement rate. More followers are great, but in reality, they’re only really valuable if they’re as engaged as the audience you already have. High engagement rates mean you have an enthusiastic audience, and your content is resonating.
Benchmark data to measure success. Always evaluate your content strategy over time. But remember that top posts on the platform may not be your top metric. Always stick to your KPIs.
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