Social App Analytics

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Accessing app analytics

Analytics are an important part of any social media marketing campaign because they enable you to measure performance across a variety of key metrics. These then inform the development of your marketing strategies as you focus on high-performance metrics and make necessary changes to address low-performing metrics.

If you want to avail of a social app’s analytics features, you will usually need to upgrade your account type to a business or Pro account, depending on the social app. Changing your account to a Pro or business account is generally free and can be found in the settings section of each app. After switching your account type, you will get access to various analytics tools and features. Typically, this includes linking with advertising tools as well as enhanced analytics and insights, which can help you run better social campaigns.

Navigating the analytics tools

Analytics tools present the raw data, or metrics, and also enable you to glean insights from these metrics.

You will need to become familiar with the analytics tools in order to navigate to the key insights. The insights that you are likely to focus on include total impressions for the week, top posts for the week, follower activity, and so on.

A general rule of thumb when it comes to analytics is to look out for anomalies or changes in the data that might indicate an opportunity or a problem to be addressed. Typically, data can be quite stable in the short term. We might not notice changes over a day or two, for example, so you’ll need to look at longer date ranges to get a feel for the data over time. Look for changes in data patterns, such as spikes or drops in performance in relation to the metrics that are related to your goals and KPIs.

Your KPIs are the numbers that you’ll use to show the success of your campaigns in relation to your objectives and it’s important to choose what’s best for you. For example, if you are looking to build your brand as an objective, you can set KPIs around post engagement and measure the number of comments and shares via the app analytics. On the other hand, if you are looking to expand the awareness of your latest offer, you can measure follower growth as a main KPI.

Filtering the data

The amount of data generated by social apps’ analytics tools can be overwhelming. Marketers need to filter this data so that they can quickly find the information that they need.

As a marketer, you need to know how to filter your content and posts by metrics including impressions, reach, engagement, likes, comments, video views, and profile visits, over a specific date range. Focus is key when it comes to analytics data. While we don’t need to ignore all of the data, we should use filters to isolate the numbers that will give us the insights we need to show success, or make improvements to the campaign.

To filter your content and posts by metrics, you may wish to consider the following steps:

1. Choose the metrics that relate to your objectives and set these as KPIs
2. Filter the data to isolate these metrics
3. For context, you can look at your engagement rates per 1,000 followers to maintain a consistent metric as your follower numbers fluctuate
4. Set a long enough date range, ideally over 3 weeks and look for changes in the data patterns
5. Try to relate changes in the data to actions you might have taken like posting a specific offer or content type
6. You can set custom filters in Google Analytics to track visitors that are sent from specific social networks to your website
7. Create a dashboard that captures the data within your social apps, and the traffic your apps send to your other web properties
8. This data is great for exploration, but you should use it to set hypotheses
9. Set a hypothesis that your action might have caused a change in performance
10. Test this hypothesis by doing a similar action to gauge the response
11. Ensure that you have strict control and treatment groups for your test
12. Measure the results
13. Use the data from the test to prove or disprove the hypothesis
14. Keep the learnings to hand to apply to future campaigns

You will want to set benchmarks to help add context to your social media data. For example, you can track competitor activity to see how often they post, their average engagement rates, and their follower numbers.

It is also important to set benchmarks within your own performance data. As your customer base grows, you will notice different engagement patterns. Take note of your average interaction rates every time you add a significant number of new followers, so you can adjust expectations accordingly.

And remember: social media app data provides invaluable insights into audience preferences and trends. Set up a simplified dashboard that senior executives can access too, as they will appreciate this direct access to real-time customer feedback.

Example: Gillette TREO

Gillette set up social media tracking across all of its apps to detect new conversations and trends. The company found that there was an unserved segment of the market: Caregivers who need a razor designed for shaving someone else.

Gillette moved quickly to launch this product, called TREO. There is a waitlist to sign up for TREO samples, as demand has exceeded Gillette’s expectations.

This is an example of the power of social media app analytics. For brands that are set up to listen, there is an opportunity to hear instant feedback and identify new opportunities.