Week 14-Learning From Social Media Analytics

The use of analytics in Social Media is immensely helpful in making sure that the way business is posting and who they are posting it to is on the right track. Analytics can help businesses see which posts are being viewed, when and by whom and if a business is willing to take a little time to review that, they can dial in what and how they are utilizing Social Media to their advantage. 

Google Analytics is free and can help your business see who is viewing your posts and where they are from.  With this kind of insight, it can really help a business narrow down their target market even better or perhaps even find that their target market is broader than they had expected.  Knowing who your target market is essential for the way a business communicates with their audience.  If people lived in a rural area were your target market, you wouldn't approach them with city living types of images, you would provide images that would appeal to that base.  I believe understanding your target market is one of the most important things a business needs to understand and with analytics, it can certainly provide more information about who that target market is.

Analytics can also show you when people are viewing your posts on your Social Media platforms. This is crucial, because if you're posting ads for your products or stunning images of your products at 2pm in the afternoon on a Monday and nobody sees them, you need to know that so you can make the necessary adjustments to make sure your posts are being viewed by the maximum amount of people at those peak hours.  And each platform has different days of the week and hours that people are looking at their feed.  So, being able to use analytics to help you post on the right platform at the right time is crucial for maximum visibility.

Another powerful tool is understanding which of your posts are being viewed more than others.  So, let's you're posting a lot of pictures of your product with a very basic white background and analytics shows that those posts get very little interaction, you can switch it up to posting more vibrant images to capture your audiences attention and after several posts, see if that works.  The idea is to understand what is resonating with your audience so that you can be sure that you audience is getting what they want and in turn will be more likely to seek out your posts and do business with you.  you want to keep your audience engaged, especially in era where everyone has a very short attention span.  As a business, it's important to know what your audience wants and with analytics, you can see what's working and what's not.

I think Google Analytics is incredibly useful for any business and it's free.  I would also use the tools available on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter too.  But, all of these are great to use in conjunction with one another and they are free. I think for a business just starting out, it's wise to use these free tools before spending any money on the other options out there because as a business just starting out, it's important to be mindful of your budget and these tools are really good and quite sophisticated to someone who's new to creating a Social Media business presence.