Social Media Data Analytics Resources | Sprout Social Sprout Social offers a suite of <a href="/features/" class="fw-bold">social media solutions</a> that supports organizations and agencies in extending their reach, amplifying their brands and creating real connections with their audiences. Thu, 16 Mar 2023 14:22:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://media.sproutsocial.com/uploads/2020/06/cropped-Sprout-Leaf-32x32.png Social Media Data Analytics Resources | Sprout Social 32 32 The social media customer service metrics that experts measure https://sproutsocial.com/insights/customer-service-metrics/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/customer-service-metrics/#respond Thu, 16 Mar 2023 14:00:02 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=148617/ When you think about social media customer service, there are probably two encounters that come to mind: the best experience a brand ever provided…and Read more...

The post The social media customer service metrics that experts measure appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> When you think about social media customer service, there are probably two encounters that come to mind: the best experience a brand ever provided…and the worst.

For example, maybe you’re completely loyal to the airline whose customer service rep magically found you the perfect flight. Even in the face of price increases and flight cancellations, you’ll never book with another airline again.

On the other hand, you might still be furious at the furniture company that delivered the wrong items to your home and refused to refund you. Even after five years, nothing can persuade you to end your boycott of the brand.

A data visualization that reads: When brands take too long to respond on social media, consumers will... The responses include share their negative responses with friends and family (36%), not complete their purchase (31%) and buy from a competitor instead (30%).

Many of us know firsthand that poor social customer service has consequences, and the data agrees. According to The Sprout Social Index™, when brands take too long to respond, 36% of consumers share their negative experience with friends and family, 31% won’t complete their purchase and 30% buy from a competitor instead.

Only the brands that go above and beyond for their customers receive enviable brand loyalty. In this article, we’re breaking down the essential social media customer service metrics you need to track to ensure you provide exceptional service and care on social. As customer service inquiries continue to increase on the channel, up-leveling your efforts will help you future-proof your business and stand out from your competition.

What are social media customer service metrics?

Social media customer service metrics are data points that help you tell the story of how well your customer care efforts are satisfying your customers. These metrics uncover what your social customer care team is doing well, where there are opportunities to improve and what tools are needed to fill those gaps. Social customer service metrics can be grouped into three categories: speed and efficiency, volume and team productivity, and sentiment.

A graphic that reads: What are social media customer service metrics? Data points that enable your team to tell the story of how well your customer care efforts are satisfying your customers. These metrics help you learn vital insights that translate to organization-wide goals.

Social customer support data also reveals how your support strategy on social fits into the omnichannel customer experience your brand provides. Using data empowers you to answer questions like:

  • Where are our customers most likely to make service inquiries?
  • How satisfied are our customers with the support we provide on social? How does it compare to other channels?
  • What are our customers’ most common questions?
  • Where in the funnel are our customers most likely to get stuck?

How to use customer service metrics to level-up your org-wide performance

Tapping into customer service metrics will help evolve your approach to customer care. With these findings, you will be on track to cultivate an emotional connection with your audience, build brand loyalty and foster customer retention and advocacy.

But the use of these metrics goes beyond improving the customer experience. Social media customer service metrics have the power to transform the way you do business—from refining product development to building your company-wide strategy. For example, the team at Grammarly uses incoming customer support messages to surface valuable user stories for their product and user experience teams, as well as company leadership.

And they’re not alone. In a Gartner online survey of 283 customer service and support leaders from August–October 2022, 84% of customer service and service support leaders cited customer data and analytics as “very or extremely important” for achieving their organizational goals in 2023.

Customer insights gleaned from service interactions on social are your “secret sauce” for building cross-functional collaboration at your company. Let’s get into the 10 specific metrics you need to monitor, and how you can track them with Sprout Social.

Speed and efficiency customer service metrics

How quickly your brand responds on social media contributes to your reputation for providing good customer service. According to Index data, while more than three-quarters of consumers expect a response in the first 24 hours of reaching out to a brand on social, 57% actually expect a response within the first hour.

Measuring your team’s response rate efficiency is imperative. Look to the following metrics to help benchmark and improve your performance.

1. Average first reply time

Average first reply time refers to the time it takes for your team to send out the first reply to an inbound customer message within business hours.

2. Average reply wait time

Measuring the time to your first response is just the beginning. Average reply time reveals how long customers wait in between responses until their issues are resolved, which is equally important.

For example, if it took five minutes for you to reply to their first message, and 10 minutes to reply to their second, the average reply wait time would be seven minutes.

How to track these in Sprout Social

In Sprout Social, the Smart Inbox unifies all your incoming messages into a single stream, enabling you to monitor incoming messages, foster conversations and respond to your audience quickly. The Inbox also creates multiple reports that visualize and contextualize your team’s customer service performance.

A screenshot of Sprout Social's Smart Inbox tool that demonstrates a brand receiving all incoming messages and mentions from social in a single stream. In the image, you can see incoming messages from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The Inbox Team Report enables you to evaluate your brand’s reply times at a team level and distill the metrics down by team member. The report also demonstrates median first reply times, slowest reply times, unique messages replied to and total replies listed by team members.

Use these insights to evaluate agent response performance more accurately, identify bottlenecks within your team’s workflows and closely monitor each agent’s activity for quality assurance or training purposes.

A screenshot of Sprout's Inbox Team Report that displays overall average wait and reply times, as well as social customer service metrics by team member.

By using features like this in Sprout, MeUndies reduced their average response time to less than 20 minutes.

Volume and team productivity customer service metrics

High-quality customer service isn’t just about response times. You must also demonstrate that you’re resolving all customers’ problems, questions and inquiries that require comprehensive support solutions. To do this, compare your productivity data to your overall volume and social media customer service stats in your industry.

3. Total received messages

The number of total received messages indicates how many total customer messages landed in your inbox.

4. Total replies or response volume

This figure represents the total number of responses your team sends to customers.

5. Reply or response rate

Response rate is the rate that brands respond to messages or comments that they receive on a daily basis. Not every single comment or message will need a response, and the amount you need to respond depends on the needs of your customers.

Social media response rates vary by industry, with an average overall response rate of 34%. The consumer products, health, wellness and fitness, retail and food and beverage industries are leading response rates by responding to over half of all incoming customer messages.

A graphic representation of social media response rates by industry. The consumer products, health, wellness and fitness, retail and food and beverage industries are leading response rates by responding to over 50% all incoming customer messages.

6. Resolution rate

Resolution rate—the percentage of customer inquiries that are fully resolved—reveals how equipped your entire company is to address customer inquiries. This data illustrates how well your internal teams collaborate to find solutions for customers in a timely manner. It’s calculated by dividing the number of total actioned messages by the total number of messages.

How to track these in Sprout Social

The Inbox Activity Report provides a holistic view of your team’s social care efforts by presenting trends of incoming message volume and identifying the rate and speed of actions taken on messages by your teams. This report answers how much your team is accomplishing in the Smart Inbox.

A screenshot of Sprout's Inbox Activity Report. In the report, you can see a summary of all key performance metrics for received messages and inbox actions and a change over time in inbox volume.

You can also use the Task Performance Report to measure your team’s productivity and efficiency based on task management. The report compares the number of assigned tasks with the total completed tasks.

A screenshot of Sprout's Task Performance Report that demonstrates task metrics overall (total assigned compared to total completed) and broken down by team member performance.

Sentiment customer service metrics

With so much valuable performance data, it might be tempting to zero-in on ways you can optimize your social customer care strategy. But don’t forget about the big picture. The insights you gain from your customer interactions are integral to your entire company’s strategy. Maximize the impact of your direct access to the customer by sharing sentiment analysis data companywide.

7. Most used quick replies

If you use a chatbot to optimize customer interactions on social, most used quick replies refer to the most commonly selected options. Use this data point to identify customer support trends, and optimize your customer service process to address these common requests quickly.

8. Most received topics and subtopics

The keywords or themes that pop up in your inbox often are your most received topics and subtopics. Tracking these topics and subtopics is challenging without the use of a tagging system or machine learning capabilities—however, tuning into them is essential for learning about your audience.

9. Positive and negative sentiment

Sentiment trends tell you a lot about what your customers think about your brand, products and services. Overall, sentiment can be described as generally positive or negative. Although that doesn’t encompass the full context of a customer’s experience, it does help you track and maintain a healthy ratio of positive sentiment, and be on the lookout for changes over time.

10. Voice of the customer data

Social media could be described as the world’s largest focus group. It unlocks an unprecedented amount of voice of the customer data, which helps you get to know your customers’ behavior, pain points, preferences and needs on a deeper level. This customer service metric is less quantifiable, but nonetheless rich in value.

How to track these in Sprout Social

When you receive incoming messages in Sprout’s Smart Inbox, you are able to add tags that indicate the content of the messages. For example, you can tag for audience type or service issue. Tagging your messages will enable you to visualize trends and report findings.

A screenshot of Sprout's Smart Inbox filtered for the tags coffee and latte. Only messages with those tags appear in the inbox.

You can also use Sprout’s artificial intelligence-powered listening tools to uncover sentiment trends from the Inbox. Listening tools make it easy to track changes in sentiment, which empower you to share reports in a timely manner—and act on negative sentiment before it’s too late.

A screenshot of a Listening Performance Sentiment Summary in Sprout. It depicts percentage of positive sentiment and changes in sentiment trends over time.

Provide your customers with an unforgettable social customer service experience

Whether you’re part of a social media team handling social support, part of a dedicated support team or somewhere in between, ground yourself in your goals for customer service. Then, as you measure performance and social media customer care metrics, you can adjust and better cater to your customers.

Try Sprout Social free for 30 days to start gathering these insights and get to know your customers on a deeper level.

The post The social media customer service metrics that experts measure appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/customer-service-metrics/feed/ 0 Masterclass: How to Prepare Your Brand for a New Era in Social https://sproutsocial.com/insights/webinars/expert-masterclass-how-to-prepare-your-brand-for-a-new-era-in-social/ Wed, 15 Mar 2023 13:57:12 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?post_type=webinars&p=170481/ A lot has changed in social media since the early 2000s. Social has become influence–it is now the channel on which trends are born, Read more...

The post Masterclass: How to Prepare Your Brand for a New Era in Social appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> A lot has changed in social media since the early 2000s. Social has become influence–it is now the channel on which trends are born, important conversations take place and sentiments are revealed. We’re in a new era of social media. Is your brand prepared to meet the ever-evolving expectations of your audience?  

Rachel Karten, Social Media Consultant and creator of the Link in Bio Newsletter, has been in the industry for over a decade and knows quite a bit about the evolution of consumer-brand relations in the social world. She worked for brands like Bon Appétit and Plated and recently worked on the famous campaign at CAVA with Youtube star, Emma Chamberlain. 

Join us on Thursday, March 30th at 1 pm CT for a masterclass with Rachel Karten to learn how to best prepare for this next phase of social. 

You’ll leave this masterclass uncovering:

  • Why your old social strategy will no longer work in the new era of social media
  • How your brand can optimize social content for engagement
  • 3 campaign examples from brands Rachel helped succeed and tactics you can implement now

Your Speakers:

The post Masterclass: How to Prepare Your Brand for a New Era in Social appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> The complete guide to TikTok analytics https://sproutsocial.com/insights/tiktok-analytics/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/tiktok-analytics/#respond Tue, 28 Feb 2023 14:00:26 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=143616/ There’s no doubt that TikTok is one of the world’s most popular social media apps. And with over 1 billion users, TikTok offers plenty Read more...

The post The complete guide to TikTok analytics appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> There’s no doubt that TikTok is one of the world’s most popular social media apps. And with over 1 billion users, TikTok offers plenty of value for brands and businesses.

With TikTok analytics, you will see how users are engaging with your content, where your followers are located, their age demographics, when they’re most active and other metrics. These insights will help you craft content that connects with your target audiences and expands your reach. It can also give you a clear answer into whether your efforts are paying off.

In this guide, we break down how to access and understand your TikTok analytics.

Navigate the article:

What is TikTok analytics?

TikTok analytics refers to the data collected from content to help content creators and brands track the performance of videos. It includes video metrics, such as views, likes, comments and shares, as well as information about your profile and followers. Along with your creativity, leveraging analytics is key to creating your TikTok marketing strategy.

Why are TikTok analytics important for your business?

You’re probably familiar with the experience of balancing social media trends while growing your brand’s following and engagement. Managing social’s fast-paced nature can be tough, especially if you have limited resources. Using TikTok for business analytics is a must because it helps you keep up with trends, but it also requires you to dive deeper to differentiate your audience and identify their specific behaviors and preferences.

Here’s some of our other top reasons using TikTok analytics for business is so important:

1: Create a data-driven content strategy

TikTok analytics will help you create a data-driven TikTok marketing strategy by pinpointing your most engaging videos and uncovering information about your audience, like when they are the most active and their location.

The insights you receive can inform your content topics, best posting times, potential content creators and influencers to collaborate with, relevant trends and more.

2: Connect with your target audience

The community-oriented nature of TikTok allows brands to cater to their niche and target audience. TikTok analytics gives you the insights needed to create content that resonates and engages your target audience. And, if done correctly, you can optimize your strategy for conversion as well.

For example, you can view hashtags to determine relevant trends or to inspire TikTok challenges and campaigns.

3. Prove return on investment

TikTok analytics can provide the evidence you need to prove your return on investment. And if you’re able to create a compelling data story, it’ll be easier to justify a need for more resources for your campaigns.

How to access native TikTok analytics

Like other social media apps, TikTok offers native analytics. Here’s how to access TikTok analytics via mobile and desktop.

How to access TikTok analytics from mobile

  1. Tap the profile icon in the bottom right-hand corner.
  2. Tap the three vertical lines in the top right corner and click Creator Tools.An image showing how to access creator tools from the TikTok profile page.
  3. Tap Analytics.
TikTok's creator tools, which features these sections: Analytics, Creator Portal, Promote and Q&A. The Analytic sections is highlighted with a red box.

How to access TikTok analytics from desktop

  1. Log into your account by going to TikTok.com. (You can also go to tiktok.com/analytics if you are already logged in).
  2. Hover over your profile icon, then select View Analytics.
  3. On the TikTok homepage, hover over your profile icon and select Business Suite.
Image of TikTok homepage with the Business Suite dropdown highlighted with a red box.

4. This will take you directly to the Analytics section of your account.

Overview section within TikTok analytics. Engagement is shown for the last seven days. The analytics section along the sidebar is highlighted with a red box.

TikTok insights and metrics to monitor

Here’s a breakdown of what’s available in native TikTok analytics:

TikTok Account overview

TikTok has four primary analytics sections: overview, content, followers and LIVE. Within each of those categories are sub-categories of analytics.

TikTok's four primary analytics sections: overview, content, followers and LIVE. The sub-categories are highlighted at the top with a red box. Red arrows point to the followers, content and LIVE sub-categories for emphasis as well.

Video views

This area shows you a bar graph of how many views your videos have received in the last seven days. You can also view video engagement for the last 28 days, 60 days or set a custom date range to get a better understanding of your growth, and any fluctuations or trends.

TikTok analytics "Select date range" feature. Users can select the last seven, 28 or 60 days. There's also a custom date range option.

Profile views

This section reveals the number of profile views over your desired date range (last seven, last 28, last 60 days or a custom date range), which can help you identify the type of content that’s driving people to your profile.

The overview tab also shows you:

  • The number of likes, comments and shares for each video
  • The number of comments you’ve received
  • The number of videos you’ve shared

TikTok follower analytics

The third tab in your TikTok analytics is all about your follower stats. Seeing exact followers on TikTok and in-depth information about audience demographics is always helpful to ensure your content is resonating with your target audience and supporting follower growth.

Followers

This area tells you the total number of accounts that follow you along with your net followers. Net followers show the number of new followers minus the number of unfollows in the last 7 days.

TikTok followers section showing total and net followers over the last 60 days.

Growth rate

This tells you the number of followers you gained or dropped against the previous date range.

Gender

A basic pie chart with the percentage of your followers by gender.

TikTok analytics follower insights for gender.

Age demographics

This section breaks down your followers by age group.

TikTok analytics follower insights for age. Data for ages 18-55+ is shown.

Top countries and cities

This section highlights the top five countries and cities your followers are located.

TikTok follower insights showing top five countries and regions. The United States, Nigeria, Russia, the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia are shown as the top five countries.
TikTok analytics follower insights showing top cities. Atlanta, Dallas, Abeokuta, Los Angeles and Federal Way are shown as the top five cities.

Most active times

This part of TikTok analytics shows the average times your followers are active. You can view these times by hours and days. Ideally, you’ll want to post your content before daily user activity peaks.

TikTok analytics bar chart showing the most active times by hour from 12 am until 11 pm. 8 am is the most active time.

Using this information strategically will help you determine the best times to post on TikTok to reach the most followers. Pay attention to the tallest bars in the graph to see when most of your followers are online, then base your TikTok posting schedule around that.

TikTok content analytics

The next tab in your TikTok analytics is the content tab. This section shows more specific information about the actual TikTok content you’re publishing, including your most viewed video. All content metrics are available for the previous seven days only.

The content tab also shows you some of the same information you can see in the overview—total likes, comments and shares.

Video posts

Here you’ll see views at a glance for the last nine videos that you posted in the last seven days. You’ll also get a glimpse into whether you stayed on par with your post frequency from the previous period, or if you posted more or less content.

TikTok Analytics content section showing video posts and trending videos over the last seven days.

Trending videos

This section shows the top nine videos with the fastest growth in view numbers over the past seven days.

Video views by section

In this section, you’re able to see how people found your video, whether it was from your profile or if it appeared on their For You feed.

Video views by region

This section gives you insight into the region your video reached and where viewers are from so that you can see exactly where your content performs best.

Average watch time

This is the average length of time people watched your videos—a good indicator of whether your videos are engaging to audiences. You will also see how often users stayed until the end to watch your entire video.

Total play time

This is the cumulative watch time for all users who viewed your video, a helpful metric for comparing the performance of your videos.

TikTok LIVE analytics

If you click on the TikTok LIVE tab, you will be taken to the LIVE Center. If you’ve hosted live videos in the past 28 days or week, in LIVE Center you’ll be able to see insights such as:

  • Total views: The number of viewers for your live videos within your selected date range.
  • Total time: The time you’ve spent hosting live videos within your selected date range.
  • New followers: TikTok users who began following you while you were hosting a live video within your selected date range.
  • Top viewer count: The highest number of live video viewers at one specific time within your selected date range.
  • Unique viewers: Viewers who watched your live video at least once (even if a viewer replays your video, they are counted only once).
  • Diamonds: Virtual gifts that users may send you—you can exchange these for money through TikTok.
  • Viewer ranking: The viewers with the highest gift count and watch time.
TikTok's LIVE Center homepage with tabs for updates, LIVE analytics, viewer ranking, suggested hosts to follow and the LIVE Academy.

Also, consider checking out the LIVE Academy to learn tips and tricks for livestreaming on TikTok.

Viewing TikTok analytics with Sprout Social

Leveraging TikTok native analytics can improve your content strategy, but you will uncover even more insights by analyzing data in a tool like Sprout Social.

Sprout’s automated, presentation-ready reports take the manual work out of reporting, and make it easier to compare your performance on TikTok to your other networks. Sprout’s TikTok integration helps you:

  • Compare your results over time: While TikTok’s native reporting shows you metrics over the past 60 days, we’ll keep all of your historical TikTok data once it’s connected to Sprout. This enables you to view month-over-month or year-over-year comparisons to track how your videos perform over time.
  • Measure everything in one view: Evaluate all of your TikTok-specific metrics in one view with a dedicated TikTok Profiles Report.
  • See how TikTok compares across social networks: Want to see how TikTok performs against similar content (e.g. Instagram)? Look at your post performance across networks in the same report automatically.
A screenshot of Sprout's TikTok Performance Report that demonstrates the number of published posts, views and engagements from one TikTok account. A line graph shows the number of video views over two weeks.

Use TikTok analytics to grow your business

Now that you know how to navigate TikTok’s analytics dashboard, you’ll need to make sure you’re keeping an eye on the rest of your social media as well. It can be challenging and time-consuming to combine data from multiple native analytics reports across every social platform. Add in the task of keeping up with trends on top of making creative content and you’ve add a lot more responsibility to your plate.

That’s where Sprout Social comes in—our social media management tool can help you keep track not just of TikTok, but other networks too like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Our platform’s deep analytics and automation will save you time, so you can have more space to be creative and experiment.

Keep up with what consumers most want out of short-form video with our TikTok integration.

The post The complete guide to TikTok analytics appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/tiktok-analytics/feed/ 0 23 essential Twitter statistics to guide your strategy in 2023 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/twitter-statistics/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/twitter-statistics/#respond Mon, 27 Feb 2023 15:30:00 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=130004/ Want to check the score of the game? The latest election updates? If a certain singer-turned-mogul is expecting their second child? There’s only one Read more...

The post 23 essential Twitter statistics to guide your strategy in 2023 appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> Want to check the score of the game? The latest election updates? If a certain singer-turned-mogul is expecting their second child? There’s only one place to go: Twitter.

Despite a year of significant change, Twitter is still the first platform people turn to for breaking news in 2023. To tap into the hub of current events and trending conversations, you have to dig into Twitter analytics to understand how people use the platform. This includes staying up-to-date on the latest Twitter statistics that can shape your approach.

Doing so will help you better understand your target audience. According to The 2022 Sprout Social Index™, 36% of consumers will pick a brand over a competitor if they feel understood, up from 21% in 2021.

A data visualization that reads: "What affects consumers' decision to pick a brand over a competitor." In 2021, 21% of consumers would pick a brand if that brand understood them as a consumer. By 2022, that figure increased to 36% of consumers.

While platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Instagram might have more users, Twitter’s audience is active, engaged and plugged-in, and brands should consider it a valuable channel to connect with their audience.

Check out these 23 Twitter statistics to inspire and guide your social media strategy this year.

General Twitter stats every marketer should know

1. Monthly active users: 436 million

2. Worldwide usage ranking: 14th most popular social media network

3. Revenue: $5.08 billion

4. Ownership: Privately held

Twitter is at a unique crossroads. For one thing, new ownership has spurred renewed interest in the platform and increased user activity. As of January 2023, Twitter has 436 million monthly active users (MAU), up from 366 million in December 2022. Despite still trailing other networks like Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram and TikTok, this growth indicates rapid and notable increases in user activity. (Pro tip: Use Twitter analytics tools to measure your brand’s unique audience performance.)

A data visualization that reads 436 million monthly active Twitter users. Statista is the source of the data.

On the other hand, uncertainty over the platform’s financial health looms. In its last yearly earnings report in Q4 2021, Twitter reported earning $5.08 billion in annual revenue, up 37% from the previous year. By Q2 2022, Twitter earned $1.18 billion in quarterly revenue—a decrease of 1% year over year—and reported total quarterly costs and expenses equal to $1.52 billion, according to the company’s final earnings release. No updated revenue data has been reported since Twitter was privately acquired.

But don’t count Twitter out during this time of transition. As the 14th most popular social media network in the world, it remains a major player in the social media game.

Twitter usage statistics that prove the platform’s impact

5. Monetizable daily active users: 237.8 million (55% of total users)

6. Average daily usage: 34.8 minutes/day

7. Worldwide daily engagement ranking: Third most-used social network

According to Twitter’s final earnings release, each day 237.8 million monetizable users log into the app, which is 55% of all Twitter users. On average, these users spend 34.8 minutes on the platform. For perspective, users only spend 30.1 minutes per day on Facebook, the platform consumers anticipated they would use most, according to our Index data. Twitter still trails TikTok and YouTube, but as the third most popular app for daily use, there’s no denying Twitter has the potential to help brands grow their communities by gaining new, highly-engaged followers.

A data visualization that reads: "Twitter is the third most popular social media network for daily use. 55% of users log into Twitter each day.

Twitter user statistics to help reach your audience

8. Gender: 56.4% male, 43.6% female (Note: Sprout Social acknowledges gender isn’t binary, but our data sources limit their reporting to male and female)

9. Age: 38.5% between 25–34 years old

10. Location: US, Japan and India

11. Cross-platform usage: Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook

12. Education level and income: One-third are college educated and make more than $75,000 annually

13. Sentiment trends: Negative sentiment toward glitches, some new features, user privacy and proposed paywall, but positive overall toward Twitter’s legacy

To maximize your chance of reaching your target audience on Twitter, you need to understand the demographic breakdown of its user base. The platform tends to sway male, with 56.4% of users identifying as such. It’s most popular with people between the ages of 25 and 34 years old, and least popular with teens. Users within this age range are also most active on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook.

One-third of Twitter users are college-educated and make more than $75,000 annually, highlighting the platform’s highly-educated and high-earning base. Countries leading in Twitter usage include the US, Japan and India.

Twitter’s core users loudly express their feelings about the platform. In recent months, they have raised concerns about platform glitches, new features, privacy and proposed paywalls. While sentiment has ebbed and flowed, most users are pulling for the platform to regain its wings—like this Tweet from a Twitter fan showcases.

Twitter statistics for advertisers

14. Annual ad revenue: $1.41 billion

15. Cost per engagement: Increased 39% from 2020 to 2021

16. Ad engagement: Decreased 12% from 2020 to 2021

17. Ad view time: 26% higher than other leading platforms

18. Industry inclusivity: Only major social platform to allow cannabis advertising

Advertising on Twitter takes multiple forms—including promoted Tweets, accounts and trending topics (as this example demonstrates). The platform strives to continuously roll out new high-impact ad types to meet evolving consumer expectations and preferences.

A screenshot of the promoted trending topic #AntManAndTheWap on Twitter. The topic was promoted by Marvel Studios.

Despite these efforts, ROI for advertisers has significantly fallen since 2020. According to the 2021 annual earnings report, Twitter earns $1.41 billion in yearly ad revenue (up 24% year over year). Yet, ad engagement rates fell by 12% while cost per engagement increased by 39%.

In late 2022 and early 2023, Twitter’s ad revenue took a hit as major brands paused advertising efforts on the platform. Ultimately, it’s too early to tell how this will impact advertising on Twitter long term, but it does create opportunity for brands to breakthrough and experiment in the interim. Twitter reports that ad view time on the platform is 26% higher than other leading platforms.

From offering discounted ads to allowing cannabis advertising, Twitter is making attractive appeals for brands to reinvest in the platform. (If your brand sells cannabis, bookmark our article: How cannabis brands elevate their social media content.)

Twitter stats businesses need to inform their strategy

19. Best time to post: Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 9 a.m.

20. Average brand engagement rate: 0.04%

21. Discoverability: #1 platform

22. 53% of people on Twitter are more likely to be the first to buy new products

23. 15% of users and 32% of brands use Twitter for customer service

When you build your Twitter marketing strategy, it’s imperative to align your content with the style of the network. For example, Twitter is a fast-moving platform, and your Tweets will be missed if you post at the wrong time. Overall, the best times to post are Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 9 a.m., but you should find the best time to post on Twitter for your industry and audience.

The average brand engagement rate on Twitter is 0.04%. While that figure might seem low compared to other platforms, remember that Tweets often require less effort which allows brands to post more often, creating more opportunity for engagement.

Despite a low brand engagement rate, Twitter is the number one platform for discoverability, and its superpower is helping brands gain exposure to an audience eager to try something new. According to Twitter, 53% of people on the platform are more likely to be the first to buy new products.

Consumers aren’t just on the platform for Twitter ecommerce, though. According to our Index data, 15% of users and 32% of brands use Twitter for customer service and care—making it a key destination at every stage in the marketing funnel.

A screenshot of a Twitter exchange between Sprout Social and their customer, Twitter user @amess_mc. In the exchange, Sprout Social promptly responds to the customer's issue and helps them troubleshoot. In response, the customer expresses their appreciation by saying "It's alright, bestie."

Use these Twitter statistics to help your brand soar

These key Twitter statistics prove the platform could still play a vital role in your brand’s social media strategy. But like all social media platforms, your brand’s performance on Twitter is what you make it. Even in the midst of Twitter’s evolution, you can find stability and success if you ground your strategy in data. Empowered with the 23 Twitter stats we shared in this article, evaluate your approach to the platform and refine your tactics to ensure you resonate with your target audience.

Start asking yourself questions like:

  • Is my target audience using Twitter more or less than I anticipated?
  • What does my target audience use Twitter for?
  • What is my brand’s return on paid investment on the platform?
  • Am I reaching my audience at the best time?
  • Is my company’s Twitter customer service workflow meeting expectations?

Use your answers to guide your company’s approach to Twitter in 2023, and watch your presence take off.  Keep iterating on your Twitter strategy by learning how to use Twitter effectively to grow your brand.

The post 23 essential Twitter statistics to guide your strategy in 2023 appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/twitter-statistics/feed/ 0 7 social media management integrations brands need https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-management-integrations/ Thu, 16 Feb 2023 13:00:46 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=156028/ What is the personal impact of a disjointed tech stack? Say you order an item online, and it doesn’t show up. You reach out Read more...

The post 7 social media management integrations brands need appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> What is the personal impact of a disjointed tech stack?

Say you order an item online, and it doesn’t show up. You reach out on the company’s web chat feature for help. You get a (delayed) response that requires back and forth. Every new response you receive is from a different agent who hasn’t read your message history. Unfortunately, email brings the same problem: A different agent who doesn’t see your chat history, forcing you to explain your issue from the beginning and wait even longer for a reponse. For good measure, you also reach out via social media. The response is faster, but you get hit with the same canned response multiple times, which leaves you so exhausted. You vow to never waste your time or money with this company again.

This situation, unfortunately, is common—one that results in lost customers and revenue.

Long wait times, systems that delay escalation to a live agent and repeating information multiple times are some of the most frustrating aspects of poor customer service.

In The Sprout Social Index™ 2022, more than three-quarters of consumers expect a response within 24 hours. If a brand takes too long to respond to resolve a problem, 36% of consumers say they’ll share negative customer care experiences with friends and family. Some 31% won’t complete their purchase, while 30% will buy from a competitor instead.

Without backend infrastructure to create a unified view of the customer journey, your team will struggle to provide a seamless customer experience (regardless of how many tools or agents you employ).

In this article we’ll dig into how to remove these digital silos with the tools that matter most and share use cases to help you identify the right social media management integrations for your team.

How to remove digital silos in an ecosystem of tools

Marketing teams depend on an ecosystem of tools everyday. However, these tools can create silos between departments, miscommunication between teams and information gaps that detract from the customer experience if they don’t work together. The good news is that these challenges are fixable—and don’t have to come at additional cost.

Many of the technologies your team relies on were built to integrate and share data with other tools. Integrations vary per vendor and so does the quality. We recommend looking for integrations that work in one platform, streamline relevant information and have high time-to-value (i.e., an easy set up so you start seeing results fast).

The social media market is saturated with different integrations, which is why Sprout is thoughtful about our approach. We heard many of our customers’ challenges around integrating with social media management tools and took notes. Here’s what we learned:

  • Prioritize prebuilt connections. Integrations should be easy to configure, without requiring additional resources.
  • Build and support integrations in-house. Rather than relying on an unknown third-party developer who can disappear if something breaks or needs an update, building in-house integrations ensures our customers are always supported.
  • Simplicity is key. Integrations should make your life easier, not take months and half of your team to get up and running.
  • Some things in life should really be free. Many of Sprout’s integrations come at no additional cost, rather than the exorbitant fees per integration that are common in our industry.

These principles inform how Sprout builds integrations to help our users work smarter, more efficiently and collaboratively across their business.

Which integrations are right for my business?

We get it, it can be overwhelming trying to figure out which integration is right for you, and what value it even brings. We will walk through six categories of Sprout’s integrations with questions and scenarios to help you identify which your organization could benefit from most.

1. Lead management & CRM

Win new business by generating leads from social and capturing existing contacts’ social interactions.

Q: How do you currently manage incoming leads from social media? How do you connect existing customers in your CRM to their social profiles?

Leads can slip through the cracks if you don’t have a streamlined workflow from social to a lead management solution. This also can result in missed opportunities to connect existing contacts in your CRM to their social profiles when they interact with you on social media.

Scenario: A user messages you on LinkedIn about an upcoming conference your company is hosting. Even if registration for this event isn’t live, having them in your marketing funnel will help capture and attribute a future sale. While you may already have their email information, now you’ll know their LinkedIn handle, and that they had another touchpoint with your brand specifically on social media around your annual conference.

Sprout lead management and CRM integrations: Salesforce, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics 365

Screenshot of Sprout Social's Smart Inbox that demonstrates the Salesforce data you can access while messaging customers.

After interacting with a user in Sprout’s Smart Inbox, you can link existing Salesforce users to new contacts via social. If there isn’t an existing contact in Salesforce, you can create a lead directly from Sprout to capture this new lead in your marketing funnel. Once a lead has been created or a contact linked, you can see Salesforce Contact and Case info related to this specific user directly from the reply layer in Sprout’s Smart Inbox. If the user already exists in Salesforce, you can add their social interaction and profile to their Salesforce Contact.

2. Help desk

Deliver superior customer service by enabling customer care and social media teams to collaborate and co-manage incoming messages.

Q: How do your social team and customer care team collaborate today? How is customer information and context shared between these teams, or across the marketing organization more broadly?

Customer care and help desk integrations are all about passing customer tickets and information between teams. These integrations can be a great fit if you find that customer inquiries on social media often need to be passed to a different team to answer. They can also give teams visibility into customers’ previous contact history with your organization, so you can offer faster, more personalized care.

Scenario: A customer reaches out about delayed shipping of a product they ordered. In Sprout’s Smart Inbox, you can see the purchase date and order information to confirm that their purchase went through. You can then send this customer directly to your help desk tool from Sprout. The service team agent who gets this ticket is able to see the customer’s communication history on social, and any internal notes you left about their shipping problem. When the agent reaches out, they will have all the context to start immediately troubleshooting.

Sprout integrations: Zendesk, HubSpot, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365

Sprout Social Zendesk user profile example that demonstrates how to link Zendesk data (like name, details and email) to a Sprout customer profile.

With Sprout’s Zendesk integration, you can create new or link to existing Zendesk users, create and manage Zendesk tickets in Sprout, edit user and ticket data in Sprout, and even comment on specific Zendesk tickets from Sprout’s Smart Inbox. Note: Zendesk is available at no additional cost for accounts on the Professional and Advanced plans.

3. Social commerce

Drive more sales opportunities by extending your storefront into social networks with the collective power of social commerce.

Q: How do you encourage your social media audience to shop directly from your social profiles? How do you see order history information when interacting with a user on social media?

If you already use Shopify or Facebook Shops, Sprout’s social commerce integration is a great way to streamline order management and customer information. If your business is an ecommerce company, enabling customers to shop directly from your outgoing posts or message responses enhances their experience by removing the extra steps between product discovery and checkout.

Scenario: Like winning the lottery, one of your products just went viral on a TikTok about simple life hacks. You immediately see an uptick of engagement and traffic on your website, but customers seem to have a hard time navigating to this specific product. Add a product link to your outgoing posts to make it frictionless for these trend hoppers to find your viral product directly, rather than getting lost and giving up on your website.

Sprout integrations: Shopify, Facebook Shops, WooCommerce

A screenshot of Sprout Social's Shopify integration. In the image, you can see the images and prices of different coffee canteens.

With Sprout’s Shopify integration, you can look up and link customers through Sprout’s Smart Inbox to existing Shopify customers, or add a new customer to Shopify. You will be able to see all connected customer information and order history in Shopify from within the reply layer in Sprout’s Smart Inbox. You can add product links to outgoing posts and message replies in the Smart Inbox in addition to product templates.

4. Review management

Strengthen your online reputation by monitoring and managing reviews across your business and locations in one centralized stream.

Q: How do you monitor, manage and respond to reviews across different websites?

Reviews, positive or negative, come in at any time. It’s important to not only be aware of every new review, but also make sure whoever monitors the review sites is equipped to respond (or get the review to the right person). With Sprout Review management, you can see incoming new reviews (across websites) in one place for you to prioritize, route and respond to.

Scenario: You are the sole social media marketer of a retail brand with four store locations. On top of maintaining consistent customer engagement across the brand’s core social media accounts, you have to manually check review sites (including Facebook Reviews and Google My Business) for the local brick-and-mortar stores. Responding to Google reviews can increase your visibility in local search rankings, which is critical for driving store foot traffic. Sprout Reviews provides a seamless way to monitor and manage the brand’s customer engagement all in one place. Sprout saves time and keeps you organized, so you can respond quickly and never have to worry about missing a time-sensitive review.

Sprout integrations: Google My Business, Facebook Reviews, TripAdvisor, Glassdoor, Yelp

A screenshot of Google My Business reviews integrated in the Sprout platform.

Never miss a review with Sprout’s Google My Business review management. Set up custom notifications every time a review comes in and sort reviews into custom priority inboxes (e.g., negative reviews: two-star reviews and below). Respond in real time to reviewers from Sprout to address a poor customer experience or thank them for leaving a review.

5. Workflow & Digital Asset Management

Streamline production to publishing to maximize the reach of your social content.

Q: How do you currently collaborate with creative teams to produce social media content?

This can be a tricky process depending on what design tools your creative team uses, what format they create creative assets in and how your company shares assets. Integrating your design and asset management tools into your workflow ensures social teams use up-to-date, approved content in the right formats.

Scenario: A nonprofit is reinvesting in Instagram to entice more Millennial and Gen Z engagement, with the goal of cultivating future donors. Having relied on less visual social networks in the past, the social media manager is using Canva’s prebuilt, aesthetically pleasing templates for story and feed posts. Rather than downloading from Canva, saving on their computer, then reuploading to Sprout Social, the manager can pull saved stories and feed posts directly from Canva from the Compose publishing window in Sprout.

Sprout integrations: Dropbox, Google Drive, Canva, Slack, Feedly

Sprout Social notification settings, where you can select email, drawer or Slack options for each type of notification, including publishing.

With an influx of emails and daily tasks, sometimes Sprout approvals or assigned tasks can slip through the cracks on your busiest days. With Sprout’s Slack integrations, you can stay up to date by customizing which Sprout notifications you want to receive in Slack and which channels you want to be alerted in.

6. Website & URL tracking

Determine the impact of your digital campaigns to track the ROI of your social content and optimize accordingly.

Q: How do you measure referral traffic from social media?

While there are a lot of incredible link tracking tools out there, having to separately build UTM parameters for your most used links every time you publish on social media can be frustrating. Sprout’s Google Analytics and Bitly integrations bake this link creation step into your publishing workflow.

Scenario: For the upcoming year, your team is launching a global brand campaign that has slightly different promotions for each target market. You need to track the performance of the campaign overall, while also comparing the performance of the more localized efforts. Setting up specific UTM parameters in Sprout, you can break down from social the web traffic and performance each target market drove, while also seeing the overall campaign performance.

Sprout integrations: Google Analytics, Bitly

Google Analytics link tracking integration with Sprout that demonstrates that editable tracking parameters.

With Sprout’s Google Analytics integration, you can create tracking rules to automatically append parameters to your links in the posts you share in Sprout. These parameters then add the tracking results in Google Analytics (which you can also see in Sprout’s Google Analytics Report). You can create and edit URL tracking rules within Sprout, which will then automatically be applied in Sprout’s Compose publishing window when the URL in question is added to a post.

7. Business Intelligence

Get a comprehensive view of your data and performance to make data-driven decisions across your organization.

Q: What is the importance of integrating social data into business intelligence?

Social data is the bedrock of business intelligence because it brings context to organization-wide data. It uncovers audience insights needed to interpret trends, develop predictions and create informed, data-driven decisions.

With Sprout Social’s Salesforce integration and Tableau Business Intelligence (BI) Connector, you can leverage the power of social data to create a 360-degree view of your customer and inform wider business insights.

Scenario: Your brand has a highly sophisticated social presence that’s grown to include customer care. You want to analyze agent performance across data sources to inform your marketing strategy, product development and other organizational focuses. Your team currently uses Tableau to aggregate marketing and customer care data, but without social data, a big slice of the customer view is missing.

Sprout integrations: Tableau, Salesforce

A screenshot of a Tableau dashboard populated with Sprout Social data and other marketing data.

Sprout’s Tableau BI Connector combines social data with other data sources in an omnichannel view, offering a unified source of truth through automated and consolidated reporting and analytics. With customizable visuals and metric defintions, you’re able to slice the data based on your KPIs and business needs to create a compelling data story with actionable insights.

Get more from your martech stack

Integrating the tools you rely on most makes your team more informed and efficient, and your customer experience stronger. Sprout is built to remove digital silos, so our customers immediately tap into the robust power of social.

While organizing and integrating your ecosystem of tools can sound overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be.

Want to learn more about Sprout’s business integrations? Sign up for a demo today.

The post 7 social media management integrations brands need appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> 4 tips for managing customer data end-to-end (and how social media can help) https://sproutsocial.com/insights/managing-customer-data/ Mon, 13 Feb 2023 16:00:53 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=169754/ Collecting and managing customer data is ubiquitous in our digital-forward world. Customer data enables personalized social feeds and customer-centric marketing by making it easy Read more...

The post 4 tips for managing customer data end-to-end (and how social media can help) appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> Collecting and managing customer data is ubiquitous in our digital-forward world. Customer data enables personalized social feeds and customer-centric marketing by making it easy to find your most engaged audience members.

Yet, data breaches and opaque collection practices have also turned customer data into a minefield. To harness the full potential of the data you collect, it’s imperative to demonstrate to your customers that their personal information is in good hands.

In this article, we’re giving you the tools to master customer data management on social media, so you can open up the door to gaining actionable business insights, improving cross-collaboration and delivering more effective sales and marketing strategies.

What is customer data management?

Customer data management (CDM) is the process of lawfully (and ethically) collecting, storing, organizing and protecting customer information for the purpose of gleaning insights that improve a brand and its offerings.

An orange and yellow graphic that reads: What is customer data management (CDM)? The process of lawfully collecting, storing, organizing and protecting customer information for the purpose of gleaning insights that improve a brand and its offerings.

Social and business intelligence data offers companies a wealth of information about their customers. By taking the raw data and distilling it into important insights, you will learn powerful ways to improve customer satisfaction across the board—from your customer care operations to product development. Bottom line: For long-term growth and success, your brand must always find new ways to improve your customers’ experience and optimize your targeting efforts. And you can’t do that without customer data.

Why customer data is one of your most valuable assets

A orange and blue graphic that reads: Customer data helps you: Nurture relationships with customers, provide a better customer experience, establish trust with your customers, build more effective marketing campaigns and create more opportunities for upselling.

Customer data is the root of business intelligence. The good news is your brand already has a wealth of data at your fingertips, and there’s probably more available you haven’t tapped into yet.

Collecting data and understanding your audience at every stage in the customer journey is key to nurturing relationships. It starts with having up-to-date information about your customers (like valid email addresses, their past experiences with your brand and psychographic data) and determining which channels they’re most likely to use (like social media or text). These insights empower you to create a better experience with your brand, which increases customer loyalty, retention and evangelism.

For example, when a customer contacts you on social media about an issue with their order, having their order history, shipping address and past interactions on file will save your team and the customer time, while making the customer feel like you value their business. But remember: You must use customer data effectively and securely store it for people to trust your brand.

We all have brands we’re loyal to. And when they contact us or we see their posts, we’re more likely to engage and get reeled in by their promotions. Customer data helps your brand narrow-in on your ideal target audience with your marketing and sales tactics. With customer data on-hand, you can build more impactful marketing campaigns and create ample opportunities for upselling and cross-selling.

Customer data plays a pivotal role in making informed business decisions across the organization that foster continued growth for your company.

4 tips for managing and sharing customer data org wide

When it comes to data collection, there are infinite things you can learn about your customers. From basic attributes (like name, email address and demographics) to how they interact with your brand online (engagement, cost per click and conversion metrics). You can track their purchasing behavior (order history, average order value, usage) and source attitudinal data (voice of customer, sentiment and psychographics).

With so much rich customer data available, proper management is key. The data you have is only as good as your ability to use it. Here are four tips for managing and sharing customer data at your organization.

A blue and orange graphic that reads: 4 tips for managing and sharing customer. 1. Gather information with customer consent. 2. Invest in management software. 3. Train your team. 4. Regularly backup and update your data.

1. Gather information with customer consent

It’s non-negotiable to be transparent about your data collection process. If you don’t give your customers full visibility into the data you’re collecting and how you’re using it, you will violate their trust and could face legal consequences, including harsh fines and penalties.

Instead, aspire to be a consumer privacy advocate and make your data collection processes customer-centric. When you gather customer data via surveys, website forms, transaction history, tracking cookies and social media analytics, explicitly tell your customers and prospects what you’re using the data for. Only collect the details you absolutely need and use it for the exact purpose(s) you specified. Also be clear on how long you will keep and use the data.

A screenshot of a webpage that reads: How Google uses cookies. The page explains Google's cookie policy and features a video of a woman describing the process.

2. Invest in management software

Housing your customer data in a spreadsheet is both unsafe and inefficient. Improper storage of any kind opens your company up to the risk of a breach or misuse of data. To up-level your customer data management, invest in software that solidifies your security measures and harnesses/manages your data in one place. Having a single source of truth is crucial.

For example, Salesforce CRM software offers layers of security like multi-factor authentication, regulation compliance, user activity tracking and anonymized data to protect your customers (and your business). Sprout Social’s integration with Salesforce enables users to manage all their social customer care requests directly from Service Cloud, while enriching customer CRM profiles with social data. This is a major win for your data security and customer service efforts.

A screenshot of social data from Sprout integrated in the Salesforce platform, which demonstrates how incoming social messages can be linked to existing contacts and cases.

Request a demo of our integration today.

3. Train your team

Managing customer data is only possible if your whole team is on board. Host regular customer data trainings to empower ethical access and usage. Emphasize why customer data is important, how to use it for different business use cases and ways to share important insights across departments.

We recommend creating specific data collection, usage and sharing policies for your company. Make relevant details of your policy public-facing to provide additional transparency to your customers.

A screenshot of Sprout Social's privacy policy from our website. The policy explains how and why we collect and manage customer data.

4. Regularly backup and update your data

To be a good steward of customer data, make sure your data is always current. Perform frequent updates by recycling unresponsive leads, validating customer information and amalgamating duplicates. Regularly delete data you no longer use or that is past its expiration (like we mentioned in step one).

You should also have a customer data backup plan in the event you accidentally lose valuable data due to tech or human error.

How social media fuels your customer data engine

Social media platforms contain an endless supply of consumer data—you just need to know how to analyze it so you can discover actionable insights. Like identifying who your most engaged followers are. Or figuring out what your target audience is saying about your brand when they don’t tag you.

A person’s interactions with a brand on social—from the first time they like a post to the last time they DM a brand—give businesses so much insight into their customer experience and journey. From social data alone, you can learn:

  • Customer demographic and psychographic information
  • Interests and hobbies
  • Other brands they follow
  • What content they engage with
  • Their feelings toward your brand, products and industry

A screenshot of a Twitter exchange between a Sprout user and the Sprout Social Twitter account. In the message, the user raves about a new product feature, and our team responds with gratitude.

Use these findings to create a more holistic view of your customer by infusing social metrics into your consumer data engine.

How Sprout Social can help make managing (and using) customer data easier

With Sprout’s social media management features, it’s easy to collect, manage, analyze and utilize customer data. Our all-in-one social media management platform unlocks the full potential of social customer data to transform not just your marketing strategy—but every area of your organization.

Customer service features

The Smart Inbox unifies all your social messages into a single stream so you can foster relationships and respond to your audience quickly. It helps you visualize all inbound message volume across profiles, find new conversations happening about your brand and respond from one place.

A screenshot of an example Twitter direct message exchange in the Sprout Social platform. In the exchange between the customer and the company, the customer contact information and past experiences appear in the right side bar.

Contact Profile Views within the inbox provide a window into a user’s social media presence. From this view, you can reply, add custom contact information, notes and even see message history between you and your customer—streamlining all customer care actions. If you’re a Salesforce customer, you will be able to see if the user is already a lead or contact.

Listening

Sprout’s Listening tools help brands tap into global social conversation to extract actionable insights, identify industry gaps and improve brand health. Use listening to find and explore actionable audience data like demographics, sentiment, conversation topics, campaign analysis and competitor performance.

A screenshot of a Listening Performance Summary in Sprout's platform. The graphs featured illustrate changes in sentiment trends over time.

Social analytics and dashboards

Sprout’s analytics tools speed up data collection and distribution. Access metrics from owned and paid media like impressions, engagements, audience growth and cost per click. Dashboards—including interactive charts and graphs—reveal trends in customer data, and make it easy to share findings with internal partners and stakeholders.

A screenshot of the Sprout Social Profile Performance Report, which displays impressions, engagements, post link clicks and changes in audience growth.

For example, with Sprout’s Tableau BI Connector, combine the power of social data with your other business channels. The tool enables you to analyze data, create custom metrics and merge different data sources. This seamless and customized view gives you a consolidated source of truth for wider business insights and performance.

A screenshot of a Tableau dashboard populated with Sprout Social data and other marketing data. The dashboard illuminates how social data supports other marketing tactics.

To start collecting, managing and sharing customer data from social media, begin your free 30-day Sprout Social trial today.

Start your free Sprout trial

The post 4 tips for managing customer data end-to-end (and how social media can help) appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> LinkedIn ads: the ultimate guide from zero to hero https://sproutsocial.com/insights/linkedin-ads-guide/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/linkedin-ads-guide/#comments Tue, 07 Feb 2023 16:03:14 +0000 http://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=61000 LinkedIn ads are a powerful tool for all kinds of businesses. The platform has over 810 million users, with 65 million of them in Read more...

The post LinkedIn ads: the ultimate guide from zero to hero appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> LinkedIn ads are a powerful tool for all kinds of businesses. The platform has over 810 million users, with 65 million of them in decision-making positions.

While organic content is still the heart of any LinkedIn marketing strategy, running ads can help amplify your content’s reach and impact.

In this guide, we’ll dive into LinkedIn advertising, discussing everything from the different ad formats available, to creating a target audience, to measuring the success of your campaigns.

Table of contents

How to get started advertising on LinkedIn

Using the LinkedIn ads campaign manager

Start by signing into the LinkedIn Campaign Manager. The LinkedIn ads manager is where you can manage your LinkedIn advertising campaigns.

Before you get started with Campaign Manager, you need to create a LinkedIn account if you don’t have one yet; it takes just a few seconds to create one.

linkedin campaign manager signup

Enter your account name and select your currency. If you’re running ads on behalf of a business, link your campaign with a LinkedIn page.

Setting a relevant ad objective

Next, choose the objective for your ad campaign. Do you want more people to become aware about your business? Perhaps you want to attract more website visitors. Or maybe you want to capture more leads.

LinkedIn advertising gives you several objectives to choose from for three different stages of the sales funnel–awareness, consideration and conversions. At this stage, you can set the most relevant objective for a particular LinkedIn ads campaign.

Linkedin objectives

If you’re an employer that’s advertising for an open position, you also have the option to set an objective to promote job opportunities.

Nailing your ad targeting

You can’t run a successful ad unless you’re targeting the right people. Make sure you have a clear idea of what kind of people you want your ad to reach. You have several targeting options for LinkedIn ads–whether you want to target people based on location, industry, company size, education, job function or skills.

linkedin targeting options

You can even select multiple attributes at a time to further narrow down your targeting. You also have the option to exclude audiences with certain attributes that aren’t relevant to you.

Before you save your ad campaign, make sure you enable audience expansion so LinkedIn can expand and engage a new audience with your ad campaign. This option automatically includes people with similar attributes as the ones you’ve selected.

Choosing the right LinkedIn ad types for your campaign

LinkedIn offers several ad types and formats to help you promote your business in the best way possible. Let’s take a look at these ad types below:

Sponsored content

LinkedIn sponsored content looks just like a regular post that you’d see on your feed except with a CTA button and a “promoted” label.

You can choose from five different formats of sponsored content — single image, carousel, video, event and document. It’s better to switch between the options every once in a while to compare their performances and see which one works best with your audience.

  • Single image ads: These ads consist of a single image and are typically used to promote a product or service, increase brand awareness or drive website traffic.
  • Video ads: These ads include video and are typically used to demonstrate how a product or service works, tell a brand story or increase engagement.
  • Carousel ads: These ads include a series of images or videos that users can swipe through. Carousels are typically used to showcase multiple products, services or ideas, or tell a story in slideshow format.
  • Event ads: These ads allow businesses to promote upcoming events like webinars, conferences and meetups. They include date, time and location details, and a call-to-action to register or attend the event.
Linkedin sponsored content
  • Document ads: These ads allow businesses to promote whitepapers, ebooks or case studies by displaying a preview of the document and linking to the full version. They’re typically used to generate leads and increase brand awareness.

Lead gen forms

LinkedIn’s lead gen forms let you easily capture leads without requiring users to leave the platform. You can add these forms to any sponsored content or message to collect names, emails and job titles.

The forms are pre-populated with users’ profile data, which encourages more people to sign up. You can also include custom questions in your forms to gather additional information about your prospects.

Once a user submits a form, their contact information is sent to your business and they’re also added as a new lead in LinkedIn’s CRM.

Sponsored messaging

LinkedIn also lets you send paid direct messages to targeted users. In fact, using this ad tactic alongside sponsored content can boost your clickthrough rates by over 70%.

There are two sponsored message ad formats you can choose from:

  • Message ads: This ad format lets you send personalized and targeted messages to users with a single call-to-action (CTA.) You can also add lead gen forms to your message ads to easily capture leads.
  • Conversation ads: This ad format lets you add multiple CTAs to your messages to help prospects engage with your business and access targeted offers and links.

Quick tip: To improve your sponsored messages, you can personalize them with your audiences’ names and job titles using LinkedIn macros.

Text and dynamic ads

LinkedIn also offers special ad options that are a bit different from regular sponsored content. These include text, spotlight and follower ads. Let’s take a look at each one below.

  • Text ads: Pay-per-click (PPC) text ads appear on the right-hand side of a desktop screen. They include a small image along with a short headline and blurb. They may be less prominent than sponsored content but can still be very effective depending on your campaign goal.
  • Spotlight ads: These are dynamic ads that are personalized for each individual profile. Spotlight ads link back to your website or landing page, and are a great way to share insightful, thought leadership content.
  • Follower ads: These dynamic ads are also personalized, but the goal is to get you more followers on your LinkedIn company page.

The true cost of LinkedIn ads

The average cost-per-click (CPC) on LinkedIn is between $5-6.

But the actual cost of LinkedIn ads depends on factors like the type of ad, targeting, budget and the campaign’s performance.

The pricing system for ads can also vary.

For example, sponsored content is generally priced on a CPC or cost-per-mille (CPM) basis, while sponsored messages are typically priced on a cost-per-send (CPS) basis.

Targeting options, such as demographic and job title targeting, can also affect the cost of LinkedIn ads. The more specific the targeting, the more expensive the ad will be.

Additionally, if your campaign is performing well and achieving the desired results, the cost-per-conversion may be lower, making the campaign more cost-effective.

Keeping this in mind, it’s important to set a budget and measure the ROI to ensure your ad costs don’t add up and jeopardize your financial goals.

Setting up your ad budget and schedule

A big part of running ads on LinkedIn is setting a budget for your campaigns. This helps you control the total cost of advertising on the platform.

LinkedIn offers three budget options to control your ad spend:

  • Daily budget: This option lets you specify the average amount you want to spend on your ad per day. You can choose between a continuous schedule or a set schedule for your daily budget.
  • Lifetime budget: This option lets you specify the total amount you want to spend on your campaign from start to finish. LinkedIn will then automatically adjust the daily budget to deliver optimal results. The daily spend can vary depending on factors like traffic, seasonality and bid type.
  • Combination: You can also set both daily and lifetime budgets for your campaign. This will help you control the total cost as well as your daily spending. However, you can only select a continuous schedule for this type of budget strategy.

Once you’ve specified the budget for your ad, you also need to set the campaign schedule. The schedule will determine the lifetime of your ad and also help pace your spending.

The scheduling options you have will vary depending on your budget type.

  • Continuous schedule: Run your campaign continuously from a start date. The campaign will end once your budget has been entirely consumed. You can use this option for all three budget types.
  • Set schedule: Run your campaign from a specified start date to end date. You can use a set schedule for both lifetime and daily budget options, but not if you’re using a combination of the two.

Understanding LinkedIn bid types

LinkedIn advertising is based on an online auction system where your ad competes with other ads for placement. To win, you must place competitive bids for your ads.

You can choose from three bidding types in the Campaign Manager:

  • Manual: This bidding strategy lets you set a specific bid amount for a key result. This option can charge by clicks, sends, impressions or views, depending on your ad format, objective and goal. Manual bidding gives you more control over the bid amount, but you need to track the performance of the campaign and adjust your bid as needed.
  • Cost-cap: This bidding strategy lets you set a maximum cost per key result. This allows the system to automatically adjust your bids to achieve optimal results while staying within your campaign’s budget.
  • Maximum delivery: This is a automated bidding strategy that uses machine learning to set and adjust bids while utilizing your entire budget. The goal is to maximize key results and use your total budget most efficiently.

Measuring the success of your LinkedIn ad campaigns

You don’t run LinkedIn ads no reason. You’d do so with the hope of getting some return on your investment. This makes it crucial to monitor and measure your ad success so you can see whether your investment is paying off.

Perhaps you might even notice that some types of LinkedIn ads are working better than others and you’ll want to shift your focus towards those. You might also find that some ads aren’t delivering any results at all, so you’d want to stop setting money toward something that doesn’t work.

The LinkedIn ads manager comes with a robust reporting feature that lets you track LinkedIn analytics and metrics to understand your ad performance. This includes metrics like clicks, impressions, cost per click, click-through rate, cost per impression, conversions, cost per conversion, leads and cost per lead.

You can even track your performance with different audience demographics in the ads manager. For instance, you can view how people performing a certain job function responded to your ads in terms of clicks, impressions and click-through rate.

Looking to dive deeper? Sprout Social’s LinkedIn management tool can help you dig into the good stuff, visualize key metrics and keep an eye on performance and trends data.

Screenshot of Sprout Social's LinkedIn Report showing impressions as a line chart and table, highlighting how many times your content was seen during the reporting period.

Best practices for LinkedIn advertising

Finally, let’s walk you through some LinkedIn best practices that will help you run successful ad campaigns on the platform.

Maintain the correct LinkedIn ad specs

Your LinkedIn ads need to instantly attract and draw in your target audience and you can’t do that without outstanding visuals. When creating visuals for your ads, make sure you follow the proper LinkedIn ad specs and sizes.

The specs vary for each LinkedIn ad type and ad format. Here are the basics:

Sponsored content

Single image ads

  • Should be in JPG or PNG format.
  • File size should be 5MB or smaller.
  • Keep headlines under 70 characters to avoid truncation.
  • Keep descriptions under 100 characters to avoid truncation.
  • Images display at 1200 x 627 pixels and should be at least 400x in width.

Carousel ads

  • Use 2-10 cards per ad.
  • Individual cards should not be larger than 10MB.
  • LinkedIn recommends using 1080 x 1080 pixels with an aspect ratio of 1:1 for individual images.
  • Keep introductory text under 150 characters and two lines to avoid truncation.
  • Character limits below ads are either 45 characters maximum, or 30 characters with a lead gen CTA button.

Video ads

  • Keep it under 15 seconds for better engagement (though LinkedIn allows up to 30 minutes of video ads).
  • File size should be between 75KB and 200MB
  • Your video should be in MP4 format running at less than 30 frames per second.
  • Audio size should be less than 64KHz.

Multiple aspect ratios and quality options are available with varying requirements. Check out the full LinkedIn ad specs for video ads to learn more.

Message ads

  • Banner creative should be 300×250 pixels.
  • It should be no larger than 40KB.
  • It should be in JPG, non-animated GIF or PNG (without flash) format.
  • Add up to three links using a maximum of 70 characters for anchor text.
  • Message text should be no more than 1,500 characters.
  • Subject should be no longer than 60 characters.

Text ads

  • Ad image should be 100×100 pixels
  • It should be in JPG or PNG format
  • File size cannot be larger than 2MB
  • Keep headlines under 25 characters
  • Keep descriptions under 75 characters

Note that there are five different sizes and ad specs for text ads. There’s also a whole bunch of LinkedIn ad size and specs for dynamic ads like follower and spotlight ads that are tailored to individual users depending on which format you choose.

For even better results in lead generation through your LinkedIn ads, some experts also recommend using colors that contrast with the platform’s blue and white colors in your visuals. This will give your ad an instant pop, allowing you to effectively draw in your target audience.

Support your ads with a strong organic brand

Running ads alone does not guarantee leads and conversions.

You also need a powerful organic strategy in place to pique your audiences’ interest, build trust and boost the impact of your paid campaigns.

Along with investing in ads, regularly share valuable and engaging content to establish your business as a thought leader. Create a well-designed company page and use consistent branding to look authentic and high-quality.

Don’t forget to engage with your audience — respond to comments and messages, and welcome both positive and negative feedback.

Finally, track analytics to understand the performance of your organic content. This will help guide your ad campaigns and set your future content up for success.

Keep testing and optimizing

Based on the insights collected from your performance tracking efforts, you’ll uncover some excellent opportunities and ideas to improve your ads.

Run A/B tests on different LinkedIn ad types, ad creatives, ad copy and CTAs. Find out what resonates with your audience and use that to further improve your ad performance.

Additionally, you might even want to use A/B testing to optimize your ad targeting. Make slight alterations to your targeting criteria to identify which audiences are most responsive to your ads. This will eventually help you perfect your LinkedIn ad targeting and get more out of your advertising efforts.

LinkedIn Ad examples to inspire you

Now that you know how to run ads on LinkedIn, let’s look at some interesting examples from real-life brands to get your creative juices flowing.

Asana

Asana linkedin ad example

Asana is a cult-favorite project management tool used by businesses worldwide. This means they have some great numbers to show off and attract potential customers. This is exactly what they’re doing with this LinkedIn ad example, where they use their success in helping increase employee satisfaction as eye-catching copy.

Shopify

Shopify linkedin sponsored content

Shopify does a brilliant job of addressing one of the biggest pain points of office-based employees — the long, monotonous commute. They do so by using powerful imagery and contextual copy, enough to grab the attention of anyone looking to transition to a more flexible work setting.

TikTok

TikTok linkedin video advertisement

In this LinkedIn ad example, TikTok promotes its virtual event using an engaging video made with high-contrast, bold colors and trendy imagery — perfectly aligned with their brand identity. We also love how the copy speaks directly to the specific audience for this post — B2C startups.

Notion

Notion linkedin lead gen form

Who says event ads are just for webinars? SaaS companies like Notion can also promote product demos on LinkedIn using multiple ad formats, including event ads. Make sure to throw in a lead gen form into the mix like Notion does to encourage more people to register.

Canva

Canva linkedin ad carousel ad example

This carousel ad by Canva is everything the online design tool stands for — colorful and versatile. Using this ad format allows Canva to highlight the many ways users can benefit from the software, visually showcase the tool’s interface and abilities, as well as look beautiful and eye-catching.

Grammarly

Grammarly linkedin ad example

Grammarly’s LinkedIn ad is proof that you don’t need flashy colors and visuals to create an impactful advertisement. In the example above, the popular AI writing tool demonstrates its editing feature using a screenshot of the app itself as copy.

Does it work? You bet! And the clever bit about this ad is the sentence being edited in the screenshot resonates with the target audience (hint: freelancers and contractors.)

Grow faster with LinkedIn ads

With the right approach, LinkedIn advertising offers plenty of opportunities to connect with the right audience and grow your business. But it can get overwhelming when you’re just starting out.

Make the most of the steps above to build a winning LinkedIn advertising strategy and generate valuable leads. Interested in learning more? Check out our LinkedIn marketing guide to 10x your growth on the platform.

Or, find out how you can use LinkedIn for business beyond marketing.

The post LinkedIn ads: the ultimate guide from zero to hero appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/linkedin-ads-guide/feed/ 3 The Social Media Metrics Map [Download Template] https://sproutsocial.com/insights/templates/social-metrics-map/ Wed, 01 Feb 2023 16:00:56 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?post_type=guides&p=141665/ With the hundreds of social media metrics available today, the challenge is understanding which metrics will help you make smart decisions about your social Read more...

The post The Social Media Metrics Map [Download Template] appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> With the hundreds of social media metrics available today, the challenge is understanding which metrics will help you make smart decisions about your social strategy and wider business goals.

While many social marketers can identify the right objectives and put together a compelling social plan, the metrics and tracking phase is where many of us lose steam—especially when communicating results to internal partners with different levels of social expertise.

It’s the role of social media managers to define what success looks like, measure it consistently and educate colleagues about the power of social data.

That’s where the Social Metrics Map comes in.

In this resource collection, we’ll review the stages of the social media sales funnel and their corresponding objectives. Then, we’ll walk through a simple, three-step process for mapping owned, earned and paid social media strategy to relevant KPIs and their business value, depending on which stage of the funnel your social program focuses on.

Whether you are an in-house social marketer or an agency pro consulting with your clients, the resources we’re sharing here will be valuable tools to ensure your social reporting strategy aligns to the right business goals. Download this resource to access:

  • The Social Metrics Map Guide, which walks you through the process of setting goals, defining your objectives and determining the right approach to measurement
  • The Social Metrics Map, a resource for identifying the right metrics to track for each stage of the funnel and objective
  • The Social Metrics Map Worksheet, a fillable PDF template for you to fill out on your own or with your team/clients in order to solidify your strategic reporting approach

It’s one thing to have metrics available to you. It’s another to know which metrics tell the right story.

Download these resources today to define success for yourself.

The post The Social Media Metrics Map [Download Template] appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> How to define and reach your target audience on social media https://sproutsocial.com/insights/target-audience/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/target-audience/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2023 15:14:10 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=106926/ Defining a target audience can be one of the most challenging aspects of social media marketing. But once you have a clear idea of Read more...

The post How to define and reach your target audience on social media appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> Defining a target audience can be one of the most challenging aspects of social media marketing. But once you have a clear idea of who your audience is, you’ll run more relevant campaigns with better returns.

Here’s a comprehensive guide on what a target audience is, and how to find and reach yours through social media.

What is a target audience?

In simplest terms, a target audience is a group of people that’s most likely to be interested in your product or service. And members of this group usually share common traits.

Let’s look at a few examples of target audiences.

Canva, the design tool, has an audience of designers and design enthusiasts, this audience can be further segmented by how the tool is used.

For example, one of Canva’s target audiences is teachers, who may use the tool to create worksheets, infographics or posters.

Another major target audience group for Canva is social marketers who need to create captivating visuals for their brand’s social media and digital campaigns.

Why should you define your target audience?

Why is defining a target audience so important? Below are some of the ways you can benefit from marketing to a targeted audience:

  • You can spend your advertising budget more effectively.
  • You know which social media platforms to focus on.
  • You can develop messaging that truly resonates with current and potential customers. This makes it easier to connect with them and earn their loyalty.

Now that you know why you should define your target audience, let’s find out who your target audience is.

Start by taking a closer look at your existing audience

To understand your target audience, start by taking a closer look a who’s already following you or buying from you.

Here are a few questions that’ll help you with this step:

1. Who is your current audience?

Monitor who follows you on social media and interacts with your posts. Who likes, shares and comments on your content? Look for common characteristics such as age, location, language and interests.

Then you can use that demographic information to target similar people who aren’t yet following your brand.

2. What kind of information are they looking for and why?

Knowing the kind of information your followers look for and interact with will help you understand your audience. And you’ll identify their needs and how to approach them on social media.

People will have different reasons why they follow brands on social media. And you’ll have to adapt your social media content strategy accordingly.

The top four reasons why consumers want brands to use social media to help connect people with each other are:

  1. Connect with likeminded people (57%)
  2. Meet people different from them (52%)
  3. Learn new skills (42%)
  4. Build community (36%)
why consumers want brands to use social media to help connect people with each other

3. Where do they go for this information?

Which social media platforms does your target audience frequent the most? The answer to that question will help you know where to focus your marketing efforts.

For instance, launching a Twitter campaign doesn’t make sense if a majority of your target audience is most active on Instagram. Understanding what your target audience wants and on which platform will define your content strategy.

4. What are they talking about?

What are your target audience’s likes and dislikes? What challenges and what solutions are they looking for? What are they saying about your brand or products? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you understand their biggest pain points and desires.

A platform such as Sprout Social makes distilling online conversations easy with its social media listening tool. This tool tracks conversations around your brand, examines target audience preferences, identifies trending topics and more.

Screenshot of the Sprout Social Listening Tool dashboard

5. Who do they trust?

Trust is important when building relationships with your followers.

Think about your social habits: Do you trust any brand online? Do online reviews from other customers sway your purchase decisions?

You should also think about how your business handles its reputation. Do you respond to all inbound messages or social mentions? Being responsive is important for building trust, retaining customers and attracting new followers.

Define the key benefits of your products or services

Now that you understand your audience, you can explain how your products or services solve their problems. What value does your business offer? Think about how their pain points align with your key benefits, and you’ll be able to position your business in a way that resonates with your target audience.

Check out the competition

To properly define and reach your target audience, you also need to conduct market research about what the competition is doing. Ask questions such as:

  • What types of people are your competitors targeting?
  • How are they reaching out to their target audience?
  • What are they doing right?
  • What’s missing from their strategy?
  • What key benefits are they emphasizing in their marketing?
  • How often are they posting?
  • Which content formats seem to work the best for them?
  • What tone are they using?

Once you understand your competitors, you’ll be able to identify your key competitive advantages. For example, one of American Express’s biggest competitive advantages is its loyalty program for customers. And to promote this unique selling point, the company leverages Amex Ambassadors for its social media content strategy.

Amex Ambassadors

 

Create content for your social media target audience

Now that you have all this insight about your target audience, it’s time to start creating content.

Here are a few best practices to guide you:

  • A/B test different content elements, formats and publishing times. Fine-tune your content strategy based on to the types of posts your target audience tends to engage with. Monitor what kind of captions they like and which timing works best to engage them.
  • Create content for different stages of the marketing funnel. Entertaining content may be great to capture attention at the awareness stage, for example. But for members of your audience at the consideration stage, informative and instructional pieces work better.
  • Be more direct with your audience research. Instead of assuming or using analytics alone, consider what your followers really think by putting those insights into context. Conduct polls and ask them questions so you can engage them better. And create customer personas to ensure your content is highly relevant for all members of your target audience.

Ready to connect with your target audience?

Now that you’re armed with knowledge to identify and engage with your target audience, you can create a strategy to connect with them. To take it one step further, use our free worksheet on how to create authentic connections with your audience.

The post How to define and reach your target audience on social media appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/target-audience/feed/ 1 Complete guide to social media analytics and why it’s important https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-analytics-reporting/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-analytics-reporting/#respond Wed, 18 Jan 2023 15:19:46 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=144893/ When creating your social media strategy, you’re choosing goals and objectives that you want your marketing efforts to hit. But if you’re not monitoring Read more...

The post Complete guide to social media analytics and why it’s important appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> When creating your social media strategy, you’re choosing goals and objectives that you want your marketing efforts to hit. But if you’re not monitoring your social media analytics, metrics and performance, how will you know if you’re hitting those goals?

Social media analytics are key to proving ROI, making informed business decisions and so much more—and luckily, nearly every platform offers its own form of in-app analytics. Plus, there are a number of social media analytics tools that can help you monitor your performance in even more depth.

Throughout this article, we’ll touch on why social media analytics are so important and which types of analytics you need to be paying close attention to.

What is social media analytics?

Social media analytics refers to the collection of data and metrics that help you measure your overall social media performance. This helps marketers understand which types of social media content best resonate with their audience so they can shape and adapt their strategy accordingly.

What is the importance of social media analytics?

Social media analytics help marketers with a number of tasks, from informing their strategy to planning campaigns and content ideas. There are five major benefits that tracking social analytics can help with.

1. Trendspotting

Trendspotting is the act of pinpointing upcoming trends before they’re mainstream, and keeping a close eye on your social media analytics can help you do just that. Some of the trends that your social media analytics can help you determine include:

  • Which platforms are gaining more traction and popularity (or losing popularity)
  • Topics of interest that your audience is talking about (and mentioning your brand in conversations about)
  • Types of ads that your audience is interested in
  • Up-and-coming influencers and products in your niche
  • Types of content that your audience engages with most

If analyzed properly, your social media stats can be a huge help in identifying what you should post more of, what types of content are becoming more popular and what your audience is going to want to hear more about in the next quarter or year.

2. Brand sentiment

Brand sentiment ultimately means how people are feeling about your brand. It includes all positive and negative feelings that are discussed online, and your brand sentiment can be measured through sentiment analysis by looking through your social media analytics.

This can help ensure your audience is happy with your business and that you’re able to detect and manage any unhappy customers.

3. Value perception

Value perception (or perceived value) refers to the overall customer opinion of your brand’s product or service and whether or not it can meet their needs. Perceived value is key to determining demand and even the price point of a product or service. For example, if your product has a low perceived value, customers won’t be willing to pay much for it.

You can measure value perception by using social listening tools and monitoring the analytics and data from those dashboards. This can help drive your strategy and guide the content you create to improve value perception and make sure you’re showcasing how your product or service can hit key pain points.

4. Setting social media goals

Social media analytics can also help you see which channels and content are performing well, helping you to create actionable and realistic social media goals and objectives.

The key word here is realistic. If you take a look at your social media analytics and realize your Instagram account is growing by 10 followers per week, trying to jump from 5,000 followers to 10,000 followers in a single quarter is not a realistic goal, even if you do revamp your posting strategy.

You might instead try to make a goal where your account starts growing by 20 followers per week instead, and steadily increase that goal from there.

5. Proving ROI

Finally, your social media analytics can help to prove the ROI of your social media marketing efforts. Each time you run a new campaign, monitor your social analytics to see how the content is performing, if people are clicking over to your website and if you’re generating new sales.

UTM tracking and URL shortening are two ways that make proving ROI via analytics even easier. This way, you can track specific campaign clicks and purchases that lead back to your social media efforts.

What are the types of social media analytics?

There are several different types of social media analytics you should monitor that can help guide your strategy and discover various data and information. We’ll walk you through the six main types of analytics below.

Performance analysis

First and foremost, you need to measure the overall performance of your social media efforts. This includes social media metrics like:

  • Impressions
  • Reach
  • Likes
  • Comments
  • Shares
  • Views
  • Clicks
  • Sales

You can easily gauge all of this within your Sprout Social dashboard:

social media profile performance dashboard

This will showcase how your actual marketing content is performing, whether you need to switch up the content you’re posting and which types of posts your audience seems to like best.

Audience analytics

Next, you’ll want to take a look at your audience analytics. This will help you discover which audience demographics your audience is reaching—and ensure they match up to your target audience. If not, you may need to adjust your content strategy to better attract those you’re aiming to reach.

Audience analytics will include data like:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Location
  • Device

With Sprout Social, you can also gather audience analytics about specific topics related to your industry, which can help you build out your customer profiles. Here’s an example of what that could look like for one of your topics:

audience demographic report

Competitor analysis

Another key area to look into is how your competitors are doing on social media. How many followers do they have? What is their engagement rate? How many people seem to engage with each of their posts?

You can then compare this data to your own to see how you stack up—as well as how realistic growth in engagement may be for your goals.

Using a tool like Sprout, you can gather all of this data in one place and measure it network by network.

social media competitor analysis dashboard

Pay attention to how your average stands up to your competitors’ average and adjust your social media strategy accordingly.

Paid ads analytics

When you’re putting money behind specific social media posts, you want to make sure they’re performing well. This is why you absolutely need to pay close attention to your paid ads analytics.

Some of the most important ad analytics to measure include:

  • Number of active ads
  • Clicks
  • Click-through rate
  • Cost-per-click
  • Cost-per-engagement
  • Cost-per-action
  • Conversion rate
  • Total ad spend

Each social media platform that you run ads through will have its own dashboard to provide you with all of this information, but you may want to create your own spreadsheet as well to track total ads and ad spend.

Influencer analysis

If you’re running influencer marketing campaigns, tracking the success of these partnerships is essential to proving ROI. Some of the data you’ll want to keep track of include:

  • Number of posts created per influencer
  • Total number of interactions per post
  • Audience size of each influencer
  • Hashtag usage and engagement

This can help you gauge overall engagement from your influencer campaigns. You can also create promo codes for each individual influencer to use so your team can tell how many sales each influencer has driven as well.

Sentiment analysis

The last major segment of social media analytics you’ll want to track is brand sentiment. We talked about this earlier and how social media analytics are able to help you determine this. You can use social listening tactics to gauge connotation about a certain topic; in this instance, said topic would be your brand name.

Sprout’s social listening dashboard can also help measure your brand sentiment, showcasing how users feel about your brand or any brand topic you set.

sentiment analysis dashboard

Start measuring your social media analytics

Don’t go into your social media strategy blind. Start monitoring and measuring your social media analytics so you know how your audience feels about your product or industry, what types of content resonate best, how many sales you’re generating through social media and so much more.

Get started with a free Sprout Social trial to discover how we can help you measure all of this and more through our comprehensive dashboard.

The post Complete guide to social media analytics and why it’s important appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-analytics-reporting/feed/ 0