How to Properly Analyze Your Social Media Campaign

Depending on your target audience and goals, your social media campaign could involve social media advertising, organic posts or a mix of both. But regardless of the type of social media campaign you choose to run, understanding how to conduct proper analysis is crucial for success.

Skimping out on analysis or conducting it improperly means that you’ll miss out on the opportunity to gain valuable insights. And these insights could help you identify mistakes and create even better campaigns in the future. For a campaign that involves social media advertising, analysis is especially important. It is the only way to measure your ROI and objectively determine whether the campaign was a success or failure.

However, for many business owners, social media campaign analysis looks like an impossible task. Figuring out where to start, the right steps to take and what metrics to focus on can seem tough. That is why in this article, we make it easy for you. Below, we break down five essential steps you should always take to properly analyze your social media campaign:

1. Define Your Campaign Goals

With the abundance of data that a single campaign can produce, the only way to streamline your analytic efforts and focus on what is important is to determine your goals. From boosting brand awareness to driving immediate sales of a particular product, social media campaigns can have a wide variety of purposes.

Taking some time to figure out exactly what you are trying to achieve with your campaign is a crucial first step. Once you clearly define your campaign goals, you can find matching metrics that can help you figure out whether or not a campaign served its purpose.

2. Choose the Right Metrics to Track

As mentioned, the right metrics for evaluating a social media campaign will depend heavily on the goals the campaign is designed to achieve.  Here are some of the most common campaign goals along with some of the metrics and tools you can use to track them.

Increasing brand awareness

According to a study by Hootsuite, up to 90% of brands want to enhance brand awareness via social media. If this is one of your goals, here are some metrics you should be tracking:

• Impressions: This refers to the number of times a post shows up in users’ feeds or timelines, regardless of whether the users notice or interact with the post. It is important to note that a single viewer could have multiple impressions because your post could show up on their feed more than once. But impressions do not tell you how many unique users are viewing your posts. This is where reach comes in.
• Reach: Reach refers to the number of unique users that have seen (or could potentially see) a piece of content. Measuring reach gives you an idea of how far information about your campaign is spreading.
• Volume of Brand Mentions: This refers to the total number of mentions made of your brand on online platforms over a certain duration of time.

It is easy to track impressions and reach on the native analytic tools offered by most social media platforms. If your campaign is limited to one or two platforms, using these native tools is a great option.

If your campaign spans multiple social media platforms, however, it is best to go with third-party analytics tools that enable you to monitor several accounts on a single dashboard. Hootsuite, for instance, is an all-in-one social media management tool that is great for tracking impressions, reach and several other metrics. It also has a social listening tool that is great for tracking brand mentions.

Mention is another great tool for tracking brand mentions. If you cannot afford a pro tool like Mention, setting up Google Alerts is an excellent and free alternative.

Driving Conversions

Boosting conversions is the ultimate aim of many campaigns, especially those that involve social media advertising. Conversion simply refers to getting a user to take a particular action. This could range from signing up for a newsletter subscription to making a purchase. Conversion metrics show you how effective a social media campaign is at triggering the desired action.  If driving conversions is one of your goals, here are some key metrics to track:

• Conversion Rate: This refers to the total number of users that ultimately complete a CTA after clicking on a link in your post. It shows you how effective a post is at getting your target audience to act. To calculate conversion rate, divide the total number of conversions by the total number of clicks on a given post and multiply by 100.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): CTR refers to the number of people that click your link after your post shows up on their feed or timeline. To calculate it, divide the total number of clicks by the total number of impressions a post gets and multiply by 100. Remember to only consider clicks and impressions that occurred within the same time frame.

If your campaign involves social media advertising, CTR is particularly important. It can affect ad placement and cost. Ads with high CTRs tend to be given better placements, more impressions and lower costs per click. Speaking of which…

• Cost Per Click (CPC): CPC refers to the amount you pay social media platforms for each click on a sponsored post. When running a paid campaign, tracking CPC allows you to monitor how much you are investing in driving conversions and whether or not the investment is yielding profit. You can calculate CPC by dividing your total ad spend by the total number of clicks on an ad.

Google Analytics is one of the best tools you can use to track conversions.  Using UTM – Urchin Tracking Module – parameters, you can track the amount of traffic coming to your website from a particular social media campaign.  UTM parameters are short lines of code that you can attach to a link to give Google Analytics more information about the link’s purpose. Google Analytics is not only a very useful tool, but it is also free to use.

Boosting Engagement

If one of your campaign goals is to increase the level of interaction your followers have with your content, you should be monitoring engagement metrics. They include:

• Number of clicks, likes, shares and comments: The overall number of likes or comments a post gets can give you an idea of how well it’s performing. It is important to note, however, that this alone will not give you the full picture. For instance, since comments can be negative, having a high number of comments is not always a good sign. For example, on Twitter the ratio of comments to likes is as important as the total number of each. If a post is getting way more comments than likes, it probably is getting a negative response. This is why you need to seek more context by evaluating other engagement metrics.
• Average Engagement Rate: This helps you determine how engaging a piece of content is on average. You can calculate it by dividing the overall engagement – the sum of likes, comments, shares, saves, and favorites – a post gets by the total number of followers on your social media account. Then, multiply your result by 100.
• Applause Rate: Unlike the above metrics, applause rate only assesses the level of positive interactions a post gets. To calculate it, divide the total number of approval actions – such as likes, saves, shares, and favorites – by the total number of followers on your social media account. Then, multiply by 100.

BuzzSumo is a great tool for tracking engagement. It makes it easy to monitor the number of likes, shares and comments a post generates. It also helps you find the most engaged with posts on various social media platforms, information you can leverage to build a solid strategy.

Buffer is another powerful tool for monitoring engagement metrics. It gives you access to data such as the total engagement and the weekly average of clicks – and other interactions – on each post.

Sprout Social is also another excellent option. It provides comprehensive reports that highlight your social accounts’ performance in the aspect of engagement.

While tools certainly make analysis easier, an even easier way to track key metrics is to employ the services of a social media advertising agency. But before we talk about that, let’s proceed to the next step – consistent monitoring.

3. Consistently Monitor Your Campaign

It is important to note that you should not limit analysis to the end of a campaign. In fact, you should be analyzing data before, during and after your social media campaign.

Before a campaign, analyzing historical data from your social media accounts can give you an idea of your target audience’s characteristics and what kind of content to produce. Also, most tools analyze data in real-time. It is best to set them up as early as possible, preferably before you launch the campaign.

During the campaign, you need to monitor your chosen metrics at regular intervals. Depending on the nature of your campaign, this could be weekly, monthly or even daily. Whatever the case may be, having a schedule is essential.

Regular monitoring allows you to identify pitfalls and tweak your campaign for the best results. This is particularly important if your campaign involves social media advertising. The ability to gain insights and make adjustments allows you to make the most of your investment.

4. Reassess Your Analytics Efforts Often

Once you’ve come up with a system for analyzing your campaigns, it can be tempting to just leave it as it is. However, taking some time to regularly review your analytic strategy is important. Every so often, you need to ask yourself questions like Am I missing anything? How are my metrics performing? Is there any way I can improve?

In addition, you should regularly check your analytics strategy to ensure that your metrics are actually helping you assess your campaign goals.

The Easiest Way to Track Your Social Media Campaign Performance

While tools can make the process easier, social media campaign analysis can be demanding and time-consuming. To relieve yourself and your staff of this responsibility, you might want to employ the services of a top-notch digital marketing agency like Umbrella Local. We are an award-winning Facebook advertising agency and social media marketing agency that handles up to 5000 campaigns each month. From set up to analysis, we can take care of every single aspect of your campaign for you. Get in touch with us today to learn more.