How to Measure your Success on Social Media - MKT-455

Social media is one of the most popular platforms in today’s society in terms of both personal use and marketing. If you ask anyone between the ages of 15 and 50 if they are on at least one social media site, I’m willing to bet the answer would be yes. Besides just personal use, social media can be an extremely beneficial marketing tool for companies which can help lead to further success.

But how does a company know if their social media tactics are contributing to success? Sure, you could look at how many followers and likes you get and think you’re doing fine, but there are far more tools available to measure success on social media which can even lead to more success for a company in the future.

Social media analytics tools are the easiest and most beneficial way to measure success. Some social media analytics platforms that I’ve had experience with in the past include Hootsuite, Squarelovin, IBM Watson Analytics, Google Analytics, and Sprout Social. Many social media platforms have their own analytics tools as well, such as Instagram Insights, Twitter Analytics, and Facebook Analytics.

The goal of each analytics tool is to dive deeper into your content dynamics and help determine what strategies to use in the future. Many of the analytics platforms are laid out in a similar way and track the same types of measurements. Some measurements that most social media analytics tools track are KPIs, engagement, growth, site traffic, audience, reach, and impressions.

Each of these metrics can be further broken down into even more specific measurements that relate to your brand. To name a few, on Instagram insights, you can see what gender, age range, and even the most popular locations of your audience. These audience metrics can really help a brand help determine a more specific target market to cater their future posts towards. For example, my current audience metrics for my fitness brand are 77% women & 23% men, the largest age group viewing my content are people between ages 18-24, and my top 5 locations are the MA towns/cities of Wilmington, Boston, Tyngsboro, Woburn, and Saugus.

From this information I can conclude that my current target market is women in the Boston area between the ages of 18 and 24. Below, When planning content in the future, I should create content that would appeal to this group of people in order to keep my current followers engaged as well as attract more. According to my insights, my page is on an upward trend in terms of growth. I’m sure that once I start applying what the data is telling me, my page will continue along this upward trend. Below, I've attached two screenshots from my personal brand's Instagram insights where I found this information.

This is exactly why companies should be utilizing analytics tools to measure their success. Analytics tools are relatively easy to access and use and can make a huge difference for a company by providing information they would not have known otherwise. Over time, the data retrieved from analytics will be a sure-fire way to measure social media success as well as guide companies in the right direction towards growth in the future.