by By Lexi Naone
With our current social climate, it’s important for brands to create a strong presence on platforms. Social media is a large part of our society’s everyday life. Companies have started creating content that is formatted for different platforms, one-minute long videos for Instagram, two and a half minute long videos for Twitter, and videos with subtitles for Facebook.
Social media is important for brands to not only market themselves but also connect with customers. It allows for customers to engage with their favorite brands and follow along with their content. The Marketing Insider Group wrote about how social media is beneficial for brands. Their 6 main points were awareness, authority, authenticity, engagement, support and affordability. All of these go hand in hand for a brand’s presence on social media. All five of these points and affordability make it easy for brands to create content for their social media. these points assist brands in helping boost their marketing to create a stronger following of customers.
The engagement that brands have with their customers is ultimately the biggest factor that allows brands to have continued support from their customers. In order for brands to understand how social media is benefitting or possibly hurting them, they need to be able to understand the data of the engagement. There are several different ways for brands to track engagement. According to Business News Daily, they have 10 ways listed: actions on page, engagement, engagement rate, followers, impressions, page likes, page previews, page views, post clicks and post reach. Many social media platforms allow for business pages to be able to view these insights and engagements through their free insights on the pages. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter all offer some sort of insights or analytics to a business’ page and how their brand has been affecting its customers.
The importance of understanding data on social media for a brand is crucial in today’s social climate because of the growing use in society. Social media has created a new world for brands to continue their marketing to potential new customers.
Twitter: @lexi_naone
LinkedIn: Lexi Naone
The benefits of social and tracking engagement are such important factors in running a successful brand on social media. The value in having the ability to control the message you put out and utilize the free platforms to build up your brand are both invaluable if executed correctly. I also really enjoyed the breakdown of what analytics represent from Business News Daily because it does become easy to mix up what each analytic means and these are important metrics to keep in mind to track success on social media. Always good to remind yourself of the key reasoning for being on social media. This article is a great reminder.
In my professional experience, I’ve seen a lot of corporations and brands on different levels of social media data sophistication. Almost all brands are tracking to some extent their social presence, but it’s interesting to see how each company is evaluating and using social data to make actionable decisions. Brands are starving for insights that can come from the data. Some great metrics that brands can start with are reach (organic/paid), engagement, followers, likes, frequency and conversion. More sophisticated metrics could include follower sentiment, reaction rate and other qualitative measures that add more color to the quantitative data.
Lexi,
Oftentimes the word “data” I think can be scary to a lot of people. You did a great job of simplifying what you mean by social media data into a language that everyone can understand. I have learned in this class that a successful social media campaign/post is more than just how many people liked your post. A lot of it is about what conversations are happening around the brand and how many people they are reaching. Everyone knows that brands must adapt to be active on social media, but a lot of brands don’t know where to start to how to track success. This is where public relations and social media specialists, like us, can come in and give them an insight into how best to reach their audiences.
Hi Lexi,
I agree that understanding data is crucial for brands to excel on social media. Something that I find interesting is meshing authenticity with data. Is there a way to measure how authentic a brand is being? Or can we conclude that from data somehow?
I have a couple brief thoughts on this issue. 1) I think all brands should have at least a Facebook page, if not Instagram and/or Twitter. It just seems like standard procedure now to join social media so your customers feel more connected to you. And if you’re excited about your brand it will show through your social media. 2) Companies do not spend enough time looking at their data. I’ve personally worked with two different small businesses within the last 6 months that have Google Analytics but they are not using them as much as they should. I don’t understand how online businesses especially don’t live on their Google Analytics pages every day to make sure they are spending time and money where they should. And not using your Facebook Insights just seems like a waste. 3) I agree with Emily’s comment that PR and social media specialists come in to help because businesses need help with making more conscientious decisions and plans with their social media.