by By: Bella Barilati, Julianna Bourjeaurd, Elli Meinert, Carolyn Riesinger
Tuesday’s class dove into analyzing social media data and how that can benefit a company. Prior to class we collectively tweeted eight times including five articles relating to the importance of social media audits and social data.
Kelli began the lecture with defining the three components of a successful strategic plan: data, interpretation of data and recommendations. When beginning a social media audit, it is necessary to state your objective so you know what you will need to be analyzing within the metrics for each social channel.
When analyzing content performance some elements to consider measuring are: reach- organic vs. paid, frequency of content, time and day distribution, character count and engagement rate. Although the time and date of the post can be a rather unclear component, when measuring and recommending different times to post; be sure to try out a variety of times a few times to record accurate results. Luckily Kelli recommended some free and inexpensive softwares to do the analyzing for us and, we also found a few more to try out!
We also learned how to look at our own Twitter analytics by first clicking on our profile picture and then the analytics tab. This tab leads to a page that shows tweet impressions, profile visits, highlights, and more, over a 28 day period.
Another section on this page that caught the class’s attention was under the “audience” tab. The “audience” tab shows the top interests of a person’s followers. The class joked that most of their followers’ top interest
In this lecture, Kelli went over the three different types of media: owned, earned and paid. We learned the differences between these types of media and how they work together to create a cohesive mix. The class got insight as to how using these would make their strategy and social media audit more effective. Kelli also discussed the importance of knowing your audience and being familiar with your engagement reach. She explained that gaining this insight can help you tailor specific conversations, expand your following, and increase your number of impressions.
Kelli ended the class by talking about moving forward. She emphasized the importance of drawing recommendable actions from the social media audit and using this information to create an official social media plan.
In order to be successful and efficient throughout this process, we must look at the social media audit through the lenses of goals, objectives, and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Having a list of goals and objectives allows the brand to have some insight on
On a different note, we recognized that when the conversation sometimes went astray, other questions were raised. Towards the end of the discussion, a student posed a question relating it back to the use of data on personal accounts: Looking at engagement data is useful for brands, but could it become destructive of people’s wellbeing if it becomes common among personal accounts?
In total, thirty-seven tweets were made during the class lecture, most of which surrounded the Twitter analytics of personal accounts of students in the class.
