Social media data insight is not something you will do every day. However, it can be a really effective way to work on your goals. Why? For once, you can really start measuring your milestones.
What is more, it gives you a clear view of your target audience. Where are they and how do they interact with your content? All very important questions to go on with your digital strategy.
As a matter of fact, most social media data insight is for free! Often forgotten, yes, Facebook and co. don’t cost a penny to sign up with. On the other hand side, you do pay, with your user data.
This is crazy if you have an Instagram Business account you can clearly see who is liking your posts.
For one thing, the benefits of social media data insight are clear. Nevertheless, looking after all social media data insight can be quite a chore.
In order to make it easier for you, here is social media data insight done easy!
The fundaments of social media data insight!
First things first, you need to get an overview over all social media insights you can have access to.
Best practise is to get a nice and clean Excel sheet. Now, on the left-hand side write down all social media platforms you are using for your music/band.
Next, you need to identify the KPI’s you are after. KPI stand for Key Performance Indicator. That means your benchmarks in terms of engagement or likes, for example.
Write them all down, one column for each KPI. You can adapt your template in every form. For example, you can choose to do your social media data insight moment every week or every other week. Or you are lazy and do it once a month.
It could look something like this (please note, this is just an example. No mother of all template):
| November202X | |||||||
| Followers/Subscribers | MoM* | Likes | MoM | Comments | Saves | etc. | |
| YouTube | |||||||
| TikTok | |||||||
| etc. |
How to gather all the social media data insight you need?
For once, most social media accounts let you have a peek behind the scenes. However, some require you to make a business account for this.
Instagram is a good example here. Also, with Instagram, you can only see the Insights Part on your mobile phone.
If you are new to the game it could be smart to mark behind every social media platform in your template where you can find the data.
Now, it is time to head into all social media data insights you can get your hands on and collect all necessary data.
You can make your life easier and have an extra sheet in Excel for all platforms individually. Then, you can draft over the data for the big overview.
How to make sense of the gathered data?
Here’s the thing, just because you have lovely data in a crisp Excel sheet does not mean that you can make sense of what is happening. This is crazy, in order to know if your work was successful you need to lay down a strategy.
Alongside your Excel sheet, it could be a good idea to keep kind of a logbook. Here you can write down your strategy decisions for a relevant time frame.
So let’s say your Excel sheet is observing one month, then match it with the strategy for this month. Also, leave space for any observing you did over that time.
Next, you need to do a bit of calculating. How much growth have your accounts seen over the observed period of time? Here is a brilliant example from social media publishing tool Later.
Identify what worked and what not
Equipped with both a strong sense of your strategy and data you can now go into a sort of meta-level. This is good in order to think about the question: what worked and what didn’t?
Perhaps you have tried out a new format of posts. Also, you might have tweaked your posting schedule. Go into your data and see if you can identify changes. Were they to you tasting and did you expect more?
Ask yourself what you want to do differently for the next time frame coming up. Perhaps you want to try another set of hashtags if that is something you’d like to monitor.
Or perhaps you want to work on getting more comments. How can you change the language of your posts to be more engaging?
Be kind to yourself when you’re doing social media data insights!
It can be a bit bitter to check in on your hard work just to see that some platforms underperformed. By all means, that is completely understandable.
Bear in mind that social media platforms can change the algorithm on their own. For one thing, that means that you have weeks where something works great and then a change comes and you need to figure out a new strategy.
Also, not everyone is on a first-name basis with Excel. You can use eLearning platforms like Skillshare in order to amp up your Excel knowledge.
Social media data insight is worth the try. You’ll see before you think twice you’ll be the boss of all data!
Moreover, take advantage of the free data you can use in order to make a real difference in your digital strategy.
What is more, use this knowledge and let it empower you!