Beginners Guide to Social Media Analytics

Social Media Analytics is a new skill set that will rapidly be in demand as more and more businesses jump into social media marketing. To get started with social media analytics you need to first answer three basic questions:

1. What's the purpose? Do you know why you are tracking? Always set an objective you'd like to achieve;

• Is it basic product performance, is it brand loyalty, or campaign success? Are you looking for trends?

• what are your competitors up to? Are you looking for engagement and ROI or conversion statistics?

First determining what you want to achieve will help you to focus your tasks, as it can be quite daunting to see all the figures coming through.

2. The second part of setting up your objective is determining the frequency of the reporting. For small businesses, doing a monthly dashboard allows you to check in frequently, without overacting to the ups and downs that we all inevitably go through.

Monthly blog performance reporting is sufficient, but too long if you are looking at monitoring brand sentiment or campaign ROI. You need to be fast and responsive.

3. Are you leveraging your current tools? In the same manner you use analytics software you can do so for your blog. Infact tracking your blog should be done (at minimum) in the same way as you would your website; unique visitors, traffic sources, average time on site, bounce rate, entry pages, exit pages.

Once you get these first three basics out the way, you'll be ready to venture into a deeper analysis.