Photo by Karolina Kaboompics
A 2023 poll of business leaders found that over 90% of them believe their company’s success will depend on a strong business strategy informed by using social media data and insights effectively. Gaining those insights is critical for digital marketing professionals to foster campaign success and maintain consistency of effort. Knowing current social media research and analytics trends can be especially valuable in an ever-evolving social media landscape with existing channels and new players such as Bluesky.
Social Media Vs Traditional Market Research
The first step in any outreach effort is performing market research to identify potential consumers, markets, and distribution channels. Knowing the overall landscape (especially your target audience) can facilitate a more thorough digital marketing campaign through data analysis, observing trends, and developing strategies for audience engagement. Much of traditional market research is performed through time-intensive procedures such as surveys, focus groups, and demographics.
Social media research can facilitate data collection through multiple sources, enabling marketing professionals to gain insight into user behavior on social media. Social media market research also has several key benefits, including
- Access to real-time insights;
- Broadening the scope of market research;
- Greater audience and competitor identification, and
- Assessment of potential campaign effectiveness.
Identifying overall business goals is a critical first step in a social media research campaign, as adopting a spray-and-pray approach to channel engagement is rarely effective. Another phase of this process involves determining strategic priorities such as audience identification, key channels, and engagement platforms. Another critical task is identifying and adopting the necessary resources for engaging in a thorough social media research campaign. When engaging in social media research, marketers need to focus on four key tasks:
- Identifying relevant information
- Monitoring data
- Interpreting findings
- Responding to learnings/insights
Social media research is a natural place for planning a major marketing campaign, and part of that planning involves an aspect that usually occurs during a campaign.
Social Media Analytics: Measuring What Matters
Any strong digital marketing campaign – including social media – involves the collection and interpretation of analytics. Identifying appropriate social media analytics, both on their own and as part of an overall digital marketing strategy, is necessary to determine whether campaigns reach their key audience while meeting the appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs). Data measurement and analysis of social media campaigns can guide social media and other digital marketing professionals on whether to maintain or modify current strategic activities.
Although it may be tempting to use likes and shares of social media content to measure success, social media analytics provide data that provides a more robust and less superficial analysis. Social media analytics can drive more specific data collection and analysis, including quantitative (focusing on numbers), qualitative (providing insights into user sentiment and behavior), and click-thru rates/conversions. Consistent gathering, analysis, and reporting of social media analytics data is a necessary activity in any digital marketing effort to establish both a baseline measure as well as a consistent profile of performance over time.
Knowing the social media analytics you “should” measure is one thing, but identifying those analytics that will directly benefit your campaign and meet business goals is another. Performing thorough market research provides the necessary background to determine appropriate social media metrics for your campaign. Currently, many social media professionals are encouraged to integrate these particular metrics into their program to ensure success:
- Audience growth metrics
- Metrics to monitor customer satisfaction
- Awareness metrics
- Metrics for customer retention
- Metrics for social media ROI
- Brand health metrics
- Social media engagement metrics
- Paid social media metrics
Author: Gordon Dymowski
B2B Social Media Marketing Consultant/Copywriter
Gordon Dymowski is a B2B social media consultant and copywriter working with small to medium-sized businesses around audience engagement, lead generation, and driving revenues. Gordon has assisted various organizations in social media strategy, engagement, and analytics with a specific focus on healthcare, technology, and mission-driven ventures. He is also a fiction writer who has written for various independent publishers.
Connect with Gordon here:
0 Comments