There’s a wealth of information hiding behind all of your social media activity on the internet, also known as your social data on websites.
All your posts, updates, interactions with followers, the comments you’ve replied to, all of this compiles a large amount of data that you can leverage. This social data of yours, which can be found in your social media analytics, can benefit your social media marketing efforts hugely.
Below, we have listed all the important reasons why your social data and social media analytics are useful, and how you can use them in your off-page SEO tactics to track your business effectively.
1. Understanding Your Audience
One of the main benefits of your social data on websites is to assist you in understanding your audience. For example, analyzing your previous posts can help you identify the best time to share posts.
Timing is a huge part of social media marketing. If you post when your followers are not online, you’re not optimizing your engagement, traffic, and sales. Therefore, use your social data to find the most optimal time to post on social media – most platforms have built-in analytics for this.
2. Determining Your Best Social Media Platform
Not every social media platform will work for you and your business. Just because Facebook has over 2 billion users and Pinterest only has 460 million, it doesn’t mean that Facebook will give you better results over Pinterest.
It all depends on your product/service. The only way to find the best social network for you is to experiment with all of them, and use your social data to analyze how much engagement, traffic, and sales you are receiving.
This social data should be used to determine which social networks are giving you the highest engagement so that you can focus your time and efforts where it counts the most.
3. Create Better Content
Social Data can help you to create better content since you will gain an understanding of what content drives the best results.
On Facebook and Twitter for example you will be able to see whether links, images, or videos perform better. On Pinterest and Instagram, which are more visual social networks, you will be able to check what type of images perform better.
Use your social data to assess which content is performing the best. What type of content is shared more? How much traffic does each social network contribute to your page? How much time do they spend? How high is the conversion rate?
The answers to these questions will help you tailor your content in a way that brings you the greatest amount of value.
4. Understanding Your Competitors
Analyzing your competitor’s data will allow you to see what is working and what isn’t. It can help you avoid making the same mistakes they are or follow similar strategies that are providing value to them.
Tools such as our Competitor Analysis allow you to do this. Simply add the URL of your website and your competitor website into the search query. You will be able to assess how well each site is performing on a particular social media platform.
5. Strategy Formulation
The best and most optimal strategies are seldom created on your first try. You will make mistakes. But if you study your social data on websites regularly, you will be able to figure out what these mistakes are and learn from them.
It will allow you to constantly refine your strategy so that you are performing as optimally as possible, at all times.
Also, social media listening is a valuable practice to adhere to. Using social listening, you can see how people are perceiving your business, in real-time, and use this information as leverage. It will help you modify your strategy even further, and better connect with customers.
6. Social Media Campaigns
Social data o websites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and others help you set up and track your campaign performance. Once you launch a social media campaign, it’s paramount to regularly track it in order to see if it’s working or not.
If it’s not, you can adjust your campaign and rectify the mistakes, and if the results are detrimental, you can cancel the campaign altogether before it’s too late.
How to collect social data on websites through social buttons
To increase the amount of social data you have, ensure your website or webpage has the proper social media buttons so that visitors can be redirected to your social media platforms, share your content, and engage with you further.
These buttons should be easy to see and conveniently placed so the users are encouraged to take action. Do not make your users look for your social buttons.
If you don’t have the social media buttons on your webpage, or they are hidden somewhere in the footer where no one can see them, the less likely users are to seek you out manually and interact with you.
Keep it simple, use familiar logo’s and ensure they are visible – but not be excessive. Big shiny social logos won’t go. Also, be consistent and make sure the social logos are from the same set of designs or at least match each other.
Finally, make sure the social media link you connect with these buttons is your business accounts. It is highly unprofessional to have a business Example.com, where the social links redirect your users to Bob’s personal page.
