Social Media Data: What It Is and Why You Should Track It

Did you know that 96% of users follow brands on social media and interact with those brands?

Social media is a valuable place for you to engage with prospects and deliver marketing messages that help you turn those prospects into customers. To get the most from your social media marketing, you need to track social media data to see how you can improve.

On this page, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about social media data, including:

• What is social media data?
• Why does social media data collection matter?
• What social media data should I track?
• How can I track social media data?

Keep reading to learn more!

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What is social media data?

Social media data is metrics and information you gather about your campaigns and audience. This data helps inform your marketing decisions to produce better results with your social media marketing.

Why does social media data collection matter?

Harvesting social media data offers numerous benefits for your business. Here’s why you’ll want to collect and analyze your social media data:

1. Social media data helps you understand your audience better

One of the biggest reasons to collect social media data is that it helps you understand your audience better. A key component of your marketing success is marketing your business to the right people.

You may have an idea of who you’re marketing to, and create buyer personas to ensure you’re reaching them with the right message. But as your social media campaigns continue, you may find that you need to adjust your personas or that you have a previously unidentified market you can tap into targeting.

By collecting social media data, you can understand how to adjust and improve your social media tactics to reach more of your target audience.

2. Social media data helps you figure out when to post content

Another benefit of harvesting social media data is that it lets you figure out when to post content. One of the trickiest components of social media marketing is figuring out the right time to post your content. You want to reach people when they’re likely to see what you post. Use social media management software so you can schedule your posts on different social media sites through one dashboard.

When you track your social media data, you can see when people interact with your content. You can see what days of the week or what times of the day work best for your audience.

With that information in hand, you can adjust your social media strategy to post valuable content during times when your audience is likely to see it and engage.

3. Social media data helps you figure out what content to post

Another great benefit of social media data is that it helps you figure out what content to post. When you develop your social media strategy, you can post numerous types of content, from text posts to images to videos. You may not know which content is best for your audience.

You gain insight into what content resonates with your audience by collecting social media data. You better understand which content leads to comments, shares, and other engagements. As a result, you can adjust your strategy to produce more content your audience loves.

4. Social media data helps you refine your social media strategy

Harvesting social media data enables you to refine your social media strategy. If you launch your strategy and never look at it again, you won’t produce your desired results. You need to track your social media campaigns to see how your content performs.

With social media data collection, you can track your campaign performance and see what works for your business. You can use that data to refine your strategy and drive better results with your social media marketing.

What social media data should I track?

Before you start your social media data collection, it’s critical to know what to look at and what to track.

Here’s the data that you’ll want to watch:

• Audience demographics: You’ll want to pay attention to the demographics of your target audience, like their age, gender, and location. These demographics will provide you with insight into who you’re targeting with your marketing.
• Engagement: When doing your social media data collection, you want to gather data about engagement. This data includes comments, shares, and clicks. You can use this data to understand how your audience interacts with your company.

• Reach: When tracking social media data, you’ll want to look at your reach. Your reach indicates how many people see your marketing messages. You’ll want to monitor your reach to see how you can improve your campaign to reach more people. 
• Brand sentiment: When you do social media data collection, collect information about your brand sentiment. This data isn’t raw numbers but rather opinions of your brand. Collect information about what people say about your business and gather insights to help you understand how your audience perceives your brand.

How do I track social media data?

Now that you know what social media data to track, you may wonder what you can use to help you with harvesting social media data.

Here are some options for tracking and gathering social media data:

1. Use in-platform tools

One option for gathering social media data is to use in-platform tools on social media websites. Some social media platforms have data tracking built into them, so you can see how your content performs.

At a minimum, you can see how many people comment, like, or share your content.

While these in-platform tools may not provide an abundance of data, they can serve as a great starting point for helping you gather valuable data.

2. Use a social media data analytics tool

Another way to do social media data collection is to use a data analytics tool. You can use social media dashboard tools like Buffer or Hootsuite to help you gather valuable data about your audience.

enable you to track your performance on different platforms. You can see your engagement and reach to understand how people interact with your content.

3. Look at what people say on the platform

When it comes to data that you can’t quantify, you’ll need to look around the platform to gather that data. With brand sentiment, for example, you need to see what people say about your brand on your platforms of choice.

You can use hashtags, for example, to track posts and see what people say about your brand. It’s a great way to gather insight into how people feel about your company.

Need help gathering valuable social media data?

Your social media data collection will help you make more informed decisions with your marketing to obtain more qualified leads that turn into sales. If you need help harvesting social media data and putting it to work, WebFX is here!

We have a team of over 500 marketing experts ready to help you analyze your social campaign data to make improvements to your campaigns.

We know how to create and optimize social media campaigns that drive results –– we’ve driven over $10 billion in revenue for our clients in the past five years alone!

Ready to take your social media campaigns to new heights? Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our social media services!