Measure Your Social Media Success

GUIDE

Social Analytics and Hootsuite

2SOCIAL ANALYTICS AND HOOTSUITE: MEASURE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS

Social Analytics and Hootsuite Measure Your Social Media Success 

We’ve Got Analytics to Help You Keep Track

If your business is active on social media and if you are posting to various social network platforms, it is critical that you track how your social media activity is doing. By tracking your activity, you will be able to assign value to what you are doing. Keeping track will also help you learn from, improve on and measure your results. Hootsuite Analytics give you a complete picture of your social media participation and make it easy to see and understand how your social media is working for you.

As with any marketing, advertising, or even campaign launch, measuring the results of your social media activities is essential when coordinating such a project. Hootsuite Analytics provide everything you might need to effectively track your social media activity, understand your audience engagement, and calculate your ROI. Whether you want to see how many retweets you had or see the overall engagement on your year-long campaign, our analytic integrations will help you understand your social media efforts. Want to learn how? Follow along:

This guide will teach you measurement best practices and how to get started with measuring your ROI.

“ With analytics, we monitor our engagement numbers, track social customer service sentiment charts and celebrate increased number of new followers after social marketing pushes.”

Cassidy Stockton Bob’s Red Mill

3SOCIAL ANALYTICS AND HOOTSUITE: MEASURE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS

Analytic and Measurement Best Practices1. Set targets and outline a strategy in advanceBusinesses need to have a social media presence in order to gain customer trust, but to do so they need to have a clear social media strategy.

There’s no point in spending a lot of time posting and responding to conversations online if you don’t have a plan to measure, learn from, and improve on your results.

To get the most out of your social media efforts, follow these steps:

FF Clarify your business’ social media goals — what you want to accomplish with social

FF Audit your current social media status — assess your current social media use

FF Develop your content strategy — figure out who your audience is and what type of content you will post

FF Use reports to track progress — check your reports frequently to see how your campaign is performing

2. Track clicks with an Ow.ly URL shortenerPart of your content strategy should include using URL shorteners in your messaging. Your URL shortener can play a large role in the success of your social media activity and is full of valuable information that you can use to focus and perfect your social media strategy.

By using an Ow.ly URL shortener you take advantage of useful data like tracking how many people click your links, which then helps you determine what content resonates most with your followers.

For example: If 800 people click on a URL in a funny Tweet promoting your new shopping app but only 200 people click on a URL in a more serious Tweet, this knowledge can be applied in future posts. In other words, URL click data can help inform what is resonating with your audience and increase the chances of your followers clicking a link.

If you want to get more granular with Ow.ly data, you can break down each clicked link by region or referrer (meaning people who shared or retweeted something containing your URL). You can also share this and other URL data with clients or colleagues by exporting the report as a PDF or CSV file.

“ Without measuring your social media efforts, how are you able to tell if your social strategy is working? Use analytics to establish baseline targets, then create short and long term goals to work towards.”

Gerard Recio, Social Media Coach Manager

If you are not familiar with URL shorteners and specifically Ow.ly, please read this blog post.

4SOCIAL ANALYTICS AND HOOTSUITE: MEASURE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS

Analytics and Hootsuite Along with Ow.ly metrics, you are also able to track analytics from your social networks, including Facebook, Twitter and Google+, right from your Hootsuite dashboard. Use Facebook Insights to find out when your fans are online, how many are seeing your posts and who’s sharing or responding. Google Analytics can show you who’s viewing and engaging with your web pages.

Our Top 5 module recommendations for social media metrics:

1. Twitter, Follower Growth — total Twitter follower growth for a selected Twitter account during a specified date range

2. Facebook, Top 10 Per-Post Metrics — top 10 posts from your Page for a selected metric

3. Ow.ly clicks, Most Popular Links — list of most clicked links via your Twitter profile during a specified date range

4. Daily click summary — Total clicks from all Ow.ly links sent via your Twitter profile during a specified date range

5. Keyword over time — The ability to track specified keywords — like competitors’ Twitter handles — over time

Coach Tip: Remember to match the metrics you are analyzing with your goals. To ensure you are on the right path, make sure you examine data that measures your specific progress towards your objectives.

5SOCIAL ANALYTICS AND HOOTSUITE: MEASURE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS

Setting Up Your Analytic ReportsAlong with the above list, Hootsuite Pro users also have access to a full range of analytic reports. The report builder is based off of a points system where every Pro user is given 50 points to put towards building an analytic report. There are two basic ways to build a report: pre-made templates and a Custom Report Builder.

Pre-made templatesPre-made templates are templates that are ready to go and are specific to social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. These templates are a great starting point, especially if you are not sure what key performance indicators to evaluate.

Custom Report BuilderThe Custom Report Builder has over 50 analytics modules available to build customized reports. You can pull in data from multiple social networks into one report or view your Team activity. This way you can build customized reports that reflect how you have set up your social media strategy and help you measure and share.

Customize your reports even further by adding your own branding. You can customize the header image with your logo and include a brief description. This is helpful when presenting or sharing your reports with clients or your boss.

“ I start my week by looking over my Hootsuite customized analytic reports. It’s a great way to get a pulse for what’s going on and what’s resonating most with our fans.”

Joshua Jeffery, Manager of Digital Engagement, The Andy Warhol Museum

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How to Set Up Your Reports1. Once you have signed into your Hootsuite

dashboard click the bar graph (Analytics) icon found on the left side of your dashboard and choose Build Custom Report.

2. From here you can choose to either build a Custom Report or a pre-made template.

For an indepth look at building your analytic reports, watch this webinar. The webinar will walk you through getting started with your analytic reports. If you have questions, our social media coaches will be there to help guide you.

For more information on the point system and how to apply points to reports see this technical help article.

REGISTER NOW

ResourcesNow that we have given you an overview of the metrics available to you in Hootsuite, we have more resources to help you continue your learning.

For more comprehensive, on-demand training on how to leverage Hootsuite analytics, and other dashboard functionality, enroll in Hootsuite University at learn.Hootsuite.com.

To gain insight on creating a social media strategy, watch this webinar.

To learn more about URL shorteners, read this blog post.

For an indepth look on how to create a Custom Report, see this technical help article.

To learn even more ways to measure success on Twitter with Hootsuite, watch this webinar.

To learn more about Hootsuite analytics from our Social Media Coaches, register for this webinar.