Hey there, fellow small business owners! By now, we hope you all know how powerful social media can be for your business. We frequently talk about how to make this tool work for you, but how do you know it’s working? Social media sometimes feels like you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall, with some posts getting two likes while others explode with engagement. It can be hard to know how to improve! This is where your analytics come in to save the day. In this post, we’re going to talk about what social media analytics mean and how they can help you take your marketing to the next level, while having some fun along the way!

We want to give a disclaimer here: social media will always be a trial and error process. While anyone can make educated guesses, there is no way to guarantee any results, one way or another. 

With that out of the way, let’s define social media analytics. They’re your secret weapon in the social media game. They help you understand how well your social media strategy is working, who your audience is, and how they’re engaging with your content. It’s like having a crystal ball, but for social media! You can see what’s working and what isn’t, and make a decision as to how you’d like to move forward.

We don’t have time to define everything that every social media platform tracks, so we’ll just talk about the most common one: Facebook. You can find all of the following information (and more) in the Meta Business Suite.

• Reach: This means how many people have your posts pop in their feed. If your posts have more engagement, this number is likely to increase. More engagement tells Facebook that people like your posts, so they’ll show your posts to more people.
• Page Visits: This means how many profiles visit your page in the time frame you’ve chosen to look at.
• New Likes: This means how many new profiles liked your page in the time frame you’ve chosen to look at.
• Engagement: This means how many people have liked (or reacted), commented on, or shared your post. Engagement is why we recommend 80% of your posts be fun, inspirational, or educational, not sales-y. More people engaging with your content means Facebook is more likely to share the rest of your content, which means more people will see all of your posts, including your sales ones.

Did you know you had access to all of that information? You can also see analytics for specific posts, rather than overall performance. That will help you learn directly about which posts worked and which ones didn’t. Additionally, You can see demographics about the people who follow your page. This means age, gender, and even the top cities and countries they’re from! Flourish’s audience, for instance, is just over 70% women.

What a powerful tool! Social media is not only the place where you can reach pretty much anyone of any demographic, but most sites have a built-in feature that lets you see exactly which of your strategies are working and therefore what to keep doing. With a better understanding of your audience, tracking your progress, and statistics to base new ideas from, you can create a social media strategy that grows your business like never before! And if you need help interpreting your analytics, or you’re new and don’t have anything to start with, Flourish Marketing is here to help! We can help you identify an audience to start working with, interpret the data that comes in, and create content that helps your business be seen. Reach out to book a consultation, and we’ll get you started toward achieving your digital marketing goals!