Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter boast users that make up large percentages of the U.S. adult population, and there’s much to be said about the data that lives on each platform. Unlike most alternative forms of consumer marketing, social media is a two-way street — brands push content they want to promote and followers provide their input via reactions, comments and shares.
It’s time to stop viewing social media and email marketing as separate channels with individual strategies. Today, advanced marketers are using insights acquired from social media to create better, more engaging content across all of their channels.
In particular, we’ve identified three things to focus on:
Sentiment. Analyzing the sentiment of customers on your social pages is a great way to gain insights on the general public’s perception of your brand and/or products. Social media platforms provide a stage for customers to talk more naturally about your business, which often leads to more honest feedback than you’d get via email or in-person conversations. Looking at a more comprehensive view of attitudes about your products can help determine if your marketing is spreading the message you think it is. Hootsuite published a great list of tools that can be used for assessing sentiment.
Engagement. This one sounds pretty obvious. However, small businesses are notoriously guilty of publishing content that they think their customers want to see instead of taking the time to figure out what actually resonates. If you haven’t been tracking your posts, go back and analyze which posts had the highest levels of engagement (shares, reposts, likes, retweets, etc.). Keep an eye out for similarities between posts that generated strong responses on social, and try to identify which elements — copy, images, offers — are the driving forces for success. The more you can learn about what excites your social audience, the more you can give them what they want and incorporate that message into your other marketing channels.
Click-throughs. Getting customers to engage with a post on social is just one step in the process; getting them to click through to your website is a different story. Every business’ goal is different – restaurants may want customers to get on the website to view menus or order online, while e-commerce businesses might want to drive sales or newsletter signups – but knowing which posts drive engagement versus which posts drive actual click-throughs provides valuable insights on how effective your calls-to-action are. Oh yeah, it can also help with ROI tracking, which is something we get pretty jazzed about here at Pirate Labs! A quick Google search will show you how to track and analyze click-throughs from social media.
There’s no shortage of social analytics tools out there, so getting the information you need shouldn’t be too hard. Taking the time to really familiarize yourself with the analytics that are available to you can make a world of difference when it comes to making your marketing more effective.
Want to learn more about integrated marketing strategy? Visit the Pirate Labs blog.
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