Just the Basics: Social Media Analytics
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As social media continues to rise, we become more obsessed with the concept of social platform likes. Whether you posted a selfie, a picture of your dinner, or a fun night out with friends, you want that post to perform well. Even though they aren’t posting selfies, brands feel the same way when they post their content that is why they rely on social media analytics. Gohar F. Khan’s book Seven Layers of Social Media defines social media analytics as “the art and science of extracting valuable hidden insights from vast amounts of semistructured and unstructured social media data to enable informed and insightful decision making”. In simpler terms, social media analytics is the overarching term for understanding your engagement rates.
When most people think of social media they think of the common platforms Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, however, it consists of all platforms that allow you to create and share content on including Tinder, Yelp, YouTube, and blogs. Social media analytics allow brands to generate business, receive feedback on their products, and to engage with their consumers to generate brand loyalty. There are eight layers of social media analytics that brands use to measure different types of engagement and key performance indicators (KPI).
8 Layers of Social Media
Layer One: Networks
Network analytics measure the size and structure of different groups that emerge on social platforms. This form of analytics can identify influential users otherwise known as verified users, for example, due to a high level of engagement on her Twitter page, Chrissy Teigen has a verified page. Network analytics can also identify subgroups within a community such as when you scroll on your Instagram search page and content appears of what you typically view, like, and save.
Layer Two: Text
Text analytics are collected to understand common themes and emotions expressed about a brand or topic. Text analytics is measured through text-based comments, tweets, status updates, etc. This type of analytic is commonly used by brands because it allows them to understand what users are talking about, how they feel about it, and what they will or will not do going forward.
Layer Three: Actions
Action analytics are collected by measuring the actions a user has performed on a post including likes, dislikes, shares, mentions, and endorsements. This form of analytics allows you to look at a glance and over time how well your post is performing. This is the most basic form of analytics that an average user will look at.
Layer Four: Search Engines
Search engine analytics allow you to see what is working and what is not, they analyze historical search data to gain insight in search results and keywords. The two common analytics that makes up search engine analytics are search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine data analytics. SEO is used to improve your websites ranking in a search engine result by using organic strategies such as keywords. Search engine data analytics are used when it comes to trends in analytics such as recurring searches.
Layer Five: Location
Location analytics focuses on pinpointing the location of people, their data, and other resources. Location analytics assist companies who create location-based advertisements.
Layer Six: Hyperlinks
Hyperlink analytics measure the incoming and outgoing web traffic from a specific webpage. Hyperlinks can be used in a variety of ways on websites such as linking out to an event sign up page or purchasing a tagged product off of Instagram.
Layer Seven: Mobile
Mobile analytics deal with measuring the engagement within mobile apps. Engagement in mobile analytics can include in-app purchases, how long the app is being used, and even what time of day the app is typically used. If you have an iPhone, you may recognize this analytic feature as each Sunday it notifies you about your screentime. In this report, you can see which days you spent the most on your phone and also what applications you frequent.
Layer Eight: Multimedia
Multimedia analytics measure the vast amount of social content such as images, videos, and audio posted on various platforms. The benefit of using multimedia analytics allows companies to see all social media conversations about their product or service.