Analyzing the Analytics
As I am learning and experiencing social media and navigating how I should grow my brand, I am simultaneously planting the seeds for my own development of techniques and tricks. Understanding social media requires a certain level of attention to detail and an eye for social trends. Though these are skills that are essential to harness for those wanting to excel in the social media management field, they aren’t necessarily the skills that everyone operating within and expanding your brand will have nor understand.
For that reason, the tools you use to analyze your brand’s social data should give you the information you require to efficiently do your job, but keeping in mind those around you might not need to know all of that information. Furthermore, an important community skill for social media managers to build upon is knowing the type of information your outside departments will need from you. Your interdepartmental team might not understand the weight of increasing viewership specifically on Mondays, for example. For you, you’ll recognize that as a fact of that sort to be a detail that lends you information about the people that are your target audience; this is because your daily life has trained you to see so.
You will observe certain facts as enlightening and your boss might not see it as an accomplishment. As a social media manager, you will check your impressions, likes, and responses daily.
In addition to responding to those in your audience, you’ll make sure your team is on track with their social media posts from the calendar. Your team tracks your target audience demographics; facts like age, gender, etc. Additionally, you will want to keep track of data points regarding the time your audience mostly interacts with your posts, and the posts that are most likely to have audience interaction. As a Social media manager, you will need to be as aware of the trends regarding your brand, your competitors brand, and any successful social media trends.
On the other hand, your boss will not need all the details of the brand’s social media account; they won’t need the daily details that you do. According to an article on Digimind, “Your boss wants to know: Is our audience growing?” Therefore, it wouldn’t be as helpful for your boss to know your daily insights. It is more important that they are aware of the KPI’s; follower count, website traffic, and impressions. They will need to understand why there were significant increases or decreases in viewership, if there were any. It is best to keep them regularly in the loop with what occurs in the brand’s social media statistics so they can track the impact that your social media tactics have. Overall, your boss needs to know what your brand’s image is on social media and they should be reassured that it is in a position to grow.
An effective way to communicate weekly growth to your supervisor is through the use of graphs with your charted information. Even more, you’ll want to keep your boss up to date on any results of social media campaigns that you might be initiating. Make sure that your boss can see“…in a glance which channel the post was on, a summary of the content, the number of interactions, and the interaction rate.”
It’s common knowledge that, “Organizations that do not include social media in their business strategy run the risk of losing relevance in the market”. In a monthly meeting for your company’s management, the whole team is going to want to see how your efforts have essentially kept your company relevant. Accordingly, they are going to want to see the facts that support and promote the company’s relevance; they should see any evidence of growth, and additionally when that growth occurs. It is imperative to show them in the meetings why your actions with social media management are growing the company. You do that by presenting your social media calendar and expanding upon particular insights that reflect overall brand growth.
As an actor, I was always taught to tailor my performance to the audience; I wouldn’t perform a production for a group of elementary aged students the same way I would for seasoned adults. Their level of understanding varies and their needs differ, and similarly so with explaining social media to different audiences. You will need to monitor most if not all of the social analytics to prepare. Your boss needs to see that your work leads to growth. Your monthly team needs to see that your work keeps the brand relevant.
