Complete Social Media Analytics Guide (For Beginners)

Social media analytics helps you turn unprocessed social media data into actionable strategies. It shows you what’s driving engagement, what’s falling flat, and where to improve. With these insights, you can improve your marketing strategy and grow your business.

Social media is always changing, making it difficult for most businesses to keep up. So, businesses have to make smart, data-driven decisions to win in social media marketing.  But with millions of social media posts, reviews, and conversations, how do you get actionable insights from the raw data?

In this social media analytics guide, we’ll explain everything you need to know about social analytics. We’ll cover the key metrics to track, the best tools to use, and tips to avoid common pitfalls. By the end, you’ll know how to use social media analytics to achieve your business goals.

What is social media analytics?

Social media analytics is collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data from social media platforms. This process helps you gather insights into how your social media channels help you achieve your business goals. It also lets you compare your social media performance with competitors and industry standards.

For example, if you’re a startup with new social media platforms, you can analyze your brand’s online presence after some time. In this case, you can measure how many people you’ve reached on Facebook or how many followers you’ve gained on Instagram, say after three months.

Social listening is another social media analytics example. Here, you analyze online conversations to understand what people feel about your brand. With metrics like sentiment analysis, you’ll know if people love your brand, products, or services.

Now, what’s the whole point of social media analytics?

The main reason to do social media analytics is to gather actionable insights to improve your social media strategy. For instance, understanding people’s perception of your brand will help you manage and improve your reputation.

What’s more, you can measure the return on investment (ROI) from your social media marketing campaigns.

Other reasons to do social media analytics include:

• Comparing and benchmarking your brand’s performance against competitors and industry standards
• Identifying brand-fit influencers for brand partnerships
• Gathering customer feedback to improve customer service
• Gathering consumer insights to improve your marketing strategy

Now, how does social media data analytics work?

Social media analytics involves three aspects: data collection, analysis, and interpretation. You can break these down into the following steps:

• Collecting data from social media platforms
• Analyzing and interpreting the data to get actionable insights
• Reporting and sharing of insights
• Taking action
• Monitoring and adjusting your social media strategy

We’ll cover this process in detail in the sections below!

The importance of social media analytics

Social media analytics provides helpful insights, helping you make data-driven decisions. For instance, you’ll understand consumer behavior and target the right people in your future campaigns. Other benefits of social media analytics include spotting market gaps and opportunities, improving content strategies, and upgrading customer service.

Let’s delve deeper into the importance of social media data analytics:

Social media analytics helps you improve your brand’s reputation 

Social media analytics such as sentiment analysis let you measure people’s perceptions of your brand. For instance, you can track and analyze mentions related to your brand’s name, products, or services. That way, you’ll always be updated when customers mention your brand in online conversations, posts, and reviews. 

In a case where most mentions show positive sentiments, future customers will be more willing to trust your brand or services. In a different scenario, your customers could complain about your brand. But if you’re constantly monitoring your socials, you’ll promptly respond to their concerns and protect your brand’s reputation.

Audience analytics helps you understand your potential customers

Conducting audience analytics gives you crucial information about your target audience. It helps you understand their demographics, pain points, preferences, and needs. 

If you’re in the hospitality industry, understanding customer needs helps attract more clients. For example, you might discover a segment of your target audience looking for baby-friendly AirBnBs. With these insights, you’ll adjust your spaces to accommodate such clients.

Trendspotting reveals market gaps and opportunities 

Social media analytics provide insights into trends and patterns, whether on social media, the market, or your industry. By studying these trends, you’ll spot market gaps and opportunities to grow your business.

Here’s an example: If you’re managing a SaaS brand, you could spot a spike in conversations about generative AI. That would mean that brands in your industry are embracing generative AI in their products. In the same way, you could identify areas to incorporate AI in your products or services and adjust to the changes in your industry. 

Competitive analytics lets you compare your performance against competitors

Competitive analysis allows you to benchmark your social media efforts against your competitors. The insights you gather help you understand competitors’ strategies, strengths, and weaknesses. 

For instance, you might discover that your competitors get more engagement and sales from video content. If you’re getting low engagement, you could also experiment with video content in your posts to boost engagement. Then, you can adjust your content strategy to include more videos in your posts. 

Performance analytics inform content and marketing strategies 

Social media marketing analytics helps you measure and improve your content and marketing strategies. Metrics such as engagement rates will let you know if your target audience resonates with your content. Plus, you’ll understand their preferred content formats and peak engagement hours (or days).

What’s more, you can use performance and paid media analytics to measure the impact of your social media marketing campaigns. KPIs such as click-through rates and conversions let you track the return on investment (ROI) and return on ads spend (ROAS) from your campaigns. These will help you know if you’ve met your business goals.

Tracking social media analytics improves customer service and experience 

Social analytics provide helpful insights into customers’ sentiments, opinions, and feedback. So, by tracking them, you’ll understand customers’ pain points and preferences. You’ll also improve customer service by responding to their queries and concerns.

And that’s not all!

Understanding social media analytics helps you boost engagement and build stronger customer relationships. That’s because customers are more likely to trust and follow brands that listen to them and promptly respond to their concerns.

Here’s an example:

Suppose you’re a smartphone manufacturer that consistently monitors your social media channels. Then, you spot conversations where customers complain about a specific feature in one of your phone models. Quickly responding to their concerns and addressing this issue will boost customer trust and loyalty. 

Social media analytics help with decision-making 

Understanding social media data helps you generate actionable insights to inform your decisions. Social media platforms are treasure troves of information that could drive your brand’s growth. 

For instance, suppose you’re a social media marketer running campaigns on your brand’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. Then, you notice that Instagram is driving more traffic to your website than Facebook. What will you do? You’re more likely to shift your focus to IG since that’s where your target audience is.

And that’s not all!

If you’re a data analyst, you probably have no power to make decisions in your organization. But you can prepare custom analytics reports and share them with stakeholders. That way, you’ll contribute to data-driven decisions that drive business growth.

What are the types of social media analytics? (Key areas to analyze)

The key types of social media analytics are performance, audience, and competitive analytics. Others include influencer and diagnostic analytics.

Let’s dig deeper into these social media data analytics below.

Performance analytics 

Performance analytics measure the progress of your social media content or platforms. They include metrics such as engagement rates, impressions, and click-through rates. Plus, they provide helpful insights into improving your content and social media strategies.

For example, you can monitor your Facebook content and discover that Reels get 20% more engagement than static posts.

Audience analytics 

Audience analytics help you understand your target audience and refine your strategies to meet their needs. They include metrics like audience demographics, preferences, and online behaviors.

For example, social media marketing analytics could help you determine that your target audience is 20-25-year-old females who love buying things on TikTok Shop.

Competitive analytics 

Competitive analytics reveals your competitors’ strategies, social media performance, strengths, and weaknesses. Key metrics include share of voice, competitor engagement rates, and follower growth.

For instance, one of your competitors could be getting high conversions from video content on their TikTok account. You might replicate some of their good-performing content in your strategy.

Influencer analytics 

Influencer analytics help you track and analyze suitable influencers for brand partnerships. Key metrics include reach, conversions, follower growth, and engagement rates.

For example, analytic tools might help you spot an influencer in your niche with a considerable following who shares your brand values.

Diagnostic analytics

Diagnostic analytics explain why things happen on social media. For instance, they can help you understand why one social media campaign performed better than another one.

Key metrics include:

• Content performance comparisons
• Campaign trends and patterns
• Audience growth 

The next section covers how to track social media analytics.

How do you do social media analytics? 

1. Set clear goals 

Before collecting and analyzing social media data, define what you want to achieve. Then, set SMART social media goals that are aligned with your business objectives. That way, you’ll run an effective social media analytics process.

SMART goals are:

• Specific: Your goals should be clearly defined, e.g. To increase web traffic from Facebook by 10% in quarter 1
• Measurable: You should be able to measure them, e.g. Generate 500 website clicks from Facebook ads in the next 60 days
• Achievable: Your social media goals should be realistic, e.g. Increase Instagram followers by 20% in three months
• Relevant: Your social media goals should align with your overall business goals e.g. Increase sales by 5% in July 2025
• Time-bound: Your goals should have a time frame, e.g. Monitor TikTok activity for the next 6 months

2. Choose KPIs and metrics that align with your goals

After defining your goals, choose key performance indicators (KPIs) to track your performance. For best practice, go for KPIs that align with your goals.

You could use KPIs such as:

• Reach, impressions, and follower growth – to measure brand awareness and visibility
• Click-through rates and conversions – to measure lead generation
• Engagement rates – to show how your target audience interacts with your content
• Web traffic and sales – to measure campaign performance
• Sentiments – to analyze brand perception

Social media data can be overwhelming and full of ‘noise.’ So well-defined KPIs will also determine what metrics you’ll analyze. Plus, these metrics should help you measure your business goals.

For instance, if your goal is to manage brand reputation, you could choose a KPI such as sentiment to understand what people feel about your brand. If they have negative sentiments toward your brand, address their concerns to protect your brand’s reputation.

3. Get the right social media analytics tool

A reliable tool simplifies the social media analytics process. Choosing the right social media analytics tool helps you collect data and analyze the metrics that matter to your brand. Since there are many social media analytics tools, pick one that matches your business goals or needs and fits your budget.

If your goal is to generate basic analytics on your Facebook performance, the built-in Facebook analytics tool would do. But for in-depth analytics, go for third-party analytics tools like Keyhole and Agorapulse.

Here’s what to consider when choosing the right social media analytics tool:

• What do you want to achieve?
• What’s your budget?
• What metrics do you want to analyze?
• What features does the social media analytics tool offer?
• Does the social media analytics tool integrate with your preferred social media platform?

4. Segment your analytics 

Once you’ve picked the right social media analytics tool, segment the analytics you want to track into categories. Segmentation helps you narrow down on specific metrics and compare one analytics type with another. It also lets you know what’s working for you and what’s not.

You can categorize analytics by:

• Type, e.g. performance analytics, audience analytics, or competitor analytics
• Platform, e.g. Facebook analytics, TikTok analytics, LinkedIn analytics, and more
• Content, e.g. Video analytics, Static posts analytics, and more
• Distribution, e.g. Organic posts analytics or paid ads

5. Collect data regularly and consistently

Data collection is a key step in social media analytics. But it’s only effective when you do it regularly and consistently. After categorizing the analytics you want to track, use your social media analytics tool to collect data.

Most social media analytics tools offer custom dashboards. That allows you to set up your personalized dashboards and select the metrics you want to track. Plus, you can use specific keywords, topics, or hashtags to collect relevant data. You can also use filters to cut unnecessary data from your results.

What’s more exciting is that most social media analytics tools automate data monitoring. And they send regular, automated alerts or notifications to keep you updated. For example, you’ll receive notifications when there are unusual spikes in conversations about your brand. 

6. Analyze the collected data

Once you’ve collected the social media data, analyze it using the analytics features offered by the tool. For example, you can analyze your customers’ demographics, interests, and online behavior. This information helps you understand the right people to target in your future campaigns.

You can also study trends and patterns in your content or social media performance. For example, analyze how your audience reacts to different content formats or posting times. You could notice that some content formats get the highest engagement on specific days or hours.

And that’s not all!

You can analyze the performance of paid ads on your preferred social media platform. For example, study how your target audience reacts to Facebook ads you’ve posted near the end of the month.

7. Compare and benchmark performance

The social media analytics process shouldn’t end with analyzing data. You can also make comparisons using the analyzed data to improve your strategies. For example, compare the performance of different content types to know what’s resonating with your audience. If your Facebook reels are getting more engagement than Stories, adjust your content strategy to include more reels.

Here’s what else you can compare using social media marketing analytics:

• The performance of different social media platforms, e.g. How many followers have you gained on LinkedIn compared to Instagram within the same period?
• Your social media performance against competitors, e.g. Which content formats get the highest click-through rates on your competitors’ posts?

8. Translate data into actionable insights and refine your strategy

Social media analytics are ineffective if you don’t translate them into action. Interpret the analytics you’ve gathered into actionable insights to help you make better decisions. You can also generate custom reports to share with your team, stakeholders, or decision-makers.

Also, most social media analytics tools simplify this process by offering recommendations. For example, a tool like Brand24 will recommend the best time to post your content based on the engagement rates.

Other actions to take to refine your social media strategy include:

• Adjusting ad targeting: Use audience insights to target the right people in your ad campaigns.
• Improving your content strategy: Add content formats that drive more engagement and conversions.
• Shortening customer response time: Promptly respond to customers’ messages, queries, and concerns to improve customer experience.

• Improving product features: Refine your product features to address customers’ pain points and complaints.
• Shifting budget allocation:  Add more funds to high-performing platforms to increase conversions and sales.

9. Monitor results, adjust, and repeat the process

After refining your strategy, track your progress within a specified time. Then, use the insights gathered to adjust your strategy.

Make this regular tracking of social media analytics a part of your business goals because social media is dynamic. Repeating this process will keep you on top of trends, improve your decision-making, and drive business growth.

How to use social media analytics the right way (Best practices and common pitfalls)

Social media analytics is only effective when you follow best practices like setting clear goals.

Here are some of the best social media analytics best practices:

• Set clear goals and KPIs: Well-defined goals will guide your social media analytics strategy. They should also be SMART and aligned with your overall business goals.
• Choose the right tool: A reliable tool will help you achieve your social media goals. Pick a tool that offers all the essential analytics and reporting features. It should also have reliable customer support and a pricing model that matches your budget.
• Track the right metrics: Only track metrics that matter or match your business goals. It helps to use a social media analytics tool that lets you customize the metrics to analyze.
• Segment your data: Organize social media data based on the type, platform, or distribution to get specific analytics. Plus, it allows you to compare and benchmark performance across content types or social media platforms.
• Study trends and patterns: Tracking and analyzing trends helps you spot gaps and understand shifts in your industry. You also understand changes in consumer behavior through trendspotting.
• Be consistent: Regular analytics and reports will help you track your social media progress. You can set up automated regular reports to simplify this process. It’s also a great way to communicate your social media efforts with your team and stakeholders.
• Make data-driven decisions: Use the insights from social media analytics to inform your decisions. For instance, adjust your content strategy to create content that resonates with your audience.
• Refine your strategy: Track your progress continuously to improve your social media strategy.

That said, here are the common pitfalls to avoid in social media analytics:

• Focusing on vanity metrics (likes or followers) and overlooking actionable metrics such as conversion and engagement rates
• Setting vague goals that don’t match your overall business objectives
• Misinterpreting data without context, e.g. a spike in brand mentions could mean your brand is involved in a scandal
• Basing your decisions on a single metric
• Failing to benchmark your performance against competitors and industry standards
• Ignoring qualitative analytics such as sentiment analysis
• Failing to act on the generated insights

In the next section, we’ll answer the question, “what social media analytics should I track?”

Key metrics to measure in social media analytics

The key metrics to measure in social media data analytics include brand visibility and awareness, social media performance, and audience metrics. You can also track sentiment analysis, competitor, conversion, and customer satisfaction metrics.

Let’s get into the details:

• Brand visibility and awareness metrics, e.g. reach, impressions, and follower growth help you measure your brand’s online presence. They tell you how many people you’ve reached and attracted.
• Social media performance metrics, e.g. engagement rates measure the impact of your social media efforts.
• Audience metrics, e.g. demographics (age, gender, or location) and psychographics (preferences, interests, and aspirations) help you understand your target audience.
• Sentiment analysis metrics, e.g. positive, negative, and neutral sentiments tell you what people feel about your brand.
• Competitor metrics, e.g. share of voice or engagement rates, follower growth, and sentiment comparisons let you benchmark your brand against competitors.
• Conversion metrics, e.g. click-through rates, traffic referrals, and conversion rates track how social media helps you achieve business goals like driving web traffic and lead generation.
• Customer satisfaction metrics, e.g. response time and customer satisfaction scores help you measure how social media serves as a customer service channel.
• Paid social media metrics, e.g. ROI and ROAS (return on ad spend) let you measure the performance of paid social media campaigns.
• Influencer metrics, e.g. influencer engagement rates, reach, and conversion rates help you track the impact of influencer marketing campaigns.

What are the best social media analytics tools?

1. Facelift Data Studio

Facelift Data Studio (formerly Quintly) is the go-to social media analytics tool for in-depth analytics. It lets you track and analyze 350+ metrics, including audience demographics and follower growth. What’s more, the Quintly Query Language (QQL) feature lets you choose only the metrics that matter to your brand. 

And that’s not all! Facelift offers flexible templates for creating personalized dashboards and reports.

2. Socialinsider

Socialinsider is the best social media analytics tool for competitive analysis. It helps you analyze your rivals’ social media strategy and performance. Plus, you can compare and benchmark your performance against competitors.

What’s more exciting is that Socialinsider allows you to compare the performance of various competitors in your industry. That way, you’ll benchmark their strategies against industry standards.

3. Keyhole

Keyhole is the best social media analytics tool for measuring overall social media performance. This software offers customizable dashboards that provide insights into your social media platforms. So, you can track engagement rates or follower growth across your social media channels.

That’s not all! Keyhole lets you customize your reports using your brand logos and share them with stakeholders.

FAQs

How often and when should you look at analytics?

You should look at analytics daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly depending on your business goals. You might also consider your social media activity and the nature of your business when deciding how often you review your analytics.

Here are some guidelines on when to check your social media analytics:

• Daily monitoring is suitable for fast-paced business activities like e-commerce sales and content publishing. You may also want to track daily analytics for real-time engagement or to spot urgent trends and spikes in brand mentions.
• Weekly monitoring is suitable for businesses that want to track short-term social media performance. Here, you can review audience engagement with content, follower growth, and click-through rates.
• Monthly monitoring is ideal for reviewing and adjusting strategies. Here, you analyze broader trends in your content and marketing campaigns. You can also study shifts in market trends and audience behavior.
• Quarterly monitoring is suitable for measuring long-term business goals and progress. It’s also ideal for businesses affected by seasonal trends, such as hotels. Here, you review metrics like conversion rates, social media ROI, and consumer sentiments.
• Annually monitoring is ideal for assessing yearly trends and business goals. It’s a comprehensive review of your campaign performance and plan for the next year. Here, you analyze year-over-year ROI and follower growth, most and least successful strategies, or industry trends.

What does an effective social media analytics process look like?

An effective social media analytics process has a well-structured approach to collect, analyze, and interpret social media data. It is also backed by clear, SMART goals that match the overall business objectives.

Here’s how to run social media analytics effectively:

• Set clear goals and KPIs
• Choose the right tool(s) and metrics
• Set your data tracking and reporting process
• Collect data regularly and consistently
• Analyze data and draw insights from the analytics
• Take appropriate action and report your findings
• Continuously monitor and refine your strategy

What’s the difference between social media data vs. social media analytics

Social media data is the raw or unprocessed information you collect from social media platforms. On the other hand, social media analytics is the process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting this data to generate actionable insights.

Let’s  break it down further:

Is social media analytics the same as social media listening?

Social media analytics is not the same as social media listening. While both processes involve collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data, social media analytics is more comprehensive than social listening.

Here’s a comparison between social media analytics and social media listening:

What is the best social media analytics tool?

The best social media analytics tool depends on your specific goals, needs, and budget. But an ideal social media analytics tool should help you choose, track, analyze, and interpret the right metrics.

Here are some of the best social media analytics tools:

• Facelift Data Studio
• Socialinsider
• Keyhole
• Agorapulse
• Sociality.io
• Exolyt
• Iconosquare
• SproutSocial
• Google analytics