I have talked a bit about Web Analytics and Social Media so the logical next step is to talk about Social Media Analytics. Social Media Analytics is the art of trying to find ways to improve how you use Social Media to achieve a desirable outcome. This outcome is largely dependent on who your representing online, be it yourself, your company or your brand..

Like web analytics you should clearly set your goals and aims for the Social Media presence. Social Media Analytics enables you to measure how effective you are against your targets and you can set benchmarks to monitor your performance. You could then see that certain online initiatives are more effective than others but if you cannot measure it, how can you know how well you are really doing? Again, you have to ask the right questions:

• What did they do?
• Why did they do it?

Social Media Analytics tools come in many forms, often provided by the platform itself: it is straight forward to see how many people have been coming to your site from a Social Media site, and vice versa but how about what specific links have been clicked most or driven the most conversions? How is your social presence actually performing? Piecing them together can be more tricky.

Many of the social platforms provide APIs that allow you to access their systems and draw the data that you want when you want. Some development work or consultancy may be required or there may be some ready made solutions. Whatever you choose you will never get anything that will cover all your requirements. Some will come closer than others though 🙂