feeling analytical

Social media has the ability to greatly influence an audience by calling it to action.... But how much influence?

Social media analytics is the practice of gathering data from social media platforms and analyzing that data to make business decisions. I sat down with my supervisor for a little lesson in further understanding what to look for when gathering said data.

According to my supervisor (and his extensive research over the past decade,) "THE GOAL" of social media is to send out a message and have other people (AKA followers) spread that message farther and wider. In other words, as nice as it is to receive a "like" on a Tweet or Instagram photo, the ultimate goal is a share or retweet of your content.

For example, Twitter gives users the ability to gather analytical data via the "Tweet Activity" feature. This feature lists the following for let's say a video embedded in a Tweet:

1. Impressions = How many people scrolled over the Tweet

2. Media views = How many times the video played

3. Total engagements = How many people physically clicked on the video

In this case, total engagement is the most important number seeing as this number represents the people who ENGAGED with the content and are more likely to share the content and respond to a call to action.

It is important to understand website and social media analytics as a tool of influence in today's day of technology. Seeing as there are services such as Google Analytics that can track and report website traffic for you, there is no excuse not to be informed!