A Guide to Understanding Social Media Statistics and Information

You may have an exceptional social media strategy and admirable business marketing goals, but this can mean nothing if you don’t understand the feedback data you’re receiving regarding your content, and how to make appropriate decisions based on the statistics you receive. Optimizing your social media strategy is as much about learning from data and adapting accordingly as it is about posting good content.

If you don’t already know how to read and understand your data, it’s imperative that you learn.

Why Are Statistics Important?

Statistics are fundamental in drawing conclusions and observations from your behavior as a business, especially where online content is concerned. Statistical data tells you where you’re going wrong and what you’re doing right.

Gaining a background in statistics, as with an online masters statistics degree, sets you apart in the business world. If you’re able to handle quantitative and mathematical data and apply it in key ways to your business strategy, this will give you an edge over the competition.

Therefore, in order to better understand social media data, you need to know how to manage base data and statistics in general first.

Research, education and qualifications can help you to do that – or, at the very least, you need someone within your business who is qualified to do that in order to better read your social media data.

What Can Social Media Statistics Tell You?

Statistics can tell you all you need to know about the social media world, in order to angle your content in a better way. Statistics can tell you what kind of posts are most popular, which media gains the most interaction, which social media platforms are the most popular and the times of the day consumers are more likely to use a specific platform, as well as providing valuable feedback regarding your own posts and content.

In short, statistics help you to learn and adapt. In an overwhelming world of information, statistics provide valuable data in a very easy-to-understand form.

The Statistics You Need to Know

The following statistics are applicable for any business hoping to optimize their social media campaigns:

• 3.2 billion people use social media daily
• Facebook is the most popular social media platform
• Millennials are the most active users of social media, compared to Generation X and Baby Boomers
• An average of 2 hours a day is spent on social media by an individual, whether browsing platforms or using messaging apps
• 73% of business professionals believe that social media marketing has been effective for their business

As you can see, these statistics provide clear insight into the behavior of consumers and your target market. For example, if your business service or product is targeted mostly at Millennials, you can see through these statistics that social media marketing is an absolute must to catch their attention, and Facebook may be the best platform to do so.

How to Better Use Social Media Statistics

• Use Each Platform’s Unique Insight Tool

Each social media platform has its own insight tool to help you gather information. This is outlined by the following:

• Twitter uses Twitter Analytics
• Facebook uses analytics via an Insights tab on its pages
• Instagram uses the same model as the Facebook Insights platform
• LinkedIn offers free data, as well as full analytics software which you can pay for through a premium account
• YouTube provides an analytics dashboard

By using each and every insight tool, you’re gathering essential data and statistical information which will benefit your business.

• Set Goals and Keep Track of Changes

Use statistics to set goals. For example, perhaps you want user engagement to increase by 10% by a certain time period. You can then concentrate your efforts into achieving this. By analyzing your statistical data, you can understand better the goals you wish to achieve.

You should then track changes by monitoring data. If you have arranged a particular campaign at a certain time and your statistics reveal that user engagement significantly increased during this time, you can deduce that the campaign you created is successful in creating user engagement, and can therefore create more campaigns in the same vein.

• Use Data and Analytics to Learn About Your Followers

Use engagement and reaches to track when your followers are most active, and when they’re most likely to engage. Understand their behaviors and preferences to tailor all your social media marketing towards that, in order to best reach out to them.

You can create an amazing campaign which is suited to your audience, but if it’s posted at the wrong time, you risk them not seeing it at all.