Get in-depth insights to grow your brand on social media

At Buffer, we define social media analytics as the process of gathering and analyzing data from social media channels for the purpose of guiding our marketing strategy and measuring our performance against our social media goals. Some examples of data points include number of likes, comments, engagement rate, follower growth, and daily average clicks, just to name a few important ones.

Understanding (and tracking) the data behind your social media performance can help you to make better decisions about your content, ensure you’re connecting with the right audiences, and help you to boost engagement and grow your following.

The easiest way to track your social media analytics is through a tool that aggregates the most important metrics across all social media networks and gives your personalized recommendations on how to maximize your results. Buffer’s analytics tool is a perfect example of that. If you don’t want to use a social media analytics tool, you can also check out each social media network’s built-in analytics dashboards that offer some great insights into your activity on the network.In this blog post, you can learn how to obtain the data and metrics offered by the social networks themselves.

The social media metrics you should track really depend on what your social media goals are. For example, if your goal is to grow an engaged audience, you might want to keep track of your engagement rate and your follower growth. If your goal is to increase your brand awareness, you’d likely want to monitor your impressions and reach for each post. The first step is to choose your social media goal. 😊 If you’re curious about which social media metrics you can track with Buffer’s analytics tool, here are a few:

• The number of posts
• The number of likes
• Engagement rate
• Number of engaged users
• Comments count
• Post saves
• Post shares
• Retweets
• Link clicks
• Impressions
• Post Reach
• Follower growth
• Daily average impressions, engagements, and clicks
• Audience demographics, such as age, gender, and location
• And much more!

If you’re a small business owner, or social media manager, there are many benefits to using a social media analytics tool to measure and monitor your social media performance. Here are afew reasons why people prefer to use Buffer’s analytics tool:

• Our tool gives you personalized recommendations to increase your reach and engagement, so you can save more time analyzing your data and focus on creating great content
• You can get a detailed breakdown of all your social media posts, including boosted Facebook and Instagram posts, and learn which posts have resonated with your audience (highest engagement rate) and which have spread far and wide (highest reach);
• You can get an aggregate view of all your social media channels’ performance in one single dashboard, instead of checking separate social apps multiple times a day;
• You can get in-depth insights on when, what, and how often to post to grow your engagement rate and following;
• You can create reports of your results every week or month to regularly show the value you are bringing to the business.

One of the best ways to define your social media strategy is to have a clear understanding of your audience. Buffer will give you demographic data for your social media audience, including gender, age, and location. This allows you to learn more about the people that matter to your business and, in turn, helps you tailor your messaging and strategy to these groups.

It really depends on when your followers are online and engaging with your posts. Buffer automatically analyzes all of this for you and tells you when, what, and how often to post to maximize your reach and engagement rate. You can find all of this data in the Answers tab in our analytics dashboard.

Besides providing data for your Instagram posts, our social media analytics tool is one of the few tools that provides Instagram Stories analytics. Buffer shares reach and completion rate for individual Instagram Stories and overall metrics, such as total impressions and average reach, for all the Instagram Stories you have posted within your chosen period. Start a 14-day trial for free today and get immediate access to your Instagram Story analytics.

Boosted posts are ads that you’ve created from existing posts on your Instagram feed or Facebook timeline. By putting some money behind your organic posts, you can get more results from the same amount of work. For example, boosting organic posts can help you get more video views, reach, followers, clicks, or even more messages. If you’re boosting your Facebook or Instagram posts with ad spend, Buffer can help you monitor your results and compare them with your organic results to optimize your ad spend. Try Buffer for free for 14 days and start measuring your boosted posts performance.

With Buffer’s analytics tool, you can track performance metrics, get recommendations to grow your engagement, and create reports for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You can also connect your Shopify store to Buffer and we’ll give you insights into customers and sales from social media.

Yes, with Buffer's analytics tool you can create and export beautiful, on-brand custom reports. You can add all types of metrics, tables, and charts from your dashboard to your reports and download them as PDFs or images. The ability to create custom reports is available on all paid plans.

Our analytics tool is available on all paid plans and you can try it for free on our 14-day free trial. No credit card required and you can cancel at any time. You’ll get in-depth insights, measure your social media performance, and create gorgeous reports.