Social Listening Versus Social Analytics

Nov 13, 2023

Understand Your Performance Online and Add to the Conversation

What does "success" on social media look like? It's tempting to consider "going viral" or impressive follower counts as the pinnacle of social media success. However, success on social media is building an online presence that represents the interests of your small business and accomplishing specific goals you have made for your business.


A critical piece of this journey is how you can measure your social media activity results. Measuring results comes down to social analytics, which people often conflate with social listening tactics. Let's break down both practices to understand how small businesses can utilize both and build their online presence. 


What is Social Listening?

Social listening is a social media marketing and management practice companies are increasingly interested in. Social listening assesses what users say about a company, individual, or product online. Social listening sometimes comes through direct engagements and impressions, such as comments, likes, etc. Other times, social listening involves mining social media platforms for mentions of your company or brand, whether or not you're directly tagged. 


Truth be told, social listening can be tedious. Conversations about your company can come in the form of unstructured data. However, understanding what customers or potential customers say about your brand can help business owners develop insights into consumer behavior, product feedback, and more. 


Social Monitoring

How can you monitor these conversations? Many CRM (customer relationship management) applications have tools for monitoring social listening. For instance, a given CRM can scrub a platform for mentions of your brand. These tools help businesses track what is said and allow the team to compile social listening findings in one place. 


Customer Sentiment Analysis Tools

Once a small business has social monitoring, it may consider using customer sentiment analysis tools. While monitoring conversations about your company or the products and services your company provides, it's critical to assess the emotions revealed in these conversations. Is there negative feedback mentioned about a specific service your company offers? Do social media users wish your company would bring back a product you discontinued? Understanding how customers feel and subsequently taking action is an age-old business strategy – customer sentiment analysis tools are how businesses can follow this strategy in contemporary times on social media platforms.


Response and Strategy

The results of social listening practices are usually how (and if) your brand will choose to respond to the online conversations you have been monitoring. For instance, if a customer decides to share a negative experience with your product or service on their personal social media account rather than leaving a review or contacting you directly, should your company respond? 


That's where your social media strategy comes in. Depending on the size of your business, it may not be feasible for your team to respond to every conversation and interaction. If your company can respond to legitimate mentions found through social monitoring, then you can show involvement and responsiveness. 

What is Social Analytics?

Now that we have an overview of social listening, what are social analytics? Social (media) analytics collect data points that help measure how content performs on social media accounts. Social analytics can be valuable for both short-term and long-term business goals. While social analytics will help assess the performance of an individual marketing campaign or initiative, they can also help uncover the long-term performance of a social media account.


Metrics

Metrics are the specific data points that make up social analytics. Each social media platform has different metrics available to track and analyze. Standard metrics are likes, followers, shares, views, reposts, and more. When setting goals for your small business' social media accounts, you should decide which metrics you would like to track and which will be most valuable to understand the performance of your content.


For instance, a small business focused on its local audience may prioritize likes, comments, and shares over its follower count. They want to engage with their current followers versus their reach. Another business that recently opened a new franchise may be more concerned with building its follower count than how many comments it gets. There is no one-size-fits-all, underscoring the importance of goal-setting with your team.


Conversions

Another essential component of social media analytics is conversions. While seeing your company's social media account getting traction within the app can be great, seeing conversions outside of the app is even better. A conversion counts as getting a user to leave the social media platform and take a specific action outside, whether purchasing a product, signing up for your newsletter, scheduling an appointment, or visiting your website. 


Strong advertising content involves a CTA (call-to-action), and CTAs on social media are ever-evolving. However your team chooses to set up CTAs and direct users to the desired action, conversions are also essential to track in your social media analytics.


In-Platform Analytics v. Third-Party

Where can you find social media analytics? Each central social media platform has its own in-platform analytics tools. From Facebook and Instagram to Snapchat and TikTok, social media platforms are adding more and more social analytics tools to help individual and business accounts. Third-party analytics tools can help companies with many social media accounts build efficiency by storing everything in one spot. Depending on your small business needs and aspirations, it's worth researching both options.

Work With Cole-Dalton Marketing Services

All in all, small businesses need to understand the differences and intersections between social listening and social analytics. With the intricacies of these practices and the instantaneous nature of the social media landscape, social listening and social analytics can be daunting. 


If you're a small business owner feeling overwhelmed after reading this information or know that other tasks bog down your team, look no further than Cole-Dalton Marketing Services. We help Greater St. Louis area business owners maintain and improve their online presence by performing various digital marketing tasks, from website design to social media to videography needs. 



Check out our recent work and contact us today to see how we can help your small business succeed online and beyond!

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