Improving Lead Generation with Social Media Analytics

Social media analytics allow firms to take a thoughtful, measured approach to their social media engagements. The extensive reach of social media grants it potential as a firm’s most powerful lead generation tool, but it can be difficult to use social media correctly without understanding the needs, background and culture of your audience.

Social media analytics can provide a data-driven backdrop to your overall social strategies, enhancing existing outreach efforts while building bridges to new audiences. Even outside of your firm’s social media presence, you can draw information from customer conversations to better inform other marketing initiatives.

How to Use Social Media Analytics to Enhance Lead Generation

There are several best practices companies should follow to ensure they are leveraging social analytics effectively:

• Understand Your Audience: Social media analytics offer an in-depth view of your target audiences and the channels they frequent. For example, including UTM codes in specific social media posts or links grants your firm insight into the platforms and content assets that drive the most interest. Based on these findings, allocate resources and optimize content to best encourage engagement with your brand’s audience.
• Get Timing Down to a Science: Not all social media posts are created equal, and a successful social plan is about more than the actual content. A large component of your firm’s social media strategy should be identifying the days and times when customers engage most heavily with your brand. From this point, time content postings to maximize exposure and engagement with your target audience.
• Bring Insight to Other Campaigns: Social media analytics can provide value outside of the social media space, enhancing related marketing efforts such as public relations, pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization, email marketing and more. By uncovering more about how your customers engage with your firm on social media channels, you can tailor your digital efforts to address specific areas of concern and focus on topics that engage your audience.
• Uncover New Opportunities: By monitoring analytics over time, your firm will discover new ways to extend your social media program. This may include adding new types of content, such as more multimedia, interactive posts or longer-form blogs rather than short pieces. Social media analytics are also invaluable in deciding the right time to add a new platform profile. For example, analytics could signal enough interest to warrant an expansion of your firm’s Facebook and Twitter presence with an Instagram profile.

Using Social Media Analytics to Inform Your Strategy

Walker Sands has proven expertise in developing data-driven social media strategies. Our proprietary BUZZ social media report collects and organizes the data available from your firm’s social media engagements to uncover actionable insights. In addition, we customize each BUZZ report to address the specific needs and challenges that your brand faces.

Call us at (312) 235-6173 to learn more about how Walker Sands can help your firm develop a robust social media strategy grounded in data and analytics.