Social Media Data Analytics Resources | Sprout Social Sprout Social offers a suite of <a href="/features/" class="fw-bold">social media solutions</a> that supports organizations and agencies in extending their reach, amplifying their brands and creating real connections with their audiences. Thu, 04 Apr 2024 13:16:28 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://media.sproutsocial.com/uploads/2020/06/cropped-Sprout-Leaf-32x32.png Social Media Data Analytics Resources | Sprout Social 32 32 The journey of a data point: Turning numbers into social media intelligence https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-intelligence/ Thu, 04 Apr 2024 13:00:22 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=162223/ Every company should strive to be driven by data. As organizations and technologies become more sophisticated, we’ve been able to tap into the kinds Read more...

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]]> Every company should strive to be driven by data. As organizations and technologies become more sophisticated, we’ve been able to tap into the kinds of insights that wouldn’t have even been imaginable 15 years ago. Those insights drive real business value, whether you’re proactively increasing customer retention, engagement or satisfaction, or creating new products or services that solve problems your customers didn’t even know they had. Social media analytics isn’t just about the numbers—it tells a story about your business and customers.

“When I think about data, I inevitably think about social media. That might be because I spend my days working with our clients’ executives to capture the voice of their customer, but I think it’s because social media intelligence is the next data frontier,” says Ryan Barretto, President of Sprout Social.

Social media data gives you actionable intelligence to drive your business forward. But how exactly does data turn into business intelligence? And do professionals from social practitioners to marketing leaders take advantage of social insights?

We spoke with several subject matter experts at Sprout, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Bowling Green State University (BGSU) and Madden Media, a destination marketing agency, to learn how a data point becomes social media intelligence.

What is social media intelligence?

Social media intelligence is the process of gathering and analyzing data from conversations on social networks to inform decision-making. Across the social landscape, there are trillions of data points that are essential parts of cumulative business intelligence.

Social media intelligence involves pulling these points together into something measurable, whether you’re looking at volume, sentiment, content or demographics. Once you add context behind the data, those insights can guide marketing efforts, sales strategy, product development and more.

There’s a good chance your competitors are already using social media business intelligence to their advantage. According to The 2023 State of Social Media Report, 85% of business leaders say that social data consistently informs or often informs their company’s business strategy. Over the next three years, 30% of business leaders expect that amount to increase significantly.

Why is social media intelligence important?

Collecting survey data from your customers, monitoring product reviews and conducting focus groups are extremely valuable. When you combine that feedback with social media intelligence, you get an even clearer picture of what your audience wants.

One post might not mean a lot, but the aggregation of every post on a topic that’s relevant to your business can be magical. Social data comes from a wider audience, it’s unfiltered and it gives you a real-time understanding of your market.

Social media intelligence contextualizes wider feedback

Social media intelligence provides a macro perspective when you desperately need one and can have a major positive impact on your quarter or fiscal year. While a survey helps you understand your base, social media intelligence captures the sentiment from anyone buying within your product category, opening the door to new audiences. With access to a wider range of feedback, teams can identify more avenues for driving impact with social data, which gives the edge you need to generate revenue, discover potential cost savings and reduce your risk.

“Balancing social data with creativity is so important because it gives us a direct pulse on what customers are doing, responding to and saying. We’re getting one of the best, richest pieces of audience data that we can get through social,” says Sarah Hupp Foster, Chief Operating Officer of Madden Media.

Understand your customers better with unfiltered feedback

Social media, for better or worse, is where people go to express their unfiltered thoughts. Your customers might reserve their true feelings on a survey that’s going directly to you, but on social media, they’re posting their thoughts as they come. Without a social media intelligence program, you might only notice a few posts that go viral and address those individual concerns. But once you organize that data, you can find the commonalities and adjust your strategies accordingly.

“People aren’t holding back when they tell you what they think. Whether you’re looking for improvements for operations, trying to decipher new technology to invest in or direct insights for your customers, all of those audiences will tell you what they want. As a leader you have a starting point whether it’s doing an internal survey or preparing a proposal, [social data] empowers you to have a firm ground to stand on,” Foster says.

And if you’re interested in employee sentiment or investor relations, your constituents are still people with social media accounts.

“I know of one company that tracks both employee and investor sentiment directly after earnings calls to get an unfiltered view of how their results and commentary are being received. They can use that intelligence to shape future internal and external communications, with messaging tailored for each group,” says Barreto.

Monitor feedback in real time

Consumers post to social media as soon as they have a problem, giving you a real-time window into how your product is being received. By implementing social media intelligence practices, you can keep an eye on problems faster than you could by monitoring your internal customer care. When you establish a trendline of social sentiment, if there are any sudden deviations from that line, you can investigate quickly.

“For example, one of our other agency customers discovered the value of social data after their client’s moisturizer sales started dropping and they couldn’t figure out why. By setting up a social listening query, they had their answer within minutes instead of months. While customers still loved the product, they disliked the packaging. The social team was able to pass the feedback on to R&D so they could redesign their packaging based on real customer insights,” Barretto says.

Fuels competitive monitoring and benchmarking

Social media intelligence also supports competitive monitoring and benchmarking. Jenny Li Fowler, Director of Social Media Strategy at MIT, says it’s important to know what your competitors are doing, especially what stories they’re telling and their successes. She says social data can help spot any internal gaps that your competitors are already capitalizing on.

“If you’re in the same industry, you have a similar audience, so it’s an opportunity for you to authentically add your spin. I learn a lot from my higher ed peers. We all learn from each other. That’s part of what creativity is—to be inspired by what others are doing,” Fowler says.

Brands can also see why consumers prefer your competitor—a competitive intelligence play that might take months to accomplish without the power of social. You can see what’s missing from the marketplace. That kind of intel has a ripple effect across your business and you might not ever uncover it without social media data.

Strategies for gathering and using social media intelligence

Our experts shared their strategies for getting deeper data and using that social media intelligence through social listening, sentiment analysis, social monitoring and competitive intelligence.

Social listening and sentiment analysis

Social listening involves collecting and analyzing online conversations to gather data about what people are saying about a brand, product, service or industry. Sentiment analysis uses this data to determine if the tone behind those conversations are positive, neutral or negative. Both social listening and sentiment analysis provide businesses with intelligence about consumer perceptions, trends and more.

For example, Brianna Louise Blackburn, Manager of Social Media Strategy at BGSU, uses the Sprout Inbox to track sentiment, specifically looking to see if their content and the university’s procedures, events and culture are resonating.

“It’s helpful for me as a social media manager to be able to report to our leadership. They can get a better understanding of how their decisions are making an impact across our various audiences and stakeholders,” Blackburn says.

Lindsey Wilhelm, Managing Senior Content Strategist at Madden Media, oversees a team of writers who produce organic and paid social content. Her team manages community engagement and comment moderation for clients as part of the broader array of owned social services provided by Madden. This approach is utilized not only for ad hoc sentiment analysis but also for fostering community building.

“We closely analyze user engagement to refine our client’s social strategy. Every user question, comment and interaction is a data point that we can use to inform future efforts. Community management not only builds trust between our clients’ brands and users but reveals insights that teach us about our key audiences,” she says.

For instance, when the Madden team worked on a campaign honoring Native American Heritage Month, there were many comments from people sharing excitement and expressing they wanted to participate in different types of cultural experiences like a powwow. Madden’s content team works with their clients and other internal agency disciplines like design and media to determine the best way to respond to these types of conversations.

“While it may not be appropriate to encourage people to attend these cultural events, it showed us there was a strong desire to engage with Native American culture, even if users themselves weren’t part of the community. So, we can cultivate interest on behalf of our client to encourage users to honor the culture with valuable experiences like touring historical locations,” she says.

Occasionally the team will see a trend for certain hot topics that spark negative sentiment in the comments. Wildlife images can sometimes spark debate between residents and conservationist groups. The creative team worked together to find new imagery while still maintaining the needs of their client.

“Once the team noticed a large number of negative comments, we shifted our strategy to not include imagery of those animals because the users’ negative interactions were taking attention away from our key message, which was responsible recreation and giving wildlife space. We continued to promote the message because it was a key client initiative, but we switched to showing different types of wildlife. This allowed us to avoid getting more of that negative sentiment but still get our client’s message across,” she says.

Social monitoring

Along with social listening and sentiment analysis, social monitoring can be used to provide business intelligence. Social monitoring refers to the process of tracking general activity across multiple platforms. It involves observing and analyzing user activity, interactions and trends across various social media platforms. By monitoring factors like engagement, demographics and content performance, businesses gain insights into their target audiences behavior and preferences. For example, if a marketer noticed an increase in engagement on Instagram Stories with polls, they might focus on using more interactive elements in the future.

Competitive analysis

Social data helps you benchmark your efforts against competitors. Blackburn says it’s helpful to see what other universities or brands are doing related to higher education, especially when it comes to informing event strategy on social media.

“For example, we may show how another university uses confetti, photo opportunities or video displays—anything that’s more engaging and shareable. We want to make the event a social media moment where people are whipping out their phones and taking pictures or video for their Instagram Story or whatever platform they choose,” she says.

During reporting, Blackburn explains she will often include competitor analysis tools to highlight other institutions, along with sharing comments about what people liked about BGSU’s event, to gain buy-in and demonstrate proof of concept.

“If you’re trying to market a brand or product, it’s important to know what conversations are held by your audience about your peers or competitors, especially if you’re trying to make an argument to go a certain direction. It helps to lead with data,” Fowler says.

7 ways to turn social data into actionable intelligence

Social media intelligence has a direct impact on your bottom line, so how do you create a social data program that works for you? There are several ways you can transform social media data into actionable intelligence for your organization. For Madden, social data supports their overall storytelling.

“We’re trying to tell authentic stories on social. We do that by reviewing analytics and data our client has on the destination and their target audiences. Whether it’s geo-targets or demographics to some degree, we look at the traditional metrics for our campaigns: CPC, likes, shares and comments. We can get an idea of how a message resonates based on that data and benchmarks,” says Jack Petty, Senior Director of Destination Strategy.

Beyond supporting storytelling, there are seven ways to turn social data into actionable intelligence.

1. Empower your social media team

Social data should be owned by the people working in the platforms every day. Your social media team already understands the landscape and probably has a few insights from their day-to-day work.

The next step is giving them the tools they need to surface that information to the rest of your organization. Keep them informed on metrics and goals of the business in the next quarter, year or five years. Make sure your social media team knows what matters to the business so they can mine and present insights to your leadership that will fuel your strategy.

2. Use social data to identify industry trends and opportunities

When it comes to social media intelligence, Madden’s teams are looking at major trends within the travel industry. For example, post-2020 people are looking to spend time outside and new audiences are seeking outdoor experiences.

“Social intelligence can show us the big trends and we can share those insights with our clients to help identify what’s going to resonate with audiences,” Foster says.

As a COO, Foster looks to social data to get an overview of workforce conversation, relevant industry topics and emerging technology as well. If she notices a major trend, she considers how to apply it to Madden’s operations.

“I’m able to see across all different industries at a grand scale and learn what staff are looking for.”

For example, when exploring different perspectives and reviewing general sentiment around hybrid work models, she was inspired to create a survey for the Madden team about best practices for hybrid work.

“I saw people didn’t want to fully return to the office, which allowed me to take action and get a pulse check for our staff by doing a survey. The social space informed us that we need to ask more about the topic,” she says.

3. Share insights across teams and departments

The beauty of social media intelligence is that one data point or finding can be relevant to multiple teams.

“A lot of what we do travels across different teams or departments because we’re a company of marketers working on behalf of our clients. We have an internal marketing team as well,” Petty says.

For instance, Petty explains his team may share several examples when presenting how a campaign performs. From there, the Madden marketing team will create a case study and apply those insights to Madden’s own channels.

Wilhelm says Madden Media also has a company-wide chat where teams share wins and performance stats from campaigns across the company.

“Since we have so many different teams hyper-focused on our clients, we don’t always know exactly what we’re all working on. It’s nice to have that company-wide space to talk about what’s new, what we’re doing for clients and what’s working. We share competitor insights as well,” she says.

4. Create a data dashboard

Social media intelligence is most powerful when paired with other data sources. All of your business data is valuable and it can’t live in a silo. Placing social insights with your CSAT or NPS survey results, reviews, customer support tickets and other data sources gives you a clearer view of the total landscape. When you give social media intelligence the same weight as data from your CRM or ERP, you see everything more clearly.

“As we move through this economic uncertainty, listening tools can be especially helpful to make game-time decisions. For example, retailers who need to make difficult decisions about their inventory can use social media intelligence to decide what to discount and what might be useful to keep on hand. Having all of that information in one place can help you make the tough calls,” says Barretto.

5. Be proactive, not reactive

One advantage of the real-time nature of social media is that it can be used to anticipate your audience’s needs or as a crisis management tool. Fowler explains over the past few years, MIT has used social to navigate crises and to help them better understand their audiences.

“When I think of social media intelligence, we’re trying to hone in on what our community is thinking and feeling. What is triggering them and what are their needs?” Fowler says.

During the height of the pandemic, the MIT community expressed they missed campus and seeing each other in person, so the social team started using more personal language. For example, instead of saying “We miss everyone,” they would use “We miss you, too.”

“I think when our audience read more personal language, it made them feel more heard and connected. It was a somber time, for example, and we stopped using phrases like ‘Have a happy weekend,’ but adjusted our tone to reflect how our audience was feeling,” she says.

She also shares that anecdotal data is one of the most powerful because it can help leadership inform messaging.

“Do we need a message to our community? If so, what is the tone and who needs to be heard? It’s challenging to connect all those dots, but when you’re hearing from all of the different voices on social, it helps you not be as reactive. It helps you know when it’s the right moment to say something and when it’s not,” she adds.

She explains MIT uses social listening and sentiment analysis tools to help with timing. For example, they search for relevant keywords to determine the momentum of conversations.

“Sometimes it confirms what we already know about the conversation, but seeing the sheer volume of mentions across networks along with [visualizations] shows you exactly where the data points are coming from. I will share those insights with leadership with a brief message,” she says.

Having a robust, always-on social data program is the best way to make sure your leadership is seeing the whole picture.

6. Conduct A/B testing to create content that resonates

Social media intelligence can also inform A/B testing to determine messaging and opportunities to lower the risk of content that doesn’t resonate. You can conduct organic social media experiments by testing different content types, captions, copy, images or publishing times. You can also use A/B testing for paid ads.

“We’re being the best stewards of our clients’ dollars. We don’t want our ad creative to be so high that we’re seeing a drop in CTR or other methods of engagement,” Petty says. “However many ads we’re creating, we’re using A/B tests to determine the different ways we can present it.”

He explains there are situations where ad creative takes off quickly, so the team optimizes toward that option. A different ad with a similar message may have a different image or target, but if they see it starts to shift, those options will become more prevalent over time. Either way, A/B testing enables Madden to present information and guidance to their clients.

7. Inform future campaigns

Social media intelligence has a place in their overall creative process, especially when preparing for new campaigns. After a seasonal campaign ends, the Madden team creates a slide deck to share overall performance with their internal stakeholders and the client.

“Our [media strategists] share great nuggets of insights, including top-performing headlines, primary text and link descriptions for paid ad campaigns. I like to review those decks when I’m strategizing for the next campaign. It helps me learn how the content we deploy resonates with our audiences. I can glean some information on the audience sentiment through that performance,” Wilhelm says.

The Madden team also looks at landing page performance for the exit URL of the campaign to review metrics like click-through rate, bounce rate and time on page to identify if the page met the user’s expectations after clicking.

“Those metrics help us know if we’re hitting the mark. Is it connecting with our audience and inspiring them, or giving them an awareness of this client’s destination? We reference them a lot as we are creating or reviewing social content to make sure we are following through with that data-first mindset,” she says.

3 social media intelligence tools to connect the dots

Now that we’ve covered the importance of social media intelligence and how brands can use it, let’s explore three tools you can use to connect the data points.

1. Sprout Social

Sprout’s solutions support gathering, analyzing and disseminating social media intelligence. Use our social listening solutions to learn about conversations and relevant topics, as well as measure sentiment and analyze your audience’s honest feedback. Our platform makes sharing insights easier with automated reports, which can also be exported and shared with various stakeholders.

Preview of Sprout’s Sentiment Summary dashboard showing net sentiment score and net sentiment trend.

Our customer care solution with Salesforce and Tableau integrations, enable you to see your social data alongside other business intelligence insights. You get a 360-degree view of your business data and customer care experience from end to end.  And our intuitive platform enables you to essentially register and get started right away.

Sign up for a demo to understand the full potential of Sprout and how it can fit your unique social media intelligence needs.

Request a demo

2. Similarweb

Similarweb is a social media intelligence tool centered on competitive intelligence with a comprehensive view of your competitors’ digital presence. You can explore engagement, keywords, traffic and more for up to 25 competitors at a time.

A preview pf Similarweb, a social media intelligence tool centered on competitive intelligence. The preview shows a dashboard for marketing channels and trends.

3. Semrush

Semrush is a popular search engine optimization (SEO) tool, but also offers powerful competitive intelligence features. Semrush provides tools to analyze your backlinks, paid ad campaigns, keyword ranks and social media performance.

Preview of Semrush, a popular search engine optimization (SEO) tool. The preview shows a dashboard for organic and paid search, backlinks and display advertising.

Use social media smarter

The sheer amount of data that social media can provide is unmatched. Implementing a social media intelligence program is one of the best ways to harness those insights for your business. Learn how Sprout’s premium analytics will help you reveal opportunities across your organization.

The post The journey of a data point: Turning numbers into social media intelligence appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> How to use LinkedIn hashtag analytics to boost content reach https://sproutsocial.com/insights/linkedin-hashtag-analytics/ Thu, 28 Mar 2024 14:00:31 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=184206 With over a billion members in 200+ countries and territories worldwide, LinkedIn is one of the most popular social networks for brands looking to Read more...

The post How to use LinkedIn hashtag analytics to boost content reach appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> With over a billion members in 200+ countries and territories worldwide, LinkedIn is one of the most popular social networks for brands looking to reach a professional audience.

But with millions of posts flooding users’ feeds daily, how do you make sure your content gets noticed? Hashtags may be the answer. LinkedIn hashtags are searchable, which increases your content’s reach and gets your posts in front of more of the right people.

In this article, we’ll dive into why hashtags matter, how they boost your brand’s visibility and how to use LinkedIn hashtag analytics to add fuel to the fire of your LinkedIn marketing strategy.

Table of Contents

What are LinkedIn hashtag analytics?

LinkedIn hashtag analytics reveal how popular specific hashtags are on the platform and how they impact content performance.

For example, hashtag analytics offer insight into how many people see your posts because of the hashtags you use, which hashtags get the most traction and how much engagement your posts get because of those hashtags. Understanding the data behind your hashtag strategy will help you fine-tune your approach and content to reach more of your target audience.

Why tracking LinkedIn hashtag analytics is important

On LinkedIn, 40% of users organically interact with a page weekly, making it an excellent choice for brands that want to get noticed without paid promotion. Adding LinkedIn hashtags to your organic content can help it reach an even broader audience, but you need to be strategic to make the most of them. This is where LinkedIn hashtag analytics come into play.

Here are the top reasons why you should keep track of LinkedIn hashtag analytics.

Identify the best hashtags for your brand

Have you noticed that a particular hashtag has a high follower count and consistently drives engagement on your company’s posts? Those are good signs that you should keep using it. Analyzing these metrics over time will allow you to pinpoint the exact keywords and phrases that resonate the most with your audience.

Understand which hashtags compliment your brand

Prioritize relevancy over popularity to reach the people most interested in what you’re sharing. For example, suppose you’re a social media marketer at a B2B marketing software company for small businesses. You might opt for the more specific #smallbusiness hashtag, with around 800,000 followers, over the general #marketing, with over 20 million followers. Despite its smaller follower count, picking the more relevant hashtag will help you cut through the noise and speak directly to your ideal customers.

Subscription design service Superside recently used this approach for a LinkedIn post promoting an upcoming webinar, using very niche hashtags like #aitutorial and #3dmoviestylecharacter with a broader but still targeted hashtag #characterdesign, which has over 14,000 followers.

LinkedIn post from Superside, promoting workshop on how to create 3D movie-style characters based on a human model.

Track the sentiment for certain hashtags

A solid social media strategy also tracks how people feel about the content you’re putting out. Monitor what hashtags drive more positive or negative engagement to ensure your content hits the right notes.

For example, creating a Listening Topic in Sprout Social will enable you to analyze the topic’s most common keywords and hashtags and see a breakdown by sentiment for related keywords and hashtags.

The Related Keywords & Hashtags screen in Sprout Social’s Listening Report

Monitor your competitors

Incorporating hashtag analysis into your competitive monitoring will help you optimize your social media strategy by staying competitive and increasing your share of voice more relevantly. For example, if competitor posts with specific hashtags consistently get high engagement, that’s an indicator that those hashtags are hitting the mark with their audience, and you may want to start incorporating those or similar keywords into your content.

Sprout’s Listening solutions make this process easy. They enable you to gather key metrics like volume, engagement, likes and impression breakdowns for specific competitor hashtags, or a broader overview of your competitors’ top hashtags.

How to generate LinkedIn hashtag analytics

Not all social media analytics are created equal. Knowing how to generate this data will make all the difference in maximizing your post reach and engagement. From leveraging built-in LinkedIn tools to browser extensions to third-party social media management platforms, here are the primary methods for generating LinkedIn hashtag analytics.

Use the native LinkedIn hashtag analytics

LinkedIn offers follower count numbers for all hashtags. To see how many followers a hashtag has, use this URL formula:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/hashtag/keyword

For example, if you wanted to see the follower count for #socialmediamarketing, you would enter the following URL into your web browser:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/hashtag/socialmediamarketing

The follower count will be displayed prominently at the top of the page. It’s not the most efficient system, but this method will show you the popularity of specific hashtags. From there, make a shortlist of industry-specific hashtags and test them to see how they affect performance.

The #socialmediamarketing hashtag follower count

Use a LinkedIn hashtags analytics extension

Hashtag Analytics is a free Google Chrome extension by Engage AI. The tool allows you to check hashtag follower counts directly on LinkedIn, get real-time insights while scrolling through your feed and get hashtag suggestions as you write your posts.

It also offers additional data like hashtag follower growth over time, the maximum number of likes and comments based on the top 20 recent posts and the total reach of a post after incorporating hashtags.

To start exploring hashtags, add the extension to Chrome, log into LinkedIn, and access the tool icon in your browser.

The Hashtag Analytics Chrome Extension

Use a third-party social media scheduling tool

Creating a tag for different hashtags in Sprout Social will enable you to track how each one performs in engagement, reach and clicks across your posts. Say, for instance, you work for a virtual event software company and want to compare posts with #eventprofs to ones with #eventtech.

Creating a tag for each hashtag will enable you to generate Tag Performance Reports that provide metrics like impressions, engagements, engagement rate (per impression) and top posts. This data will help refine your social media strategy and drive more meaningful interactions with your target audience.

The Stats by Tag screen in Sprout Social

Harnessing the power of LinkedIn analytics

It’s challenging for brands to stand out in the ‘pay to play’ social media landscape. Fortunately, hashtags are an easy way to boost your content and organically get it to the right people. Just make sure you monitor your hashtag analytics to see which hashtags drive the most results to maximize your LinkedIn content efforts.

Of course, hashtags are just one feature that can affect content performance. If you want to dive even deeper into the world of LinkedIn performance data and learn more about the best platforms to track metrics, check out our roundup of the top LinkedIn analytics tools on the market.

The post How to use LinkedIn hashtag analytics to boost content reach appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> How to conduct a TikTok audit in 6 steps https://sproutsocial.com/insights/tiktok-audit/ Mon, 11 Mar 2024 15:00:20 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=183518 Regular TikTok audits are the secret to working smarter on the fastest-growing platform on social. Just ask Alex Lewis, Senior Social Media Strategist at Read more...

The post How to conduct a TikTok audit in 6 steps appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> Regular TikTok audits are the secret to working smarter on the fastest-growing platform on social. Just ask Alex Lewis, Senior Social Media Strategist at Abercrombie & Fitch Co.

Lewis leads organic TikTok content strategy for Hollister and Gilly Hicks, two retail brands that operate under the Abercrombie & Fitch Co. umbrella. In his role, he’s responsible for using data to bring their respective brand strategies to life on the platform. Just before the new year, he audited the brands’ TikTok presences so teams can deliver high-performing content more consistently.

“We want to help drive efficiencies for all the teams that support our TikTok presence,” says Lewis. “With that in mind, I knew a social media audit would help us gain a better understanding of our content’s performance and audience engagement over the past year.”

Lewis generously guided us through this work, so you can replicate his approach with your own brand. In this article, we’ll share his tips—including how to share your findings with your team.

What is a TikTok audit?

A text-based graphic that says, "What is a TikTok audit? A TikTok audit is the process of reviewing your company’s TikTok account point-by-point. That includes your profile set up, content strategy, trends in engagement—everything that contributes to your performance on the platform."

A TikTok audit is the process of reviewing your company’s TikTok account point-by-point. That includes your profile set up, content strategy, trends in engagement—everything that contributes to your performance on the platform.

This research contributes to a greater understanding of what’s working for your brand on TikTok. Your findings may also supply ideas for creative testing to optimize your brand’s TikTok presence.

The benefits of a TikTok account audit

Lewis learned a lot from auditing the Hollister and Gilly Hicks TikTok accounts. Some of those learnings have already translated into wins that have streamlined content production and boosted performance.

Here are just a few ways conducting a TikTok audit can drive similar benefits for your brand: 

Refining your strategy

A TikTok audit offers an opportunity to dig deeper into your strategy, providing the context necessary to give your metrics more meaning.

KPIs can’t tell you everything. Not all views are created equal, obviously, nor is all engagement. We want to make sure we’re making a positive connection with our customer, which requires quantitative and qualitative research.
Alex Lewis
Senior Social Media Strategist (TikTok), Abercrombie & Fitch Co.

These insights are more than just helpful—they serve as a roadmap to refining your approach on the platform. In Lewis’ case, his work highlighted the content worth prioritizing, allowing the social team to focus on quality over quantity. “We’re not just putting stuff on the calendar just to meet a publishing quota. We’re ensuring that the content we share has a strong chance of performing well for us.” 

Improving collaboration

TikTok is a team effort. Whether you have a full creative team backing you or a handful of colleagues ready to appear on camera, creating content for the platform truly takes a village.

A TikTok shared by Hollister. In the post, a model is covering her face while on the set of a photoshoot. The caption says "When some says "didn't you were that exact outfit yesterday?".

Content creation for the Hollister and Gilly Hicks accounts is a collaborative effort shared by cross-functional partners across the social, influencer, public relations and product teams—not to mention the stylists and creators that make the merchandise shine. Findings from the brands’ TikTok audit ensure optimal use of everyone’s time. It also provides a meaningful opportunity to acknowledge their contributions.

“It’s an exciting way to celebrate the team members that worked so hard to make these achievements possible,” says Lewis. “TikTok is such a joint effort, so it’s important to circulate praise beyond just the social team.”

Advocating for more resources

In 2023, Abercrombie restructured their social media team for a more platform-specific approach. Through his TikTok audit, Lewis found that a considerable amount of followers across the Hollister and Gilly Hicks accounts began following after shifting to this new structure.

“It’s been really interesting to see how our performance has changed since we started dedicating more resources to the channel,” says Lewis. “It’s fun to look back and see that all that work did play a significant role in our success.”

Findings from your audit can be used to make the case for more social media team resources, whether that be headcount, budget or software. Use the audit to showcase how added resources impacted performance, and how bandwidth limitations are holding you back.

How to conduct a TikTok account audit

The key to a great TikTok audit is going as in-depth as your bandwidth and limitations will allow. “You might not be able to go as deep as you’d like to go, but you can still set aside time to cover your brand’s priorities,” says Lewis.

Let your goals guide your audit and frame what “success” looks like. Here’s a process you can use to set the foundation for your approach:

1. Optimize your TikTok profile and branding

How frequently do you visit a TikTok profile after coming across an intriguing post on your For You Page? That first glance often determines whether users decide to hit the follow button.

Gilly Hicks' TikTok profile. The profile picture and pinned posts are promoting the new Gilly Hicks Active line.

Kick off your TikTok audit with a profile wellness check. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you review your setup:

  • Branding: Create consistency by ensuring your profile picture and TikTok bio aligns with your brand standards and personality.
  • CTAs: TikTok Business account owners can add a link to their bio, creating more opportunities to drive traffic to a relevant page of your website. You can also link Instagram and YouTube profiles to grow your following across the web.
  • Pinned Posts: Pinning a post ensures it stays at the top of your profile so it’s front and center for any visitors. Ensure this real estate is used well by dedicating it to your top performing posts, or posts that showcase core brand elements.
  • Playlists: TikTok Playlists allow businesses to categorize their public videos so that viewers can watch related content in a single scroll. If you haven’t already, set up playlists that group similar posts so users can easily find what they’re looking for.

2. Conduct a TikTok follower audit for engagement and authenticity

A TikTok audit isn’t just about what you publish, it’s also about who interacts with it. “We use social media tools to keep a close eye on what our audience is saying in comments and across platforms,” says Lewis. “That’s how we get a fuller picture of how people are interacting with our respective brands.”

Audit your following using native TikTok analytics or a tool like Sprout Social to:

  • Examine your follower growth rate: Monitor how your account is growing month-over-month. If you’re seeing healthy, steady growth then you may want to consider making TikTok a bigger priority.
  • Weed out fake TikTok followers: Bot accounts plague every social media platform, including TikTok. If you leave them unchecked, they can skew your engagement rate for the worse.
  • Identify influencers engaging with your content: Look for the emerging and established creators lurking within your follower list. These are warm leads for future creator partnerships.

This effort can yield just as many findings as your content audit. It certainly did for Lewis. “One of the biggest lessons that we took away from our audit is to lean more heavily on our community of creators, whether they’re larger accounts, customers or store team accounts. They showcase our clothes in a really engaging way.”

3. Evaluate your publishing strategy with a TikTok content audit

The secret to collecting juicier insights with your TikTok content audit? Start quantitative, then go qualitative.

“I looked at our top fifty highest performing videos from 2023, based on views and engagements,” explains Lewis. “I also pulled our fifty lowest-performing videos. Then, I went post-by-post and listed the content format, the focus of the video and what kind of sound we used.”

Use a TikTok analytics tool to save yourself the time it would take to manually identify your highest and lowest-performing posts. Sprout Social’s TikTok Profiles Report can deliver a performance snapshot of all the content published within a given period, so you can jump right into analysis.

Sprout's TikTok Performance Report, which demonstrates the number of published posts, views and engagements from one TikTok account.

Once you have that information, you can look for performance trends based on the following criteria:

  • Post format: Examine which content formats resonate most with your audience. Do carousels elicit a response? Or trending filters? Also, check to see if certain video lengths perform better than others.
  • Content topics: Dig into what your audience likes to see from your brand. Is it promotional content? Memes? Content from influencers and creators? Figure out what works and what doesn’t.
  • Audio use: Social’s traditionally been a visual medium, but TikTok brought audio into the mix. A TikTok audit isn’t complete until you look into how trending sounds influence content performance.
  • Publishing cadence: Social media consistency is a simple practice that can drive major results, especially on a platform as fast-paced as TikTok. Once you’ve reviewed your posts individually, check to see how your publishing cadence impacts performance over time.

You’ll find takeaways you can apply to your content strategy going forward, even if you review less than one hundred posts. According to Lewis, it matters more that you review an even mix of high and low-performing content.

“Don’t just keep it to the wins,” advises Lewis. “Take a look at what underperformed, too. What patterns do you see? Are there outliers in that content? What can you learn from it all?”

4. Analyze competitor strategies and positioning

A quick competitive analysis allows you to evaluate your performance in comparison to other brands and relevant accounts on TikTok.

Lewis’ teammates stepped in to help him with the competitor portion of his TikTok audit. “It gave us a better sense of the overall content landscape on the platform.”

To add the same layer to your audit, choose three to five competitors and do a brief analysis of their presence on TikTok. How many followers and likes do they have? How often and what do they publish? There’s a lot you can learn from a quick profile review.

5. Synthesize your findings and share with your team

Your brand’s performance on TikTok can inform more than just your social strategy, but only if you share your findings across your team.

After completing your audit, present your insights in a format that is easily understandable to a broad audience. Highlight key findings, share links to top-performing posts and identify opportunities for future testing. This can take a lot of shapes, depending on your preference. If you love a good deck, this social media presentation template will help streamline the creation process.

With that in mind, remember the work isn’t done once you hit send or finish presenting. To truly get the information to stick, you need to reiterate your insights when the appropriate moment strikes. “There are a lot of ways you can go about socializing your findings,” says Lewis. “A lot of times, it’s just sharing anecdotes during meetings with cross-functional partners and leadership.”

Conduct a TikTok audit that levels up your strategy

The social media landscape moves fast. It’s easy to get caught up in day-to-day content creation and publishing calendars. However, truly effective strategies are made when marketers take a moment to pause and evaluate their content.

Setting aside some time to audit your TikTok strategy will set you up for greater success in the future. While you’re at it, make space to review your strategies across platforms. It may sound like a lot of work, but this handy social media audit template breaks it down into manageable steps. Download it today, so you can work smarter tomorrow.

The post How to conduct a TikTok audit in 6 steps appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> YouTube analytics: How to analyze your YouTube data https://sproutsocial.com/insights/youtube-analytics/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/youtube-analytics/#comments Thu, 07 Mar 2024 19:57:11 +0000 http://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=81967 Building a strong YouTube channel starts with understanding your audience. Do viewers love your videos? Is your channel growing? Where do your views come Read more...

The post YouTube analytics: How to analyze your YouTube data appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> Building a strong YouTube channel starts with understanding your audience.

Do viewers love your videos? Is your channel growing? Where do your views come from?

These are all questions that directly impact your content and approach to YouTube marketing.

And one of the best places to get answers to these questions is through social media analytics — specifically YouTube analytics.

YouTube’s native analytics provides heaps of data to uncover everything you need to know about your channel and content performance. However, it can all be overwhelming if you’re new to it.

Check out this complete guide to navigate YouTube analytics and use it to your advantage.

What are YouTube analytics?

YouTube analytics refer to the data and performance metrics of your channel. To name a few, these metrics include views, subscribers, watch-time, and comments. Understanding all YouTube metrics is crucial to understand how much you’re engaging your audience and whether your content is performing well.

Your performance data can be broken down by either channel-wide or video-specific metrics.

Benefits of tracking YouTube analytics

You can’t grow your channel if you don’t know how your audience engages with your videos.

And so the benefits of having a pulse on your YouTube analytics can’t be overstated.

1. Spot audience performance trends

Creators should be wary of blanket advice regarding what’s “optimal” on YouTube.

If you want to know what your specific audience does or doesn’t want, look no further than your YouTube analytics data to uncover insights. For example, do your viewers tend to prefer 10+ minute videos or YouTube Shorts? Do you notice an uptick in subscriber engagement when you upload less?

YouTube analytics can provide valuable information so you can create content with more confidence.

2. Learn what content resonates with your YouTube audience

While the YouTube algorithm feels like a mystery, one thing’s for sure: content formats have a massive impact on your videos’ engagement. Not to mention, it influences your ability to build an audience.

For example, you might notice that reaction videos get way more views than your explainer videos. “Create relevant content” isn’t actionable advice until you have benchmark video data.

3. Assess how assets affect performance

Remember that your actual YouTube content is only one piece of your video marketing strategy.

Consider how assets and publishing details can likewise impact your channel’s performance:

  • Thumbnails
  • Captions
  • Hashtags and keywords
  • Channel branding
  • External links

Figuring out how these pieces impact your content is as simple as checking your dashboard.

How to find YouTube analytics

Before getting into the nitty-gritty, let’s start with the process of accessing your YouTube analytics.

The fastest way is through the YouTube Studio page via your desktop browser or its mobile app.

How to access YouTube analytics on desktop

To access the YouTube analytics tool, you can log in directly from studio.youtube.com. You can also click on your profile icon from your YouTube account and select “YouTube Studio.”

display of youtube navigation to view where to click into the YouTube Studio dashboard

From your YouTube Studio dashboard, click on “Analytics” in the left-hand panel. Simple enough, this will open your YouTube analytics! Here you get an overview of your channel’s performance.

You can navigate further with the Content, Audience and Research tabs for more granular metrics, too. Click “See More” to get more detailed YouTube channel analytics for each.

YouTube Studio channel analytics dashboard view

How to access YouTube analytics on mobile

From the YouTube mobile app, select your profile picture and tap “Your Channel.” Then select the graph icon (next to “Manage videos”).

YouTube Studio analytics dashboard view on mobile

Alternatively, you can download the full YouTube Studio app which offers many of the same metric breakdowns as the desktop version. You can find a prompt to download the app at the bottom of your mobile YouTube analytics page.

more views of YouTube Studio analytics dashboard on mobile

YouTube channel analytics and metrics to track

In YouTube Studio, select the “Analytics” in the left-hand menu for your channel-wide data.

Below is a breakdown of the YouTube metrics you can see for your entire channel via Studio.

Channel overview and content metrics

Channel views. The number of total views your channel has received (defaults to the previous 28 days).

Channel watch time (hours). The amount of time viewers have spent watching your videos.

Channel subscribers. The number of subscribers gained within the past 28 days.

Realtime report. A live report of your subscriber and viewer count.

Top Content. A preview of your top three videos within the past 48 hours (you can also click to see an expanded list).

Impressions. The total number of impressions your channel has received in the previous 28 days.

Impressions click-through rate. The percentage impressions that resulted in a video view.

Average view duration. The average amount of time (in minutes/seconds) that viewers spend watching your videos.

Key moments for audience retention. A percentage breakdown of how many viewers are still watching specific videos at the 0:30 mark.

How viewers find your videos. A percentage breakdown of how people discover your content organized by suggested videos, browse features, playlists, YouTube search, channel pages and other sources.

Audience metrics

Returning viewers. The number of repeat viewers of your content within the past 28 days.

Unique viewers. The total number of unique (individual viewers) of your content within the past 28 days.

Videos growing your audience. A breakdown of videos that resulted in repeat views.

When your viewers are on YouTube. A breakdown of the times and days of the week that your audience is most engaged on YouTube.

Top geographies. The origin countries of your audience.

Age and gender. A breakdown of the age and gender of your YouTube audience.

YouTube video analytics and metrics to track

In YouTube Studio, select “Content” in the left-hand menu to see a list of all your videos.

Then, tap the Analytics icon next to the thumbnail for a breakdown of metrics for a specific video.

Engagement metrics

Views: The total number of views your channel (or video) received

Watch time: The total number of time (in hours) people watched your videos

Subscribers: How many new subscribers you’ve gained within a given timeframe

Average view duration: The average length (in seconds) of video playback

Average percentage viewed: The average percentage of a video watched during playback

Impressions: The number of times your video thumbnails or previews were presented to viewers

Impressions click-through rate: How often viewers clicked to view a video after seeing a preview or video suggestion for it

Likes (vs dislikes): The ratio of “thumbs up” versus “thumbs down” ratings on a video

End screen element click rate: How often viewers clicked your end screen following a video

Awareness metrics

How viewers find this video: Percentage of viewers from sources such as suggested videos, YouTube search, playlists, browse features and more

Impressions and how they led to watch time: A visual representation of how many thumbnail impressions a video received and the number of views that resulted from it

External sites or apps: Percentage of viewers that come from off-site source such as Reddit or Discord

Bell notifications sent: How many times your subscribers were sent notifications for your new videos

YouTube search terms: Which terms that viewers searched in YouTube to land on your videos

Content suggesting this video: The percentage of impressions received from content suggesting your video

Playlists featuring this video: The number of YouTube playlists featuring your content

Other metrics to track

Returning viewers: How many viewers of your videos have previously watched your content

Unique viewers: The number of individual viewers of a video or channel (not counting repeat viewers or loops)

Age and gender: The demographic breakdown of your viewership based on age and gender

Watch time from subscribers: The amount of time spent on your videos from viewers subscribed to your channel

Top geographies: A breakdown of the locations where your videos are viewed the most

Top subtitle / CC languages: The most common languages that appear in subtitles for your videos

YouTube ads earnings analytics and metrics to track

Unsurprisingly, you can also find heaps of data on your YouTube ads within the platform as well.

For the sake of your budget and performance, keeping a close eye on your paid YouTube analytics is crucial to make the most of your ad spend. Especially as Google continues to experiment with new ad types and formats.

Ad earnings: The total estimated earnings (net revenue) from all Google-sold advertising sources for the selected date range and region

Earnings: The total estimated earnings (net revenue) from all Google-sold advertising sources as well as from non-advertising sources for the selected date range and region

Red partner revenue: The total estimated revenue earned from YouTube Red subscriptions for the selected report dimensions. It reflects earnings from both music and non-music content

Ad type: The format of the ad in question and its buying platform

Ad impressions: The number of verified ad impressions served

Monetized playbacks: The number of instances when a viewer plays your video and sees at least one ad impression. A monetized playback is counted if a viewer is shown a pre-roll ad but quits watching the ad before your video ever starts.

Playback-based CPM: The estimated gross revenue per thousand playbacks

How to see YouTube analytics for other channels

Without using a third-party YouTube analytics or a competitive analysis tool, there’s limited data you can gather on competitors or creators in your space.

Natively, you can see limited data for other channels under the “Audience” through in your main YouTube Analytics dashboard. Here you get a snapshot of the activity and content preferences of your viewers.

  • Channels your audience watches
  • What your audience watches
  • Formats your viewers watch on YouTube (videos, Shorts and Live)

Note that this data may be incomplete until you have a larger viewership to populate each field.

YouTube analytics tools to level up your strategy

Video marketers are spoiled for choice when it comes to YouTube analytics tools.

Although YouTube’s native data is pretty robust, third-party tools can fill in the gaps and uncover new opportunities to grow your YouTube channel. Many of these opportunities can stem from your social marketing efforts.

Sprout Social

Sprout offers powerful tools to analyze your YouTube performance. The platform lets you easily visualize your content performance across channels to see exactly where you stand. You can also gain video-specific insights to understand how to improve your publishing and engagement efforts.

Sprout Social's YouTube Analytics dashboard

Google Analytics

Google Analytics can give you a more detailed look into your channel performance as it pertains to your website. You’ll be able to track how people are interacting with your channel page and how they’re converting on the page. You can also track the traffic coming from your YouTube videos to your website.

Grow your channel with Youtube analytics

We get it: there’s a lot to take in!

But YouTube analytics can inform your strategy and amplify your marketing efforts. Consider using a tool like Sprout Social to help you step up your YouTube marketing. From cross-publishing and asset management and beyond, our platform allows you to seamlessly combine your YouTube presence with your social campaigns.

And if you haven’t already, you can take the first step by checking out our YouTube strategy template!

The post YouTube analytics: How to analyze your YouTube data appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/youtube-analytics/feed/ 2 13 TikTok analytics tools to boost your strategy in 2024 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/tiktok-analytics-tools/ Thu, 29 Feb 2024 15:07:02 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=182881 When marketing your brand on TikTok, you want to maximize your potential reach and overall performance. The best way to do this is through Read more...

The post 13 TikTok analytics tools to boost your strategy in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> When marketing your brand on TikTok, you want to maximize your potential reach and overall performance. The best way to do this is through keeping a close eye on your TikTok analytics—monitoring your most popular videos, analyzing your audience demographics and using your findings to adapt your strategy. TikTok analytics tools give you more complete insight into the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.

Read on to find out which TikTok analytics tool will work best for your team—and how to choose the right one.

Jump to a section:

What is a TikTok analytics tool?

A TikTok analytics tool is a software that enables brands and creators to get a closer look at how their TikTok presence is performing. Your TikTok analytics shares details like:

  • Top videos
  • Video views
  • Audience demographics
  • Video engagement

Analytics help you get a clear understanding of if your TikTok marketing strategy is working or if you need to make changes to better reach and resonate with your audience. A TikTok analytics tool can present you with this data.

What to look for in a TikTok analytics tool

There are many different TikTok analytics tool options out there—we’re covering 13 different ones within this article. So how do you decide which tool will work best for your business?

Here are three key features to make sure your TikTok analytics tool has so it can help maximize your strategy.

Trend analysis

One important part of maintaining a relevant and exciting TikTok strategy is staying on top of popular TikTok trends. Knowing what’s trending improves your chances of going viral on the platform and reaching a massive audience with a single video.

This means you’ll want an analytics tool that gives you the full scope of what’s trending. This way, you can easily jump on trends while they’re hot, increasing views and staying relevant.

Streamlines reporting

Analytics platforms make it easier to get the full scope of your account’s performance. You can look at a single dashboard where all of your metrics are in one place. Best of all, many TikTok analytics platforms allow you to export your data, making social media reporting a piece of cake.

Hashtag tracking

A main facet of your strategy should revolve around TikTok hashtags. Hashtags can improve your position on the For You Page and can help your videos show up in search results. With 40% of Consumers using TikTok as a search engine, this is extremely important for increasing your reach.

Find a TikTok analytics tool that can help you with hashtag tracking so you know the best and most relevant hashtags to include alongside each of your videos.

13 TikTok analytics tools to try in 2024

Want to get a better view into your TikTok performance? Find the right TikTok analytics tool for your brand. We’ve got 13 of the best options right here.

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management platform that offers a number of features—TikTok analytics being just one. Sprout Social can be used to create a birds-eye-view of your entire social media plan, no matter which platforms you have a presence on.

A screenshot of TikTok analytics tool Sprout Social's website

Link your TikTok account to your Sprout Social account and monitor all of your social platforms in one easy-to-navigate dashboard. Look at charts and graphs with your analytics data in a single place, making it easy to understand how your strategy is performing and put together your monthly reports.

Screenshot of Sprout Social's TikTok Profiles view demonstrating TikTok analytics.

Key features:

  • Build custom reports so you’re including the exact metrics and data that are important to your business.
  • Separate paid and organic analytics to seamlessly include in reports.
  • View your results in different graphs so you can easily see what the numbers mean.
  • Access your analytics overview, audience demographics and engagement data from your TikTok.

Pricing: Starts at $199/month. Try free for 30 days.

2. Native TikTok Analytics

TikTok’s native analytics are completely free to use for anyone—creator and business accounts alike—who has published at least one TikTok video to their account. They are accessible on both the mobile app and on desktop, enabling users to view their analytics in their preferred format.

TikTok's four primary analytics sections: overview, content, followers and LIVE. The sub-categories are highlighted at the top with a red box. Red arrows point to the followers, content and LIVE sub-categories for emphasis as well.

Key features:

  • Get access to four main sections of analytics: Overview, content, followers and live videos.
  • Learn what your top video content so you can create more videos that resonates with your audience.
  • Access data about your live videos if you regularly live stream.

Pricing: Free to use.

3. Socialinsider

Socialinsider is another social media management tool that offers several different features—TikTok analytics being one of them. Socialinsider enables its users to monitor metrics like views, engagement, follower growth and more, while also giving them access to information like historical content trends and top-performing content.

A screenshot of TikTok analytics tool Socialinsider's website

Key features:

  • Compare your TikTok metrics over time by viewing historical data to find trends within your own content.
  • Discover your most popular categories of content so you can easily create more that resonates with your audience.
  • View charts and graphs with your TikTok metrics to interpret their meanings.

Pricing: Starting at $82/month.

4. Loomly

Loomly enables brands and agencies alike to analyze their social media performance, create and schedule content, manage online campaigns and conversations, and collaborate amongst their team. Loomly offers tools for a variety of social media platforms, TikTok included.

A screenshot of TikTok analytics tool Loomly's website

Key features:

  • Measure your video content’s performance in real time to see which videos are most popular.
  • Use post labels to easily categorize your content based on type or campaign.
  • Automate analytics reports to make your reporting process even smoother.

Pricing: Starts at $32/month.

5. Brand24

Brand24 is an AI social listening tool built to help brands monitor their online presence, their competitors and their audience. Brand24’s TikTok analytics is of a different sort. Instead of monitoring your own performance, you can use this tool to track brand mentions, industry conversations, competitor performance and more.

A screenshot of TikTok analytics tool Brand24's website

Key features:

  • Monitor your mentions feed to see what people have to say about your business on TikTok.
  • Track the volume of discussions around your brand to preemptively plan for potential crisis management.
  • Find the top industry influencers you should be working with on TikTok.

Pricing: Starts at $79/month.

6. Social Champ

Social Champ is a social media management tool that helps its customers publish social media content, manage their content calendar, analyze their performance and engage with their audience. Users can connect each of their platforms to this tool, including TikTok.

A screenshot of TikTok analytics tool Social Champ's website

Key features:

  • Get downloadable PDF and PPT exports of your TikTok analytics to share with your team.
  • Keep an eye on weekly and monthly results to find patterns and improve your strategy.
  • Discover your top-performing posts so you can create more content that your audience loves.

Pricing: Free account for up to three social accounts. Paid plans start at $26/month.

7. Pentos

Pentos is a TikTok analytics tool, plain and simple. Its entire purpose is to help brands and creators track their competitors, find the best audio clips to use, hop on trends and improve their overall TikTok performance.

A screenshot of TikTok analytics tool Pentos's website

Key features:

  • Access an extensive list of each week’s top trending audio clips to include in your videos.
  • Track your competitors’ performance so you can see how you stand up against them.
  • Export your TikTok data to compile into your monthly social media reports.

Pricing: Starts at $99/month.

8. Exolyt

Exolyt is another tool that was created only to help brands and creators get a better grip on their TikTok accounts. This tool is perfect for analyzing your content as well as monitoring trends, conversations, influencers and more all across TikTok.

A screenshot of TikTok analytics tool Exolyt's website

Key features:

  • Discover the day’s top hashtags so you can include trending tags in your video captions.
  • Get insights into your brand sentiment on TikTok so you know your reputation on the app.
  • Access audience demographics and metrics regarding your TikTok performance.

Pricing: Free limited account available. Paid plans start at $330/month.

9. Iconosquare

Iconosquare is an analytics tool at its core, helping social media marketers monitor their presence across a number of social media platforms like TikTok. Other features include post scheduling, social listening and social media inbox management.

A screenshot of TikTok analytics tool Iconosquare's website

Key features:

  • Create custom dashboards so you’re only met with the metrics that mean the most to your business.
  • Monitor engagement to discover which content your audience loves best.
  • Easily export your results to compile into your monthly, quarterly or yearly report.

Pricing: Starts at $49/month.

10. Keyhole

Keyhole is another comprehensive tool that is solely dedicated to social media analytics and helping brands monitor their online performance. While brands can access publishing and scheduling tools, most features include social listening, historical trend tracking, influencer tracking and the like.

A screenshot of TikTok analytics tool Keyhole's website

Key features:

  • Measure your accounts over time to get accurate historical data and trend analysis.
  • Find optimal posting times to further improve your overall reach and presence.
  • Get deeper insights into your audience and what they want to see from you.

Pricing: Starts at $89/month.

11. Rival IQ

Rival IQ is another social media analytics tool perfect for helping brands monitor their online presence across a number of social media platforms—of course, with TikTok being one of them. On top of offering a wealth of analytics tools as part of its regular subscription, Rival IQ also offers free reporting and benchmarking tools for marketers.

A screenshot of TikTok analytics tool Rival IQ's website

Key features:

  • Use the hashtag analytics tools to find the best TikTok hashtags to use in your content.
  • Conduct comprehensive social media audits to help adjust your strategy and improve performance.
  • Get a birds eye view into your TikTok performance so you can see top posts, engagement and more.

Pricing: Starts at $239/month.

12. Quintly

Quintly is a social media analytics and competitive benchmarking tool that helps brands make sense of their online performance and compare it to their competitors. The suite of tools only includes options for analytics, reporting and more.

A screenshot of TikTok analytics tool Quintly's website

Key features:

  • Create custom reports by choosing from more than 350 metrics that you want to track.
  • Access pre-made dashboard templates meant for analyzing different outcomes.
  • Use the fast Analysis feature to gain instant insights into your TikTok performance.

Pricing: Starts at $315/month.

13. Dash Hudson

Dash Hudson is a social media management platform that offers a suite of different tools for marketers, brands and agencies to use. Access tools like visual AI, social listening, link-in-bio tools, audience engagement and analytics.

A screenshot of TikTok analytics tool Dash Hudson's website

Key features:

  • Leverage predictive AI to help you find trends you can use in your content planning.
  • Segment your content to easily pinpoint which types of videos perform best.
  • Access analytics and reporting tools so you can ditch your spreadsheets for cohesive reports.

Pricing: Starts at $249/month.

Find the right TikTok analytics tool

What features do you need the most access to? Find something with hashtag tracking, trendspotting capabilities and the ability to work with multiple platforms so you have all of your social media marketing data in one place.

Sprout Social can be the perfect option for your brand. If you’re interested in trying our TikTok analytics tool, sign up for a free trial today.

The post 13 TikTok analytics tools to boost your strategy in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> 8 top influencer analytics tools to boost your campaign ROI in 2024 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/influencer-analytics-tools/ Thu, 22 Feb 2024 15:00:54 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=182844 While the right influencer endorsements are worth their weight in gold, brands have to be strategic with their influencer campaigns to get positive results. Read more...

The post 8 top influencer analytics tools to boost your campaign ROI in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> While the right influencer endorsements are worth their weight in gold, brands have to be strategic with their influencer campaigns to get positive results.

That means finding influencers with followers in your target audience and creating campaigns that feel natural and inspire conversions. It’s no small task, but the right influencer marketing analytics can help.

In this article, we’ve compiled a list of 8 outstanding influencer analytics tools to help you discover niche influencers and optimize your campaign strategy in 2024.

What is an influencer analytics tool?

Influencer analytics tools are a type of influencer marketing tool designed to measure the performance and impact of influencer marketing campaigns. These tools help brands find influencers with the right target audience, and then track and evaluate how each sponsored post contributes to the overall campaign.

A callout card that says "Influencer analytics tools are a type of influencer marketing tool designed to measure the performance and impact of influencer marketing campaigns."

Consolidating audience demographics, content performance metrics and profile stats for each influencer helps marketers measure and optimize their influencer partnerships according to overall business objectives.

What to look for in an influencer analytics tool

Influencer data analytics isn’t just about a creator’s engagement rate. To find the right influencers and optimize future campaigns, you’ll need access to audience demographics, brand affinity, competitor analysis, industry trends and so much more.

Here are the most important features to look for in an influencer analytics platform to get just that:

Influencer discovery

The influencer you choose can make or break your campaign. Big audiences and high engagement rates don’t guarantee success. It’s all about finding an engaging audience that fits your ideal customer profile (ICP).

That’s why influencer discovery features are so important. Your influencer analytics tool should have a database of vetted influencers you can filter and search through. It should also have analytics profiles with historic content performance and audience demographics for each influencer.

If you use Sprout, you can find the best influencers for your campaign with Tagger’s social intelligence engine, Signals. It monitors trends, influencer data and competitor strategies so you can spot your industry’s key creators and trends and take strategic action before the competition.

Campaign tracking and monitoring

Reviewing influencer campaign performance can be a headache, especially when you have to request performance data directly from each influencer and hope you get accurate results.

Your influencer analytics tool should eliminate that burden and streamline the campaign performance reporting process.

Look for a tool that consolidates accurate, relevant analytics for all your influencer marketing campaigns into a single dashboard, so you can dissect campaign performance on a per-influencer and per-post basis. You’ll need access to advanced metrics like reach, impressions, engagement, clicks, conversions, audience insights and TikTok-specific metrics like average watch time and views for each influencer’s sponsored and organic content.

Another essential: enhanced link tracking. This is how you’ll measure the concrete impact of your influencer campaigns. Like how Sprout links campaign performance with Google Analytics so you can analyze link clicks, total new users and other conversion metrics at the post level.

Influencer marketing trend analysis

Social media users expect brands to read the room. Industry conversations, social media trends, current events and even brand sentiment can impact the success of your campaign.

Your influencer analytics tool should help you stay in the know so you can make informed decisions about your campaign messaging and brand positioning.

For example, Sprout’s social listening tools provide insight into critical use cases, including industry trends, product share of voice and event discovery.

Competitor analysis

Studying your competitor’s influencer marketing strategy is a bit like observing your older sibling. You learn to do what they did, but better. You also learn what to avoid at all costs. The best influencer analytics tools recognize the value of social media competitive analysis.

Look for a tool with competitor metrics so you can study your competitors’ influencer marketing strategy and optimize your campaigns accordingly.

Maximizing influencer ROI

Influencer marketing wouldn’t be a $7.14 billion industry without high ROI, but reaching that point takes strategy.

Influencer analytics tools help you strategically maximize influencer marketing ROI. How? They use precise audience targeting, influencer insights and performance metrics to help you pick influencers that align with your brand and campaign objective.

They also provide creative content insights that show what type of content will perform best for your target audience. When you know what creative direction will work best, you set your influencers up for success.

Top 8 influencer analytics tools to boost your influencer marketing

Using an influencer analytics tool makes your influencer marketing workflow more efficient so you can focus on strategy and building strong, creative partnerships.

Here are eight of our favorite influencer analytics tools:

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management platform stocked with powerful influencer analysis features. Our influencer analytics tool, Tagger by Sprout Social, helps you discover niche influencers, analyze content performance and create influencer campaigns that resonate with your audience (and inspire conversions).

Here are a few ways Tagger streamlines end-to-end campaign management and delivers fast, tangible business impact:

  • Grow your audience organically by collaborating with vetted influencers whose audiences align with your brand
  • Build data-driven influencer marketing campaigns and optimize your social strategy with tailored insights into your target audience’s behavior across all social media platforms
  • Maximize influencer ROI fast by accurately measuring and reporting the impact of your influencer campaigns

 

Tagger by Sprout Social UI that gives you real-time campaign results so you can track influencer performance and engagement rates

Key features:

  • Vetted influencer database with audience demographics and smart filters
  • Brand affinity engine that uses machine learning and audience psychographics to suggest influencers based on interests, audience demographics and more
  • Real-time content performance metrics
  • Follower verification and engagement rate analysis
  • Historical data tracking for analyzing an influencer’s past content history, quality and brand alignment
  • Industry trend analysis
  • Competitor analysis

Most importantly, our influencer analytics tool is part of our larger suite of social media solutions. It integrates influencer marketing with social media management, aligning all components of your social media strategy in the process.

2. Upfluence

Upfluence is an influencer marketing platform that helps you find creators and measure campaign performance. The tool’s comprehensive influencer database uses machine learning to choose the best influencers for your brand. Use this platform to find influencers, measure engagement rates and content performance, and integrate influencer marketing into your broader marketing strategy.

Upfluence's dashboard that shows helps you find track influencers and measure campaign performance.

Key features:

  • Engagement rates
  • Content performance
  • Ecommerce and CRM integration
  • Influencer audience demographics
  • Automatic sales and ROI tracking
  • Custom campaign results dashboard

3. HypeAuditor

HypeAuditor is an all-in-one influencer marketing solution that helps with influencer discovery, audience analysis and campaign tracking. This influencer analytics tool uses AI to track audience demographics, engagement rates and follower authenticity. HypeAuditor’s influencer database is 81 million strong and uses more than 35 metrics for vetting and fraud detection.

HypeAuditor's dashboard that helps you with influencer discovery, audience analysis and campaign tracking.

Key features:

  • Audience quality filters
  • Demographic search
  • Fraud detection
  • Brand affinity
  • Key campaign KPIs
  • Competitor analysis
  • Global market research
  • Trends and ranking analytics

 

4. Emplifi

Emplifi is an influencer marketing solution that helps users boost reach, engagement and conversions. AI-powered content grades take the guesswork out of understanding individual influencer performance, engagement and brand health. Use this tool to discover top influencers and measure the true ROI of your campaigns.

Emplifi's dashboard helps users track and measure influencer performance, boost reach, engagement and conversions.

Key features:

  • Influencer discovery and vetting
  • Competitor analysis
  • Audience segmentation
  • Real-time content analysis
  • Consolidated view of reach, engagement and sales
  • Influencer dashboards with preset templates and easy exporting
  • Custom rules that automatically identify potential red flags or off-brand topics
  • AI-powered content grades

 

5. Grin

Despite being one of the more complex, pricey creator management platforms on the market, Grin has a free Influencer analytics tool. It’s designed to help you identify potential influencers for your next campaign. Just paste an influencer’s URL in the search bar or use the Chrome extension to check critical performance metrics, including engagement rates, likes, comments, shares and views.

Grin allows you to check critical performance metrics, including engagement rates, likes, comments, shares and views.

Key features: 

  • Influencer analysis
  • Fake influencer tool
  • Influencer comparisons
  • Influencer lookalike audiences
  • Engagement rate calculator
  • CPM calculator
  • Engagement metrics

 

6. Creator.co

Creator.co is a user-friendly influencer marketing platform dedicated to challenger brands and micro-influencers. Find influencers that align with your target audience using this influencer analytics tool’s detailed demographic data and database of 200M+ profiles, then analyze performance with comprehensive reporting for campaign reach, engagement and ROI.

Creator Co has a database of 200M+ profiles, then analyze performance with comprehensive reporting for campaign reach, engagement and ROI.

Key features: 

  • Influencer discovery
  • Detailed demographic data
  • Campaign performance insights
  • Influencer performance insights

 

7. Promoty

Promoty is an influencer analytics tool that helps you discover influencers with strong brand affinity and analyze campaign performance. Use this tool to view a detailed profile report for every influencer, worldwide, with data on their follower count, engagement rate, credibility scores, audience demographics, most-used hashtags, brand affinity and interests.

Promoty gives you a view a detailed profile report for every influencer, worldwide, with data on their follower count, engagement rate, credibility scores and audience.

Key features: 

  • Influencer search
  • Detailed influencer profile analytics
  • Audience demographics
  • Brand affinity
  • Content analysis
  • Credibility scores

 

8. Keyhole

Keyhole is an influencer marketing platform that helps users measure and optimize influencer campaigns with trustworthy analytics data. Use this influencer analytics tool to track influencer activities and campaign performance data in real time, then assess overall campaign impact by aggregating data from all your influencer partners into a comprehensive report.

Keyhole helps you track influencer activities and campaign performance data in real time.

Key features: 

  • Influencer engagement, region and sentiment analysis
  • Audience demographics
  • Keyword and hashtag tracking
  • To-the-minute analytics
  • Automatic reporting and optimization
  • Comprehensive campaign reports that consolidate all influencer, brand ambassador and UGC data

 

Build the right campaigns for the right audiences with influencer analytics tools

Starting a new influencer campaign can feel like rolling the dice, but it doesn’t have to be that way. With influencer analytics tools, you can be more strategic with your influencer search, campaign strategy and optimization.

Ready to start reaching new audiences, fostering authentic customer engagements and driving brand growth? Schedule a demo to learn how Tagger by Sprout Social can help you source niche influencers, create engaging campaign content and seamlessly integrate influencer marketing into your social strategy.

 

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]]> Reach vs. impressions: What’s the difference in terms? https://sproutsocial.com/insights/reach-vs-impressions/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/reach-vs-impressions/#comments Tue, 20 Feb 2024 13:00:45 +0000 http://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=93079/ If your business is working toward better brand awareness or looking to grow and influence your audience on social media, knowing the difference between Read more...

The post Reach vs. impressions: What’s the difference in terms? appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> If your business is working toward better brand awareness or looking to grow and influence your audience on social media, knowing the difference between reach and impressions is critical.

Marketers understand when it comes to strategy, it’s all about accurately measuring your social media analytics and finding areas to increase efforts.

While it’s very easy to group terms like reach and impressions together, they do have their own definitions and can vary per network. To help you accurately measure these metrics, here’s a crash course on reach vs. impressions.

What’s the difference between reach and impressions?

Reach is the total number of people who see your content. Impressions are the total number of times your content is displayed, no matter if it was clicked or not.

Think of reach as the number of unique people who see your content. In a perfect world, every one of your followers would see every piece of content you posted. But, in reality, not all of your followers will see every single post you publish.

Think of impressions as the content delivered to someone’s feed. One person could have multiple impressions for a single piece of content. For example, if one follower saw a post three times, that would count as three impressions. But, since it’s the same follower, reach would equal one.

If a Facebook post appears in the original publisher’s feed and again when a friend shares the post, and you saw both, that counts as two impressions for the same post.

Let’s walk through another example: You have 100 followers and publish one post. If every followers sees it, you would have a reach of 100 users and 100 impressions. The next day you publish two posts to the same followers, and all of them see both posts. Your reach is still 100 users because your follower count didn’t change, but now you have 200 impressions.

There will also be situations where the number of impressions for a piece of content is sometimes larger than your follower count or reach. Notice in the example below how there are 93 likes and five shares. Each person who sees those five shares would be included in the number of impressions. We can’t see the total number of impressions, so let’s assume those shares are higher than the total number of likes and reach.

A Facebook ad from MarketerHire that has 94 likes, four comments and five shares.

Reach vs. impressions can be a challenging concept, but knowing the difference is essential when tracking the success of a social media campaign, especially if you’re using other engagement metrics.

If you want to make sure you’re focusing on the right metrics, our social media metrics map can help you understand all the metrics to focus on based on your marketing goal(s) so you can make a greater impact with your data.

Reach vs. impressions per social media network

If you’re looking to better understand how to improve your reach and impressions, it’s important to learn about the different ways each social media network measures them. Many networks include reach and impressions in their native social media analytics, but their definitions can differ slightly. Let’s review.

Facebook reach vs. impressions

Facebook shows reach and impressions broken down by post type and other categories. Facebook reach falls into three different categories:

  • Organic: The number of unique people who saw your content for free.
  • Paid: The number of unique people who saw your paid content, such as a Facebook Ad.
  • Viral: The number of unique people who saw your post or Facebook Page mentioned in a story published by someone else. These stories include actions such as liking, sharing or commenting.

Facebook impressions are also broken down into three categories, which are viewable in Sprout’s Facebook Pages report:

  • Organic: The number of times your content was displayed in the Feed or on your Page.
  • Paid: The number of times your paid content was displayed.
  • Viral: The number of times content associated with your Page was displayed in a story published by another user. These stories include liking, sharing or commenting.
Sprout Social's Facebook Pages report, featuring reporting on impressions, engagements, post link clicks and audience growth.

Instagram reach vs. impressions

Instagram refers to reach as “accounts reached,” which means it includes the total number of unique accounts that have seen your content (posts and Stories) at least once. For Reels, accounts reached include the number of unique accounts that have seen the video on screen at least once, whether they played it or not.

Instagram impressions measure the amount of times content was seen overall. Instagram Reel impressions include multiple views from the same account.

If you’re using native analytics or a social media management software like Sprout, you can view demographic information for accounts reached by top cities and countries, age range and gender.

TikTok reach vs impressions

TikTok defines reach as the total number of unique accounts that watched a video. TikTok impressions include every exposure, even if a unique account has already seen the content before. In other words, impressions are simply the sum of all video views. Note that if you’re using TikTok native analytics, reach is considered one of the platform’s estimated metrics, so it’s not an exact number.

LinkedIn social media impressions

LinkedIn doesn’t have a defined metric or definition for reach, but you can see how many accounts viewed your profile over the past month. LinkedIn impressions include the number of times your post, video, article or update appear in a user’s feed. Users don’t have to engage to count as an impression, but since LinkedIn’s algorithm prioritizes content that fuels engagement, posts with more likes, comments, reposts and shares are likely to get more impressions.

YouTube social media impressions

On YouTube, there isn’t a single reach metric. In the YouTube Studio, underneath the “Reach” tab, you can view traffic source types, suggested videos, external sources, playlist and other factors.

YouTube impressions measure how many times at least 50% of your video thumbnail was seen on screen for at least 1 second. You can view impression click-through-rate to determine how often viewers actually watched your videos after seeing the thumbnail.

X (formerly known as Twitter) reach vs. impressions

The native X app doesn’t measure reach, but it does track impressions. The network defines impressions as anytime a user sees your X Post. The number of impressions you see inside the app only counts the number of times your Posts show up in a user’s feed or search results.

When the app doesn’t provide data on reach, there is a workaround. With Sprout Social, you can measure engagement, follower growth, impressions and more.

Sprout Social's Facebook Summary showing a performance summary that includes several metrics including impressions, engagements, post link clicks.

Reach, impressions and your marketing strategy

With better clarity on reach vs. impressions per platform, it’s easy to gauge behavior from your target audience. The more you know about them, the more you’ll be able to optimize your strategy. Let’s review the connection between reach and impressions to your target audience and marketing strategy.

Know your target audience

For businesses, it’s important to scale your reach. As reach increases, it naturally leads to increased awareness. But even if you’re reaching 10,000 people, it won’t mean a thing if only 1,000 of them have interest in your brand. Design messages and your content strategy with your target audience in mind.

With Sprout’s Smart Inbox, you can keep an eye on the content that’s being shared, liked or replied to. By tracking these engagements, it’ll help you find potential users to target, thus extending your reach.

Sprout's Smart Inbox showing incoming messages, comments and mentions with a spike alert overlay shows 522 remaining messages in the inbox.

Monitor and analyze engagement metrics regularly

Impressions measure your ability to get your content in front of your intended audience. When your impressions rise, it’s likely due to your content surfacing more frequently into users’ feeds.

This usually means your posts are optimized for whichever social network you’re using. If you do not see the impressions you hoped for, look at your content and consider if it’s optimized for the platform you’re posting it on.

If you’re trying to increase impressions, focus on publishing shareable content. As your community begins sharing your posts with their networks, your impressions (and reach) will increase.

See if your efforts are working by consistently monitoring and analyzing these metrics. Continually make improvements and experiment with changes by using social media monitoring tools like Sprout to tag messages for specific departments on your social team.

Sprout's Smart Inbox showing inbound messages with a tag overlay that shows a dropdown of different options for support.

Sprout’s Smart Inbox helps you avoid going back and forth between networks by centralizing your social media in one place so monitoring and analyzing engagement metrics like reach and impressions is easier.

Looking at the bigger picture

Now you know the difference between reach vs. impressions on different platforms, you can use these metrics to better understand how well your brand is generating awareness on social media.

But awareness is just the tip of the iceberg: the next step is to measure and optimize for engagement so you’re creating content that drives business and demonstrates ROI. You can track reach, impressions and engagement for every major network all in one place with Sprout Social: sign up for a free 30-day trial to get started.

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]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/reach-vs-impressions/feed/ 6 Building Data-Powered Social Strategies: Insights from Hollister, Affirm, and Consultant, Jazmin Griffith https://sproutsocial.com/insights/webinars/building-data-powered-social-strategies-insights-from-hollister-affirm-and-consultant-jazmin-griffith/ Fri, 09 Feb 2024 19:09:58 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?post_type=webinars&p=182438 Social media professionals are at their max capacity. As roles and responsibilities only continue to expand, how can social data help you streamline your Read more...

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]]> Social media professionals are at their max capacity. As roles and responsibilities only continue to expand, how can social data help you streamline your efforts?

Customer sentiment, brand perception and cultural trends can change in minutes. Yet, getting the most value from social business intelligence requires the ability to access and take action quickly. From understanding the pulse of social trends to fine-tuning your customer care strategy, or informing your go-to-market plans, social data should be leveraged in all parts of your business.

Check out our panel discussion with Alex Lewis, Sr. Social Strategist at Hollister & Gilly Hicks, Deandre Moore, Social & Brand Marketing Lead at Affirm, and Jazmin Griffith, Social Intelligence Consultant. We’ll discuss why social data is the missing link for brands to best connect with their audiences. Plus, Corporate Erin stops by!

You’ll walk away from this event with:

  • Key takeaways from new research on social media marketer productivity
  • Reasons why your brand should embrace social listening
  • Examples of how brands leverage social data to inform social and business strategy

Your Speakers:

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]]> Social media benchmarks by industry in 2024 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-benchmarks-by-industry/ Wed, 07 Feb 2024 14:55:43 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=158835/ Sharing your performance data without including industry-specific social media benchmarks is like putting on a play without setting the stage. Sure, people will get Read more...

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]]> Sharing your performance data without including industry-specific social media benchmarks is like putting on a play without setting the stage. Sure, people will get what you’re saying, but they’ll probably come to their own conclusions about the bigger picture.

Industry benchmarks provide the context needed to tell a richer story about your social media marketing strategy.

Use data from Sprout’s 2024 Content Benchmarks Report to illuminate opportunities to fine-tune your strategy in a way that resonates with your target audience. Before diving into the data, keep reading to learn more about the metrics, why they matter and how you can use them to make sure that 2024 is your best year yet.

What is a social media benchmark?

A social media benchmark serves as a performance standard that allows social media teams to assess and compare the effectiveness of various strategies and campaigns. Marketers often use benchmark data to create realistic social media goals.

Teams can compare their results against three different types of social media benchmarks: industry benchmarks, competitive benchmarks and personal benchmarks.

What to measure in 2024: Social media benchmarks by industry

The Content Benchmarks Report analyzed more than 2.1 billion messages from over 1 million public social profiles that were active between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023 to pull industry benchmarks on three specific areas: posts published, inbound engagements and outbound engagements.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of each metric, along with benchmark data from the top three most active industries for each metric. Download the report for a full look at the data.

Download the 2024 Content Benchmarks Report

Posts published

Posts published is a straightforward metric. It measures the number of posts published across accounts during a specific period. While this may seem simple, it’s often at the foundation of a successful social media strategy.

Narrowing in on posts published can help you reverse engineer the publishing volume needed to reach certain impressions, engagements and engagement rates. If your social media goals are data-informed, then figuring out how to reach them is just a matter of reviewing your previous performance reports.

A data visualization detailing the number of posts brands published per day across networks in 2023 (10).

Brands published an average of 10 social posts per day across networks in 2023—unchanged from the benchmarks we saw for Q1 – Q3 2022. 

From a publishing standpoint, consumer-facing industries consistently surpassed this goal. Those include:

  • Media (43 posts published per day)
  • Leisure, sports and recreation (26 published posts per day)
  • Retail (20 posts published per day)

To be fair, these industries have an edge over the rest. It’s much easier for a consumer-facing brand to align their content to trends, events or even cultural moments. Just look at how Steven Madden hopped on the annual In-and-Out list trend to kick off 2024.

A TikTok posted by Steve Madden. In the post, the brand provides its list of 2024 ins and outs.

You can still replicate this strategy even if you’re not in the retail space. Next time your business has something fun on the calendar, look at the event through a social-first lens to get more mileage out of your presence.

Inbound engagements

In this report, you’ll find two different inbound social media engagement benchmarks: average inbound engagements on content per day and average daily inbound engagements per post.

Breaking these numbers down by day and post helps validate the success of your overall strategy and individual posts. This granularity is key to measuring the success of big swings in your social creative and copy.

Of course, the more you post, the more chances your audience gets to engage. For that reason, industries that consistently surpass publishing benchmarks also receive a higher amount of inbound engagements.

Industries that receive a proportional higher amount of inbound engagements per post compared to their publishing cadence include:

  • Food & Beverage (17)
  • Computer Software & Technology (16)
  • Government (14)

Outbound engagements

In 2024, outbound engagements will make or break your social strategy.

People are flocking to closed communities and vertical networks for a more tailored online experience. To remain competitive in this new era of social, brands will have to double down on proactive marketing. Building 1:1 relationships on social isn’t a trick for overnight growth, but it is a controllable, sustainable path toward long-term rewards.

This marks a sizable shift in traditional brand social strategies. In 2023, the average number of outbound engagements was just 2 per day across all industries.

Industries going above and beyond include:

  • Telecommunications (16 outbound engagements per day)
  • Leisure, sports & recreation (8 outbound engagements per day)
  • Media (6 outbound engagements per day)

For telecommunications companies like Boingo Wireless, outbound engagements also support superior customer care. Their team uses Sprout’s social customer care tools to monitor keywords related to service locations, which can include airports, military bases, conference centers and more. This allows them to provide service to any one in need, even if they don’t tag the Boingo account in their question or comment.

A post from X user @nate_bukaty that says, “Back above ground @fly2ohare. Glad to be safe and glad for WiFi so I can watch this awesome WBB game!”. The Boingo Wireless social team responded with “Happy to connect you on your journey. Enjoy! #WhereEverYouGoBoingo”

Social media engagement benchmarks across social networks

One size fits all social media strategies have long been a thing of the past. Between ongoing network fragmentation and the rise of new content formats, teams must now create bespoke strategies that account for the nuances of the intended platform.

Every social media network has its trends and communication norms, which can impact how consumers interact with brands in those spaces. Segmenting your social media benchmark data by network is a powerful way to ensure your expectations are consistent with user preferences.

A data visualization depicting the average number of engagements received across social networks in the year 2023. The values are as follows: Facebook with 22 engagements, Instagram with 21 engagements, and X (formerly known as Twitter) with 13 engagements.

According to the 2024 Content Benchmarks Report, users began shifting their activity toward Meta platforms in 2023. Engagements received on Facebook and Instagram have remained steady year-over-year, while engagements on X (formerly known as Twitter) have taken a slight dip.

The benefits of social media data

Benchmarks can turn last year’s data into this year’s advantage. Now that you have new insights at your fingertips, here are three ways you can use social media engagement benchmarks to level up your strategy:

Industry benchmarks serve as inspiration

Every industry has its own unique approach to social media. If you want to revamp your social media marketing strategy, looking beyond your competitors can be the first step to your next game-changing campaign.

Use industry benchmarks to find out which brands outpace the rest when it comes to the metrics listed above. As you look through their social presences, try to identify what they’re doing differently and how your brand can emulate them. This is a great way to come up with innovative ideas that bring something new to your target audience.

Competitive benchmarks give your performance context

Understanding how your brand stacks up against competitors can help you tell a richer story with your performance data. With competitive benchmarking, you can better translate your efforts for business stakeholders who may not know what social media success looks like.

Screenshot of Sprout Social Instagram Competitor Report that demonstrates competitors' followers and audience growth.

With Sprout, you can use network-specific competitor reports to compare your performance with your top business rivals. These social competitive analysis reports offer insights on publishing behavior, fan growth and engagement so you create tailored benchmarks around the metrics that matter.

Personal benchmarks inform your immediate goals

Your personal benchmarks should be your go-to resource for creating actionable goals. While industry social media benchmarks can give your performance color, your brand’s own year-over-year benchmarks tell the story of your growth over time.

This is especially meaningful for brands piloting new social strategies or adopting a new network presence.

Establishing personal benchmark data starts with annual reports. Your year-over-year performance data is critical to identifying strengths and weaknesses in your social media strategy. These insights should be the core reasoning behind your goals for the upcoming year.

Month-over-month benchmarks, on the other hand, will help you gauge progress on specific campaigns so you can identify quick wins or necessary pivots. These benchmarks will also help ensure you’re pacing well on social media KPIs.

How to find social media benchmarks by industry with Sprout

Establishing social media benchmarks without a social media analytics tool is like riding a bike with low tire pressure up a hill. You’ll get there eventually, but it’s going to take a while.

Sprout Social helps marketers speed up the data collection process with cross-network performance reports that allow for smart data segmentation. These tools support on the fly benchmark data collection so you’re always working with the full picture, regardless of when you start tracking your KPIs.

Screenshot showing the open date range filter within the Sprout Social web application. This filter enables users to apply a reporting filter, facilitating the collection of performance benchmarks.

Brands using Sprout’s Premium Analytics can build custom reports that ensure your data is always presented with the right context, no matter where it ends up. Simply use Text Asset widgets in the Report Builder to include information on personal and competitive benchmarks alongside up-to-date performance data.

Let the benchmarks be your guide

You’re all set to start collecting your personal and competitive benchmarking data. You can leave the industry data collection to us.

Find out how you stack up against brands operating within the same industry with the 2024 Content Benchmarks Report. Inside, you’ll find up-to-date benchmark data, as well as research on the types of content your audience is craving today.

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]]> LinkedIn hashtags: The complete guide for 2024 [+ trending hashtags] https://sproutsocial.com/insights/linkedin-hashtags/ Wed, 24 Jan 2024 16:32:04 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=181548 LinkedIn is more than just a networking site. It’s a top spot for generating leads and getting your brand seen. One strategy for driving Read more...

The post LinkedIn hashtags: The complete guide for 2024 [+ trending hashtags] appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> LinkedIn is more than just a networking site. It’s a top spot for generating leads and getting your brand seen.

One strategy for driving growth and visibility on the network is using the right hashtags. In this post, we’ll walk you through finding, using and optimizing LinkedIn hashtags to get more eyes on your content.

We’ve also rounded up the top 30 most popular hashtags on the network so you can hop on relevant trends and boost your LinkedIn marketing strategy.

Table of contents:

What are LinkedIn hashtags?

LinkedIn hashtags are keywords or phrases that categorize content. This makes it easier for users to find and engage with topics they’re interested in. You can add hashtags to posts, comments, articles, profiles and even pages on the platform.

Hashtags help your content become part of a larger, dynamic conversation happening on LinkedIn. They’re powerful tools for increasing the visibility of your posts, reaching people with similar interests or in the same industry, and tapping into trending topics.

How to use hashtags on LinkedIn

There are several ways you can incorporate LinkedIn hashtags to increase your visibility. Let’s look at examples of how and where to appropriately use them on the platform:

How to add hashtags to your LinkedIn business page

Wondering where to add hashtags first? Your LinkedIn business page is a good place to start.

Head over to your page and click on Edit Page on your left. Find and click on Hashtags under the Community tab and then add up to three hashtags by tapping + Add a hashtag.

Screenshot showing how to add hashtags to your LinkedIn business page.

Adding hashtags to your page helps it pop up in relevant search results. But it’s also a great way to find and interact with your target audience—people who are interested in your brand, industry, products and services.

How to add hashtags to your LinkedIn posts

Posts are the bread and butter of LinkedIn feeds. Help your posts rank for relevant keywords by sprinkling in carefully selected hashtags. Use the # symbol when typing out your post to add keywords and hashtags.

Screenshot showing how to add hashtags to your LinkedIn post.

You can weave hashtags naturally within your post content or place them all together at the end if you feel they’re diluting your post’s impact.

How to add hashtags to your LinkedIn articles

Publishing articles on LinkedIn? Give them more exposure by adding relevant hashtags. You can hashtag some keywords within the body of your articles or add them all at the end so they don’t interrupt the flow of your content.

Screenshot demonstrating how to add hashtags to LinkedIn articles

When you publish your articles, your hashtags will become clickable and searchable. It’s a great way to contribute in-depth insights and opinions to trending discussions and topics.

You can also add hashtags to your posts when you go on to share your articles. Here’s an example of what that could look like:

Screenshot showing what a LinkedIn article looks like with hashtags.

How to add hashtags to your LinkedIn comments

Finally, you can include hashtags directly in your comments when interacting with other people on the platform. Here’s an example:

Screenshot showing how to add hashtags to LinkedIn comments.

Try to always use hashtags naturally within your comments to avoid looking like a spam bot. Also, use them sparingly or not at all if they’re not highly relevant to the topic.

How to find and follow new hashtags on LinkedIn

You know how to use the hashtags. But how do you find the right ones for your brand? Let’s look at three ways to find and follow hashtags that matter to your business.

Use the LinkedIn search bar

The easiest way to find hashtags on LinkedIn is to directly search for them on the platform.

Head over to the search bar at the top of your LinkedIn page and type in keywords that are relevant to your industry, business and content.

For example, a marketing agency could search for hashtags like #digitalmarketing or #contentmarketing. They can also browse additional suggestions in the drop-down, like #digitalmarketingtrends or #contentmarketingexperts.

Screenshot of LinkedIn search bar of a user searching for hashtags.

Clicking on a hashtag lets you see related content and gives you the option to follow users who create discussions surrounding the topic.

Use social listening to identify trends

Monitor conversations and posts in your industry, especially involving thought leaders and influencers, to spot trending topics. Note the hashtags these people are frequently using in their discussions.

Use a social listening tool like Sprout Social to keep an eye on specific topics and keywords.

Example of a social listening topic summary including: total message volume, positive sentiment, unique authors, engagement and impressions.

A big advantage of using Sprout is you can also identify popular hashtags being used on other platforms and then check whether they’re worth following on LinkedIn.

Use ‘Followed Hashtags’ to find more related hashtags

The third way to find relevant hashtags is to look at the ones you’re already following. On the left side of your LinkedIn feed, you’ll see a list of followed hashtags (right below Groups.)

Screenshot showing how to use Followed Hashtags to find more related hashtags on LinkedIn.

Click on Followed Hashtags to view suggestions for related hashtags you might be interested in.

Tips for optimizing your hashtags on LinkedIn

Hashtags are tricky—if you misuse or overuse them, they can do more harm than good. Use them strategically to boost impact and reach.

Here are four tips on how to optimize your LinkedIn hashtags.

Use LinkedIn analytics to refine your hashtag strategy

Improve your strategy over time by understanding how the hashtags you’re currently using are contributing to your brand’s visibility and engagement on the platform.

Use LinkedIn hashtag analytics to track the performance of posts with specific hashtags. Access the platform’s built-in analytics tool or use a third-party software like Sprout for in-depth data exploration and a visual perspective.

Screenshot of Sprout Social tracking engagement metrics.

Based on hashtag analytics, tweak your hashtag choices for future content. For example, you might find #digitalmarketingtips is more popular with your target audience than #marketingtips. Or, you might find certain hashtags increase your reach but others get you higher engagement.
Click here to learn more about using overall LinkedIn analytics.

Use hashtags sparingly and strategically

Don’t spam your posts and articles with hashtags. Use a mix of niche and popular hashtags to balance reach and targeted engagement.

In LinkedIn posts, we recommend using 3-5 hashtags that are most relevant to your content. Here’s an example of how Pipedrive does it:

Screenshot of Pipedrive LinkedIn post demonstrating how the brand used hashtags in their post.

The post above strategically incorporates a mix of niche, popular and branded hashtags to join broader (e.g. sales and CRM) and more focused (e.g. AI) conversations on the platform.

Experiment with different hashtags

Growing on LinkedIn means you need to continuously test and improve. This includes experimenting with your hashtag strategy.

Let’s say you’re in the financial sector and regularly use #finance. Add more depth, relevance and reach by introducing niche hashtags like #fintechinnovation or #wealthmanagementtips to posts and articles that align with these content themes.

The benefit of testing different hashtags is you often stumble upon keywords that resonate highly with specific target audiences. You’re also able to rule out hashtags that might not be working as well as others—saving space for better ones.

Pro tip: Sprout’s hashtag tracking tool lets you measure the performance of your chosen hashtags across multiple social media platforms, including LinkedIn.

The “Stats by Tag” section of Sprout’s Tag Report displays metrics like total messages sent and received, and growth trends for each tag to provide on-the-spot performance comparison.

Track your competitors

Keep an eye on your competitors to see which hashtags they’re using and which ones seem to be working for them. Competitive monitoring gives you a window into trending topics and helps you find and incorporate relevant hashtags into your own content.

For instance, if you notice that a competitor is getting lots of engagement with #AIinMarketing, consider how you can use this hashtag in your own posts.

Does the hashtag align with a blog post or an article you are planning? Can you add a unique perspective to the conversation under this hashtag? Remember, the goal is not to copy but to find inspiration and identify trends that you can adapt to your own strategy.

To make it easier for you to join trending conversations, we’ve put together a list of the top 30 LinkedIn hashtags relevant to marketers and business professionals. These trending hashtags should give your brand a starting point when implementing your marketing strategy for 2024. Trending hashtags on LinkedIn update quickly, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for trending topics you can capitalize on.

  1. #innovation – 38,411,129 followers
  2. #management – 35,598,286 followers
  3. #humanresources – 32,898,825 followers
  4. #digitalmarketing – 27,095,863 followers
  5. #technology – 26,161,748 followers
  6. #creativity – 24,925,069 followers
  7. #future – 24,304,980 followers
  8. #futurism – 23,219,190 followers
  9. #entrepreneurship – 22,469,540 followers
  10. #careers – 22,286,006 followers
  11. #markets – 22,001,983 followers
  12. #startups – 21,011,950 followers
  13. #marketing – 20,178,414 followers
  14. #socialmedia – 19,491,703 followers
  15. #venturecapital – 19,100,660 followers
  16. #socialnetworking – 18,826,357 followers
  17. #leanstartups – 18,782,560 followers
  18. #branding – 17,838,214 followers
  19. #advertisingandmarketing – 17,002,362 followers
  20. #motivation – 15,629,846 followers
  21. #personaldevelopment – 14,529,875 followers
  22. #investing – 14,249,587 followers
  23. #jobinterviews – 14,171,761 followers
  24. #sustainability – 13,162,614 followers
  25. #personalbranding – 10,350,194 followers
  26. #education – 9,545,127 followers
  27. #customerrelations – 8,514,104 followers
  28. #productivity – 8,363,545 followers
  29. #sales – 5,826,765 followers
  30. #socialentrepreneurship – 5,746,331 followers

Elevate your LinkedIn hashtags strategy

Hashtags can drive engagement to your LinkedIn posts and put it in front of the right audiences. Start by finding the right hashtags and place them strategically in your posts and articles to join relevant conversations happening in your industry.

Use Sprout Social’s LinkedIn management tools to take your marketing strategy to the next level. Track posts and hashtags, monitor conversations, keep an eye on the competition and measure performance all in one place.

The post LinkedIn hashtags: The complete guide for 2024 [+ trending hashtags] appeared first on Sprout Social.

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