Social media is by far the most pervasive, far reaching, and easily-accessible form of communication in the world today. Its affects have gone far beyond its humble beginnings as a cool place for college kids to meet each other. Now it is a multi-billion dollar business.

Meeting new people is social media’s number one function, but marketing things to them is close behind. Marketing your products, however, is far more complex than just posting, and hoping for the best. It takes the same research. Hard work, and discipline as any other kind of advertising.

Tracking and analyzing your activity will help you attract higher-quality followers, and provide content that resonates better with your audience. Not to mention make you more money. Here are 8 ways you can analyze your social media marketing today.

Figure Out Optimal Posting Times

People are active at different times of day on different social media. Beyond that, certain products will sell better, or your audience may be more engaged with your posts depending on what day it is.

The chart below is taken from a Buffer study, as you can see typically the best time to tweet is around lunchtime (which seems quite obvious).

Sumall is a tool that helps you track what time of day brings you the most engagement. Once you’ve figured it out, schedule your posts at the optimal times. This will help your posts become more efficient, and will allow you to get the most out of each one.

Another great tool that does the similar thing is SocialBro. Each week they’ll send you a report telling you when the highest percentage of your followers is online. I find this really helpful as it’s directly linked with Buffer. So with just a click of a button I can change all of my Buffer timeslots according to the report from SocialBro. You can read more about this in our guide: Using SocialBro To Find The Best Time To Tweet.

Use TweetReach to Examine Keyword Reach on Twitter

Track a keyword or hashtag on Twitter using TweetReach. If you have a campaign with a hashtag, you can find out how far, and how many people have been reached over a certain time frame.

The free service will cover the first 1,500 tweets. Not only that, but it will also show you the most influential accounts spreading your message. This information is invaluable. Use it to see which keywords and tags work the best, and interact with the biggest names you can find.

Scout the Competition

Nothing works better in this industry than seeing what your closest competitors are up to. It’s a copycat world or so they say. You can see where you closest competitors are doing well, and where they are tanking with a tool like Rival IQ.

With this information, you can see which social media sites are best for your niche. If someone selling a similar product is failing on a certain platform, it is probably going to be the same for yours. Also, it can help you identify opportunities, and areas that they have yet to explore. Meaning that you can exploit holes in their armor.

Find the Movers and Shakers

Nothing helps promote your products, service, or brand more than finding a really influential person and having them say that you are awesome. It is just how people work.

With Buzzsumo, you can see who the real movers and shakers in your field are, and what things they are talking about. That way you can zero in on them, engage more, and use them to springboard your activities.

What’s more, you can find out which ones are getting the most action, discover keywords, and find new chats to participate in. In a nutshell, the best things about this tool is that it gives you insights into how posts should be worded, and with whom to engage, and that is worth its weight in gold.

Identify Keyword Performance

Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? You are going to want to know which words are getting people to follow or engage you, or which ones are getting the most clicks, likes, or sales.

Thankfully, it is simple enough with the free tool from Wordstream. Wordstream lets you see which pay-per-click keywords are performing the best, that way, when coupled with the rest of research, you can devise a better plan to market on social media. You will be able to do away with keywords that are bleeding money, and focus on the ones that are raking in the cash.

Gain a Relevant Following

Twitter is the place to go if you want to send quick messages to your following in the hopes of making growing your brand. So making sure you have a relevant following is essential to sharpening your efficiency, and really getting the most out of your characters. There are plenty of tools to help with this. Just a few are:

• ManageFlitter – This little gem will tell you which followers are bringing in the bacon, and which ones are complete duds. Moreover, it’ll help you find ideal customers so that you can follow them. Trim the fat, and reap the benefits
• GeoFollow – This one will help you filter users by location so that you can better target your tweets. This works well for physical businesses, and ones that sell products in a certain area. It can also help to hone in on personalities from that area to help grow a presence and gain a following.
• Twibs – In short, Twibs is awesome. It focuses on finding businesses on Twitter. You can search through all of the listings, or even list your own. This way people can help find you better. This will allow you to sift through and find relevant people within your niche or industry. Connect, and use your powers combined!

Run an SEO Audit

Finding out how your Facebook page is performing in the search engine optimization department is a sure-fire way to get more traffic. If you just build one and hope it brings people in, then you’re doing it wrong. SEOptimer, offers a free website review that can show you if your page is up to par.

See if you have the right keywords, placement, urls, links, and everything else that goes into the SEO game. Nothing is better than seeing where your page ranks, and what you can do to fix it. Once people can find you more easily, you’ll see the traffic come rolling in.

Get a Social Media Dashboard

This is more of a holistic approach to things. Getting a dashboard is more than just seeing everything in one place, it is about being able to have all of the necessary information about your social media presence right at your fingertips. With a good dashboard you can see everything from website traffic, to mentions, to post views, to new customers and everything in-between.

This will cut down on the time you spend dilly dallying, and really give you a huge leg up in the social media marketing world.  I recommend hootsuite, because you can get started for free and it doesn’t break the bank. If you aren’t using one of these. Get started now.

When used properly, Social Media can be the most powerful and inexpensive tool there is to market your business. No other platform on the planet can rival the scope of this beast. With great powers come great responsibilities, though.

You must do your best to analyze, identify, and determine the next course of action based on the data that you have available to you. With these 8 tools and tactics, you will find that it is a whole lot easier, and more lucrative for you.

And remember if you’d like help with any of the above or would like someone to manage your social media get in touch with us today to hear about our social media marketing plans.