There are lots of factors that influence the amount of engagement your social media posts have on your readers and followers. You have to take into consideration things like the time of day that your posts get the most attention, or even the influence a social networks algorithm has when prioritising one form of format over another.

If you take a look at your social media analytics you may see a trend where your readers are sharing your Facebook posts at around mid to late morning when they may be taking a coffee break, or even in the evening when they are relaxing after work. Sometimes there appears to be no regular pattern, but what is being shared or re-tweeted is a type or style of post that connects more with your readers.

Twitter Analytics

Twitter Analytics is a very useful tool for small business owners to understand which of their tweets are proving the most popular. Go to analytics.twitter.com to get a general overview of your tweet activity and your audiences. From your dashboard, you can download data for any period that you choose and then feed it into a spreadsheet to compare which of your tweets performed well against a set of metrics. You could use Google Drive to create a new spreadsheet for your data.

If you really want to pinpoint more detailed results, such as identifying which days of the week are more popular as well as the time of day, you will need to dig a little deeper into your Twitter Analytics to find the answers you are looking for.

There is a useful guide about how to use Twitter Analytics available from the Twitter Help Centre.

Facebook Analytics

Facebook also launched a free Analytics for Apps tool in 2015, and have recently added more useful features for users to use to help build their engagement and connectivity. Facebook is introducing it in beta support for cross-platform metrics, but the new metrics will help users to get a much better overview of their customer base. Many users switch between devices to perform certain actions, so may browse on one device but buy through another. The new cross-platform features will be able to identify where this happens and report customer activity more accurately.

Analytics for Apps is also being integrated directly into Facebook Pixel, a tool that helps businesses target certain audiences for marketing campaigns and then be able to track the campaign’s performance. For anyone not familiar with Facebook Pixel, there is a very useful guide available here through the Facebook Business Help Centre.

Another advance that Facebook have recently added is push notifications for Analytics for Apps. This means that you can send an update or notification to any user that meets specific criteria. So for example, if someone was browsing your site and added something to their shopping basket, but didn’t check out, you can send a reminder to them that their goods are still in their basket later the same day or the following day etc.

Sharing insights‘ is another great feature that you can use to identify the type of content that is being shared most by your followers. It also shows hot trends and which content is becoming popular on Facebook. This is based on content that has been published in the previous ten hours, and also which website URLs have been shared the most over the past five hours.

This can give you a great insight into the mood and emotions of your chosen demographic and you can tailor the content you publish to reflect current trends and what people are talking about and sharing the most. This could be very useful for small businesses who are selling seasonal goods and will be able to pick up clues about when people start to talk more about Christmas, New Year, Easter, summer holidays etc. You can start to put these seasonal items in front of their eyes and offer early-season bargains or run special themed promotions.

Of course, you will need to spend some time working through the analytical data to find the information you need, but even a simple skim or quick overview can help enormously with your social media content and engagement. If you find the thought of social media management and analytics a little overwhelming, or you simply don’t have the free time to dedicate to using the analytical tools, you can always outsource your social media to Lobster to handle for you!