Analysis. A reflective practice that allows us to find out whether our various campaigns have actually worked and hit the objectives that we’ve set. Without analysis, we’re unable to understand how to improve activities or evolve our strategy, and thus complete the marketing campaign cycle. Analysis allows you to demonstrate ROI, showcasing to senior management the value of marketing, and strengthening any requests you make for further budget or resources.
When looking at your digital marketing efforts, you first need to set SMART objectives to ensure you are measuring the right analytics on your social platforms, otherwise you’ll waste hours trawling through every retweet, like, comment, share, and save with little return. Of course, working with a social media monitoring platform, such as Sprout Social or Crowdfire, will reduce time needed pulling off analytics, however these platforms don’t provide interpretation and intelligence of in-depth analysis, comparing exactly how effective your social media strategy has been and how you need to improve it.
Your social media objectives should be an extension of your existing marketing objectives as part of a wider, integrated strategy and should be reflected in your platform choice, tone of voice, content curation and calls to action.
Consider how you want to use your social media platforms. Are you looking to use it as a CRM system, speaking with guests to increase loyalty and remain top of mind, answer their questions and build a relationship with them, or are you looking to widen your reach and engage with new audiences that weren’t previously aware of your brand? Is your objective to generate more bookings, or is it simply to promote content, showcasing your expertise and giving some entertainment to your followers to digest? Or, is it a strategic growth activity that encompasses all that you do as a brand, retaining loyal customers, reaching new ones and generating revenue?
Keep reading to find out how you can analyse your social media content and strategy to deliver tangible results in line with four of the most common social media objectives:
Engagement
Engagement is a term that simply means how much of your audience is interacting with what you share, and can come in many forms, including likes, comments, shares, saves, private messages, video plays, answering polls or surveys, or clicks on posts, images and links.
A high engagement rate shows that your audience thinks your content is good in some way, and therefore responds to it by connecting with it. Engagement rates and how you calculate them vary by industry and platform, with the most popular calculation being dividing all engagements on posts within a set time period by total impressions, and engagement rates on average range from 1.22% to 0.045% across the four key social platforms. By filtering your posts by those with the highest engagement rates, you can then filter out which content your followers react best to, and adapt your social media strategy accordingly.
Custard tip
Utilising a variety of post content ideas ensures your followers don’t get bored and still want to engage with you – try holding a competition, asking them to send their thoughts on their recent visit with you, hold polls around what dish to have on your menu and host lives events and workshops. Try changing post formats as well so as not to just use images and text, but instead incorporating video or carousel images which can make up to twenty times more people engage with your content.
Awareness
Awareness is a measurement that seeks to find out how far and wide your posts have reached. This can be done by looking at:
- Followers and follower growth rate
- Impressions, and a breakdown of where these have been sourced including:
- Hashtag impressions
- Explore impressions
- Location tags
- Profile tags
- Shared to Stories impressions
- Saves
- Reach, and how this differs from impressions
Essentially, if you’ve developed an effective hashtag strategy, are tagging locations and partners in your posts, and reaching pages such as the Explore page on Instagram, your impressions and reach will increase. Similarly, if you create posts that are shared by multiple users, this additionally increases your awareness, hence why creating content that aims to go viral is a tactic attempted by many organisations. Aiming to increase your followers can also be effective in achieving a higher brand awareness, which can in turn help to boost market share and sales.
Custard tip
If you’re trying to get your message far and wide, tag some relevant stakeholders in your posts or ask them to share it. For example, if posting a new dish, tag your food suppliers, your tableware suppliers and your chef. Not only will it notify them that you’ve posted, and make them more likely to share it themselves, but it increases the likelihood of other accounts with similar interests discovering you.
ROI
Many organisations hope that social media will help to boost their sales, however fail to track users from their profiles and posts through to a conversion on their website. With various integrations such as Instagram Shops or the Facebook Book Now button allowing even simpler customer journeys, utilising social media to push and track sales has never been easier. If you’re not using these ecommerce services and are instead driving users to your website, dig into your Google analytics and analyse the ‘Social’ source of referrals, breaking it down between which platforms deliver longer durations on your website, or less bounce rates, before tapping into how many conversions and to what value.
If you’re seeking to chat with them in person to book a show round or book an exclusive experience, ensure your contact details are visible on your profile, and ask them to quote a code when calling you, or automated subject line for conversions from social to email. Utilising a tracking link can further assist in following these referrals to conversion, and you can even set up a specific landing page on your website for social traffic to provide all the information they might need to take the next steps with you in their customer journey to make the transaction easier. Within Google Analytics, you can then set up ‘Goals’ and ‘Conversions’ to track whether the transactions have been completed, and what source they came from to make the transaction.
Custard tip
Reducing the number of steps it takes from seeing an initial post on social media to being able to book increases chances of conversion tremendously. By integrating one click buttons that go straight to the end of the customer journey map, potential guests and clients are much more likely to convert, than having to scrabble around to find your website and then click through five pages to get to your availability or contact details.
Audience
Tracking your audience can assist in determining whether you are reaching your target audience, and providing them with the content they desire or need. If you’re hoping to attract a certain audience to your brand’s profile, make sure they use the social media platform you’re focusing on. Hostel brands and more inexpensive hotels who are seeking younger generations should focus less on Facebook, and more on Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, while if you’re a meetings and events venue, LinkedIn is the obvious choice for reaching event buyers.
You can track your audience through social insights, by analysing data such as primary age, primary location, and gender, while emotional drivers of these demographics can then be further drilled into from dissecting which posts drive people to your website – does your audience enquire about weddings whenever you post landscape shots, or book a room when you showcase the local walks you can take. By theming your content around your key messages and then breaking your analytics down by these themes, you can begin to determine your audience segments on social and further develop your social media strategy to align with what content they most enjoy.
Custard tip
Social media can be a great tool for increasing loyalty and staying front of mind. Ensure your content isn’t self-serving but instead adds value to your target audience, through insights, entertainment, or an exclusive offer.
Social media analysis is key for ensuring your campaigns and content management strategy are targeting the right audiences with the right messages at the right time. With various integrations on each platform, and the simplicity of following a digital journey compared to a physical one, there’s no excuse for not analysing and adjusting your social media strategy regularly to reach your objectives.
Need help with defining your social media objectives and analysing your strategy? Did you know Custard works with a variety or venues and hotels to manage social media strategy, and can work with you to ensure your social media strategy in integrated and in line with your marketing and business objectives to increase engagement, awareness, loyalty and conversions. For more information on how Custard can support your social media marketing and content strategy, contact our team.