Lessons Learned: What Analytics Taught Us About Our Audience

You can pull analytics from pretty much anywhere your organization exists online. From social platforms to emails to website pages, you can easily track and view your audience’s habits and history. We primarily track our social media data using Meta Business Suite, LinkedIn Analytics, and Sprout Social.

These platforms give us access to engagement metrics —such as likes, reposts, comments, clicks, and impressions — and audience demographics — including gender split, age ranges, locations, job titles, and more.??

However, looking at the numbers alone doesn’t tell us the information we need, being able to interpret the data is how you’ll find answers to your most pressing questions. Here’s how we set ourselves up to do that.

Only measure what’s important

We’re always interested in learning more about our audience, but it’s necessary to make decisions about what is important to you.?Data is fascinating but can also be distracting. The gender and location of our audience is interesting, but not a key metric we use to understand who we are attracting.

So, we’re not going to track all the audience demographics we’re given. We’re more interested in knowing their behaviors, like when they interact with content the most and what topics they find helpful. We focus on what time of day they’re most active and job titles. We then look at engagement metrics for each piece of content to try to find trends in what makes people act.

Passive metrics v. active metrics

Metrics differ in the way they explain user activity. Some metrics — we’ll call them “active metrics”, such as comments, reposts, and clicks — show how users consciously interact with your content and help you track audience interest. Other metrics — “passive metrics,” such as impressions and likes — show the subconscious interactions users have with your content and help you track your reach.

While technically an action, liking is considered a passive metric. Typically, when people scroll on social media, they end up liking posts without really viewing the content. Active metrics require an additional step or two for someone to complete, meaning people give the content more thought and consideration.

Both types of metrics have value but knowing the difference between the two will guide you towards realizing what metrics you need to track to support your goals.

Lay it all out

Making sure your data is displayed in a digestible format is crucial to being able to use it. We maintain a separate spreadsheet with all our accounts listed, our goals for each account, and the metrics that help us track progress on our goals.

Staying up to date with your data and putting it into an easy-to-understand format helps you quickly see if you’re on track for your goals or if you need to improve any of your processes or strategy.

Noticing trends provides insight

Over time, you’ll start to see patterns. You might notice a steady increase in followers in months where you’re posting frequently, or maybe you see one platform growing faster than others. Interpreting what this data means can give you valuable information about your audience. For example, a steady increase in followers may tell you that your recent consistent activity attracts more people. One platform growing faster than the others shows where your audience spends their time online. Knowing general the demographics of each platform may give you insights on the demographics of your audience.

What we’ve noticed…and how that’s changing our actions

When analyzing stats for FocalPoint, we list out each article and track the engagements, impressions, and views of each. After interpreting this data, we were able to see that any article with the word “Logo” in the subject line, did exponentially better than others. This insight gave us key information about our audience — they’re interested in learning about tactical solutions for their brand. Now, that doesn’t mean every article we post is going to be about logos, but it does tell us we should prioritize incorporating tactical branding topics into our articles.

What we learn from our marketing helps us understand what programs and services we should be offering to meet our audience’s needs. Remember, the point of understanding your data isn’t to get more social activity. Use what you learn to help your organization grow.

Being able to translate your quantitative data into qualitative findings helps you gain key insights into your audience and their behaviors. Need help interpreting your analytics? Send me a message to find out how we can help!