Social Media Analytics: Do likes really matter?!

Picture this: You just crafted what you feel is an excellent social media post for your business or brand. It looks great, uses trending audio or features a concept that’s really popular, so you post it—and it gets a decent amount of likes! Yet, hardly anyone shares your post and you didn’t get one single sale from the link you provided.

Frustrating, right?

Social media is all over the place, which can muddle your content strategy. What to post, how often and when is commonly driven by the need to get a good amount of likes on a ton of new posts. However, those likes and posts need to serve your end goal, and that’s the insight most people miss.

You want your business or brand to be a reliable resource in your industry. You want people to trust you, and you ultimately want them to buy into the products or services your business or brand is offering—and you need good content to make that happen.

It goes back to the whole “quality versus quantity” argument, which is why your business or brand’s analytics really do matter. Every social media platform provides an in-depth look at your audience AND your posts. Analytics are essentially performance reports that can tell you when your audience is online, which posts they reacted to the most, where they’re coming from, and what links they’re clicking on.

And to be honest, that’s just the start of the story you can pull.

So, yes. Analytics matter because the numbers tell a story. And when you start to focus on that story instead of gaining more likes and followers, or when you start to put out content that reflects the data in your analytics—your business or brand’s likes and followers will increase naturally.

Consider the following tips about social media analytics:

1) Use analytics to determine when your business or brand’s followers are online, then schedule your posts to go live during that time. Help the platform’s algorithm put your content in the right place at the right time!

2) Look at the posts that are generating the most engagement. And remember, engagement is more than a like. It’s a post share, comment or link click, too. Is there a content theme within these posts that you can turn into a recurring content pillar? Is there a style of post that seems to be working better, like a carousel versus a reel or static image? Draw your conclusions, then rethink your content calendar.

3) Compare analytics across the platforms you use. Determine which platforms are generating the most return, and center your focus on those. If your business or brand’s Pinterest page is dead, but your TikTok and Instagram accounts are alive and thriving, you know where to turn.

4) If you notice a huge drop in engagement, try to figure out why. Has the platform instituted new updates to their algorithm? It happens, and you can’t always fight it—but you do need to adapt. Or maybe you started trying something new that made your profile and posts harder for the algorithm (and your followers) to find. Play around, but don’t drop the quality of the content in your posts.

5) Always have some perspective. If your post has five likes and leads to five sales, that’s much more impressive than a post with 5,000 likes and no sales. It means that 5-like/5-sale social media post included the right kind of content. It connected with your audience and led them to engage with (and believe in) your business or brand.

That’s ultimately what social media is all about. Not numbers—connections! If you communicate the values of your business or brand to your target audience, you’ll connect with them on a level that leads to repeated engagement and (hopefully) sales.

So, when you create your content calendar, do it for the love of your business or brand and its loyal customers, not for the likes on an app.

That’s our theory and we’re sticking to it.

If you need help fine-tuning your social media approach, we’re here for you. Consider booking some 1:1 time with us via Zoom. We’d love to deep dive your social media profiles, or take you through a content power hour. (Seriously, we geek out about this stuff!)