By Mike Szudarek, Marx Layne & Company

Social media platforms generate enormous amounts of data every day, and leveraging this data can help you make your social media more effective. Mike Szudarek, from Marx Layne & Company’s digital marketing and engagement team, offers 10 ways ways to utilize data to improve your social media presence:

1. Define your key performance indicators (KPIs): Determine which metrics are most important for your social media strategy. Some common KPIs include engagement rates, follower growth, website traffic, and conversions. Once you have these defined, you can start collecting data that will help you achieve those goals.
2. Monitor engagement metrics: Engagement metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and click-throughs are important indicators of how well your social media is performing. Use tools like Google Analytics or social media platform analytics to track these metrics and identify patterns in user engagement. This will aid in optimizing your content and your posting schedule to increase engagement.
3. Analyze your audience: Understanding your audience is critical to creating content that resonates with them. Use social media analytics to gather data on your audience’s demographics, interests, and behavior. Use this information to tailor your content and messaging to their preferences and needs.
4. Test and iterate: Experiment with different types of content, messaging, and posting schedules to see what works best. Use A/B testing to compare the performance of different types of content and make data-driven decisions on what to publish in the future.
5. Use social listening: Social listening involves monitoring social media for mentions of your brand, industry, or competitors. This provides valuable insights into customer sentiment and will help you identify opportunities for engagement. Use social listening tools to track these conversations and join in where appropriate.
6. Track your competitors: Keep an eye on what your competitors are doing on social media and learn from their successes and failures. Look at their engagement rates and what types of content they are posting to spur ideas for your own strategy – and then do it even better, and more creatively.
7. Use customer feedback: Use customer feedback to inform your social media strategy. Ask your audience what types of content they would like to see more on your pages – use that feedback to tailor your content to their preferences. Reels, videos, advice, how-to content; your page must be a benefit to your customer.
8. Track and respond to social media trends: Use social media listening tools to monitor conversations and trends related to your industry or niche. Use this information to stay on top of emerging trends and adjust your strategy accordingly.
9. Use data to inform content creation: Analyze data to identify which types of content resonates with your audience. Use this information to create more of the content that works and avoid the content that doesn’t. Sounds easy? Not necessarily, it takes a strategic yet organic approach to build the right audience to benefit your brand.
10. Personalize your content: Use data to segment your audience and create personalized content that appeals to different groups. Consider factors like demographics, interests, and behaviors when tailoring your content.

By leveraging data properly, you can make your social media more effective in achieving goals and building meaningful connections with your targeted audience.

About Marx Layne & Company
For more than 36 years, Marx Layne & Company has provided outstanding, results-oriented communications counsel to a broad spectrum of clients in the business, government and non-profit sectors. Its proven ability to design and launch successful public relations campaigns, develop creative communications solutions and exceed client expectations has earned the agency a reputation as a valued partner and an industry leader. For more information, visit www.marxlayne.com.