Social Media Insights: What are they and how do they help your business?

Social media insights are more than just data and statistics. They are the key to improving content, connecting with audiences, and achieving business goals. But what exactly are social media insights, and how does it add value to business? In this article, we will explain social media insights and give examples of how to use them. By the end of this article, you'll be ready to take your social media game to the next level with the power of social media insights.

What are social media insights?

In short, social media insights are the interpretation and application of data to achieve your business goals. For example, social media insights could be consumer information that helps your businesses gain a deeper understanding of your audience, which ultimately helps to move forward with a strategy or action plan.

To extract insights, you must first collect and analyze data from social media platforms. However, data only tells you what is happening. Insights help you discover new or unforeseen information about why these things are happening. For example, social media analytics can tell you the number of comments. However, as a social media marketer, it's essential to understand who is engaging, what people are saying, and why they leave comments. When you know the reasons behind happenings, you can map out how to improve strategies and set up action plans.

Social media managers and businesses use social media insights for multiple purposes. For example, to optimize content, improve future strategies, make data-driven decisions, and enhance business performance. Read more about social media intelligence to understand how you can assemble the puzzle of gathered information and data.

3 examples of how to use social media insights to improve your business and marketing strategies

To illustrate the power of social media insights, let's consider an example from a real-life scenario. Imagine you recently rolled out a campaign on Instagram. You want to understand how well the campaign resonates with your audience:

One of the most efficient methods to determine whether your content resonates is measuring engagement and analyzing sentiment. To save yourself a ton of time and ensure a consistent and accurate analysis, you can use a tool with sentiment analysis features. Ideally, the tool conducts nuanced sentiment analysis automatically with the help of advanced AI methods.

Whether you use a tool or not, the first thing to do is get an overview of the sentiment. Let us imagine it's quite evenly divided between comments tagged with positive, negative, and neutral sentiment.

Now, you want to understand why it's evenly divided. To do so, you can look into what people say and how they express themselves. For example, which words are most used in comments tagged with positive, negative, and neutral sentiments? 

These words give you little insight per se, apart from an overview of the most discussed topics across your social channels. But if we continue to break things down, we can get a hint of people's thoughts and feelings.

1. Map out how people express themselves and understand what your audience appreciates

Social media insights facilitate the process of connecting with your audience. They can help you uncover what customers truly value about your brand or products, and find new content ideas or solutions they're looking for. With that said, let us explore how people use "love" in their comments:  

In real life, you want to look at more than six comments. However, the principle is the same as in this example — you want to identify patterns, opportunities, or pain points. In this case, people mention that they love the style, indicating that the audience appreciates inspiration for how to wear the products. 

Based on the observation that your audience appreciates styling tips, you could continue investigating if this could be a good angle for future campaigns and content. Social media listening is a great way to understand audiences and online conversations better.

It's also valuable to analyze historical data and competitors' content performance. For example, does previous data underpin that your audience appreciates styling tips? Does the same type of content perform well for competitors? If several things point towards that inspirational styling content makes the audience go wild, then that might be something to consider for your future content strategy. 

But, there's also a user who may use love with a different intention than the others. "Anyone who bought this product…can you post a pic? I'd like to see what it looks like on real people" could indicate that they think the campaign fails to show how the jeans fit different body types. Therefore, paying attention to nuances is crucial, as comments like these can provide valuable insights into more complex opinions. 

2. Use social media insights to find areas of improvement

At this point, you may have some ideas of what content your audience likes and, most importantly, why they like it. However, you don't want to settle just yet. You also want to understand the reason behind the negative sentiment since it may help you identify potential areas of improvement or pain points. Let's revisit the negative word cloud and look into how people use the word “order” in their comments:

There's a recurring theme related to shipping complaints among these comments. These issues directly impact the overall customer experience and harm the brand's trust, which can send potential customers away. However, seizing this chance to improve will address pain points and demonstrate your commitment to delivering exceptional service, positively influencing customer satisfaction.

3. Inform your strategy with customer insights and comments

Let us look now into more complex keywords in the word cloud, such as "people" and what does it have to do with the campaign:

These comments raised negative sentiment but also some interesting points about the ad campaign. It appears that the ads might not be resonating well with users, as many have expressed concerns about the lack of diversity and authenticity. One user astutely observed that the slogan "jeans for every body" doesn't quite align with the models featured in the campaign. Furthermore, we can see indications of a similar opinion when analyzing how people used the words "real woman," "model," or "body."

These insights offer valuable guidance for the marketing strategy to embrace a more inclusive approach that truly celebrates diversity. Customers feel seen, heard, and acknowledged when they see themselves reflected in the marketing campaigns. By demonstrating that representation matters, this company could foster a genuine connection with its audience, making customers more likely to become loyal supporters.

Social media insights add business value

As mentioned before, what sets social media insights apart from other methods is that you transform data into actionable insights. Simply put, social media insights are more than analyzing data and statistics. It's about moving forward based on informed decisions. 

Social media insights enable you to create a concrete action plan to reach goals and objectives, something that not only social media managers can benefit from. In summary, companies can use social media insights to understand and improve within several areas:

• Tap into what your audience talks about, likes and dislikes 💬
• Assess content resonance and optimize your marketing strategy 📈 
• Efficiently improve your products and services 🚀
• Build stronger relationships with your customers 🤝

BrandBastion provides extensive social media insight reports

BrandBastion offers a tool ideal for extracting social media insights. Our platform analyzes data from across social media platforms and provides a holistic view of your audience's preferences, sentiments, and engagement patterns. We continuously update you on key metrics through our comprehensive reports, making it easy for you to analyze data and turn it into actionable insights. 

With our unique methods powered by advanced AI and human expertise, we highlight vital takeaways monthly. This information empowers you to refine your social media strategy, optimize content and campaigns, improve customer experience, and make data-backed decisions that drive business growth.

Read more about our BrandBastion Lite Platform or sign up for a free trial: 

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