It has been almost half a decade since social media has put in appearance. Among its many benefits, one is it provides rich sets of analytics. This part has traditionally been avoided by many online marketers because of their apathy for technicalities. But understanding it is the need of the hour, and in this article, we’re going to shed some light on it.

Before we even begin, let us first clarify that the real significance of social media analytics is not yet well-understood. Only a small segment of internet marketers apprehend it and besides them, very few can actually interpret analytics in the first place.

But this should change, more and more online marketers and their clients alike need to start to recognize the prospect of social analytics and its use in internet marketing campaigns should become commonplace.

That’s because the biggest benefit of social analytics is it leverages social and search engine marketing campaigns. The data obtained from the analytics help marketers gain insight on how a campaign is performing and how it could perform even better.

If the benefits of social analytics are to be broken down, then the key ones will be

Knowing what’s actually going on

End doesn’t always justify the means, at least not in internet marketing. There’s always a certain degree of randomness that may or may not go in favor of the marketer. The task of the marketer is to reduce dependence on random factors and make the whole process systematic. For that, social analytics is more than necessary.

Social media analytics is all about data. Once the marketer gets his hands on all the relevant data, he gains a comprehensive understanding of the campaign that he’s running. Without analytics, the marketer is pretty much lame when it comes to reviewing the campaign and how each of its parts are functioning.

Tracking the real progress

You might think it’s derivable because the performance of a campaign automatically informs you its progress. But that’s not completely true because the real progress of a campaign is different from what merely appears as the progress.

May be the campaign is doing good by bringing leads, but that doesn’t conclusively indicate it is showing progress. If the leads are not converting to sales, then something is wrong with the campaign. That's why the real progress is not easy to measure and the marketer requires a broad range of parameters for it. Social analytics tools are custom made for this purpose. They are developed to aid the marketers parameterize the progress. For example, a robust social analytics tool not only allows the marketer see how many fans he’s gathered, but also within what time.

The more information the online marketer gets, the better becomes his understanding of the actual progress of a campaign.

Better time management

Social media analytics makes better allocation of time possible. Social marketing is an uncharted territory and the success of a marketing campaign depends heavily on trial and error. The marketer needs to quickly fathom which strategies are going to bolster his campaign and stop applying the non-performing ones. Social analytics tools and resulting data can assist him spot the correct approach within a short span of time. The marketer can then allot the extra time for other marketing purposes. Thus, social media analytics tools help achieve better time management.

Understanding customer behavior

Social media analytics tools can help understand customer behavior. Online marketers can obtain raw data from the analytics tools and then analyze them to discover patterns. Such patterns can give them plenty of information regarding customer behavior. Getting a hang of how customers behave is the key to customer engagement.

For example, using a social analytics tool, a marketer can discover a pattern in how different customers are lodging complaints against the quality of the product/service of the company. If they see most customers are reporting their grievances at a certain time of the day, then they can mobilize most of their customer servicing resources at that time. This way, the company in question gets an edge over its competitors.

The benefits discussed above point at the significance of social media analytics for businesses. If you run a business and have hired an online marketer recently, then make sure they make good use of analytics tools.

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