Old Dog Digital

Digital Marketing Consultants in South Florida.

Category: Analytics

The use of statistics to find insights and patterns in data.

  • It’s all about the numbers

    It’s all about the numbers

    Every decision we make about our digital marketing campaign has to be based on numbers. What to post, when to post, on what platform, should it be boosted, or should it be a paid ad; all these questions have to be answered based on statistics.

    Where do we get these numbers? That is also a very important aspect that we have to resolve before anything else. We need to pick a tool that helps us gather these numbers and help us make all those other important decisions.

    There are free tools and there are paid tools. Every platform has its own set of free tools that give you basic information about your content, interactions, followers, and every other relevant aspect of your social media.

    If you want to stay on budget and don’t mind having to do a lot of things manually, like generating a report, then the free analytics tools should be enough for you. There is no need to pay that extra money, especially if you know your way around Excel or any other similar tool.

    But if you feel that you need extra information or that you don’t have the time to create manual reports, then you can choose from a wide set of tools that a lot of companies are offering. It depends on your budget and what kind of information you need to get.

    Photo by Lukas on Pexels.com

    One tool may work wonders for one brand and not work at all for another. That’s why I’m not recommending any tool to anybody. For that, you will have to make your own research. Don’t pick the first one that shows up on the results page of a Google search. Compare tools and prices. Really, do it.

    Of course, I have my favorite, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to impose that tool on all my clients. Depending on the information needed, that’s the tool I’m going to use with that account. The larger the account, the more expensive tool we are going to need.

    But let’s say that is not the case. A small business doesn’t need a lot of accounts for a whole team of data analysts. A basic report should be more than enough to support our decisions. So any of the paid tools should be more than enough.

    It’s a matter of personal taste, to be honest. Because all of them are very similar. They have very similar interfaces and they give you basically the same information. The difference is the way they look and the templates they use for the reports. And that’s pretty much it.

    So, do your research, pick a tool, make sure you configure it to get the information you want and start using it. You will have to learn how to interpret those numbers, but once you have enough data, things will get easier. It will be worth it.

  • Keep track of your success

    Keep track of your success

    One of the best things about social media is that you can measure almost every aspect of them. You can track who is visiting your profile, which posts they are reading, from where and when they are visiting, and much more.

    There are a lot of tools to do this, some of them are free and some of them are paid. Of course, paid tools do a better job than free tools, because they offer some functionality that free tools don’t have. Which one to use will only be determined by your budget.

    Social metrics, as they are called, are key to every strategy, because they let you see how well yours is performing. The data you get from them helps you make better decisions when making adjustments.

    If you notice that one post performs really well, you should check what is going on, so you can do it again. But if you see that some content is performing poorly, you should consider changing it for something else.

    Sometimes brands notice that the posts that talk about their products are the ones that don’t perform well. This doesn’t mean that they should stop making them, it means they should try different formats, tones, etc.

    A perfomance report with graphics and statistics.
    Every adjustment that you make to your digital marketing strategy should be backed by the statistics that your analytics tools are reporting. Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com

    Which metrics to track will depend on your business goals. You shouldn’t measure something because you found an article on the internet about “the best metrics for 2022”, or something like that.

    There are awareness, engagement, customer experience, ROI, sentiment metrics, and a lot more. There are even video-specific metrics, so make sure that the tool you are using measures what you need to know.

    Without metrics, there’s no way to know what’s going on or how well you’re doing with your marketing efforts. At least, you should use the native analytics tool that each social media platform provides.

    Analytics tools also help you with report generation. You can find all the numbers that are important to you concentrated in one place, instead of jumping back and forth between accounts.

    Rounding up, analytics are key to any social media strategy, because they help you tie your business goals to social metrics, generate reports, and prove your success. All your decisions should be backed by metrics.