January 25th, 2021

Do you feel like some people just seem to get lucky when it comes to social media? Well, it has nothing to do with luck and a lot to do with analytics. The vast majority of people who succeed with social media marketing for their business follow their metrics very closely.

Most people set up a social media dashboard to make following analytics easier by tracking, analyzing, and displaying key engagement metrics across multiple social media channels.

There are a number of different software and tools on the market to use if you want to set up a social media dashboard. MobileDisruptors' software can be used for your own business via Social Owl to help manage others' with their social media dashboards. You can even create a template in Excel.

1.  Know Your Goals

Before you can start creating your social dashboard, you need to know what your goals are. What are you hoping to achieve with your social media account? Do you want to garner more clicks or views? Are you hoping to have more of your sales come through your social platform? Maybe you're just looking to increase the awareness of new products and launches. Or, you may need to get into more detailed social media analytics such as cost per click, return on ad spend, or cost per lead.

Look at your favorite social media platform, or the different apps you use, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. But also consider platforms like Reddit, Quora, and other sites that Google Analytics and other tracking tools often deem social media.

Depending on what your goals are, you may find that you need more than one social dashboard.

2.  Choosing Your Metrics

Now that you know your goals, you can go about choosing the metrics you'd like to follow. Approximately 75% of marketers track between three-to-five primary metrics.

You need to ensure your goals and data align with your dashboard in order for it to work, otherwise, it'll become useless. For example, if your goal is centered around engagement, net followers, or likes gained, then the total number of posts you've made won't interest you, as it has nothing to do with engagement performance.

Don't overcrowd your dashboard with too many social media metrics. You'll overwhelm yourself and be less likely to take in what the analytics are telling you.

If you have a lot of information that you need to track, especially categorizable data like sales and engagement, you might be better off creating multiple, smaller dashboards. This way, when you're looking at the social media metrics, you can really take in the importance of your key performance factors (KPIs).

3.  Research Your Competitors

Keep an eye on your competition's social media platforms, what they're doing, and how they're performing. See what's working for them, what isn't, and how your metrics align with theirs. This could help save you money, or it may even give you an idea about how to go about things differently.

In addition to your competitors, look at what your industry's influencers are up to. Are their social media metrics lining up with your metrics? They're considered influencers for a reason, and whatever the industry, people will follow what they're doing. As a result, being able to engage with the same people and align your metrics with these influencers will help your company.

4.  Monitor

A social media dashboard isn't much good if it's going to just sit there. You're going to need to monitor it. About 77% of people monitor their dashboard on a daily or weekly basis to ensure they're continuing on their path toward meeting their goals and KPIs.

There are a number of areas that you'll want to take a look at, perhaps in addition to what may be on your main dashboard. You'll want to ensure that you always have the most relevant information, such as trends, keywords, and hashtags.

Monitor meaningful interactions and data. If you have a video and there are people who have only watched it for three seconds, those are stats that you shouldn't consider as meaningful.

There are two ways to look at location data if you ship physical products. Some who only ship to certain locations won't consider site visits from places outside of their shipping area, where others will use those numbers to see if the interest is worth the cost of starting to ship there.

So, there are a lot of different ways to monitor your social dashboard. That's what makes monitoring them regularly so important, as does having all of the proper and important information.

This type of data allows a company to know which campaigns and social media channels are working the best. Not all social media channels work effectively for all companies. Having a dashboard could show a company that they're better off dropping one of their platforms and adding more time and ad spending into one that's performing extraordinarily well.

With these four tips, Social Owl believes you can effectively leverage social media dashboards for yourself or your company. Social media dashboards are a simple but powerful management tool that allow you to make informed, data-driven decisions.