How can data help your social media strategy

Every year, there is a myriad of new social media trends. All of them are supposed to help brands to improve their communication and gain fans. You don’t always need to look for new and new trends in order to succeed. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is to start working with what you already have at your disposal – data. In this article, we are going to tell you, how to make your social media even better in the year to come.

Know your data, use your data

Nowadays, when customers are overwhelmed by the enormous amount of information and messages thrown their way, it’s not always easy to catch their attention. How can you use your customers’ data to make them more engaged? It is necessary to ensure that you’re getting all the possible data and analyzing them according to your needs. Make sure you’re tracking the right metrics – depending on what your goals are, and do not forget to run a social media audit.

It’s important to regularly analyze data available to you and use them to your advantage. Data can help you in planning future communication strategy, creating posts and most importantly when used the right way, can be a real game-changer in the brand-customer relationship.

You can learn a lot about your audience from your web analytics, from the way they engage or don’t engage with your social media content. What do they comment on? What is their way of expressing opinions, the language they use in the comments?

Data analysis is important in knowing your audience, their demographics, preferences, thoughts, and ways of engagement, etc. It will help you in deciding which things you should focus on. Making sense of data will help you understand which types of posts are the most successful and which types of posts don’t perform that well. When planning your content, you’ll be able to map out your posts and switch them up. That way you won’t end up posting just about your amazing product/service five times in a row but you will balance your communication with posts that bring added value to the customers. Social media management tools such as Kontentino can help you with this – add labels to your social media posts and see at first glance, how balanced your content really is.

Learn from the experts

Spotify gives us a great example of how to work with available data in the yearly Wrapped campaigns. Why don’t you take a page out of Spotify’s book on using data?

Spotify makes use of their subscribers’ data to create catchy content that makes people excited and willing to share across various social media platforms. For the third year in a row, Spotify came with their popular Wrapped campaign. Based on user data collected throughout the year, they were able to create interesting insights into users’ streaming habits. From the total amount of time people spent listening to music; to the artist, they listened to the most. The results are packaged with a dose of humour and actually make you want to share them. For these purposes, Spotify provides direct links to social media sites that make sharing unbelievably easy. Tweeting a thank you to your favourite artist is also just one click away. Genius, right?

Make it personal

Spotify made people eager to see their own results and even excited to see how the rest of the Internet was doing. The reason for this is personalization. Yes, Spotify came up with a great idea; they were able to create magic with the data from user experience and then got all this exposure and organic engagement because they managed to create a relationship with their customers.

Spotify used their users’ listening preferences in a similar way for the end-of-the-year campaign in 2017. Based on this, they were able to create a campaign that increased their brand awareness and made people love them even more. In the 2018 Goals campaign, they made fun of bizarre playlist names, saying: Take a page from the 3,445 people who streamed the “Boozy Brunch” playlist on a Wednesday this year. The campaign was extremely successful because people were able to identify themselves with the results. The entertaining element of the communication was an added bonus and really encouraged viral sharing.

Another great example of personalized content on social media gave us Lexus in their 2015 Beyond Utility campaign. In order to promote a new SUV that combined utility and style, they produced 1000 short videos. In each video, they compared objects – an ordinary one and a luxury one. These videos then targeted Faccebook users based on their interests, demographics, location, vehicle affinity… Each video was matched to a user with specific characteristics. This highly personalised campaign allowed Lexus to reach millions of users.

Source: Lexus

Personalization is the key element to success. Your audience needs to feel connected to your brand. You’d ideally keep this in mind when preparing communication strategy. Making sure that your audience identifies with the content you’re producing is essential. Then you’re on the right path to be recognized as a brand that cares about and understands their customers.

Even if you can’t get closer to your users based on their music preferences, there are many different ways that might work for you and your brand. It’s always good when, apart from your planned content, you also react to unforeseen events that are affecting your audience. And it doesn’t have to be politics. It can be weather or whatever you can think of, be creative!

That being said…

Right, not everyone has a cool data from their users’ playlists but it is a reminder to all of us to create content that speaks to our audience. We have the data that we need, so why not take it into account when planning and creating?

Look at your web analytics and connect these data with insights from your social media channels. When your brand produces content that is exciting for your audience to share that’s a win for you.

Understanding customers’ needs and acting on it when producing/planning content will deliver results. People tend to buy (or whatever it is that you need your audience to do) from a brand that understands them, is relatable and has a relationship with them.

Author:

Paula Grochalová, Content Manager at Kontentino

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