Social media analytics tools are pieces of web application analysis
software that are used to monitor, assess and consequently improve social media
performance. They are simply a subset of web analytics tools that are designed
to gather and make sense of web performance data produced by social media sites
and platforms, and consists of the usual graphical dashboard and data
visualization techniques that give the user a clear understanding on the
performance of their social media presence.
Social media analytics tools are essential in running a successful social media campaign. It allows social media experts to track and determine the performance of various portions of the social marketing campaign such as sales, customer service and sentiment analysis.
In terms of sales, these tools show how well a social media marketing campaign is going by showing all positive turnovers or purchases that come directly from social media sources such as Facebook and Twitter. These sites are useful for disseminating purchase or signup links and correlate directly to traffic which can be picked up by a specific social media analytics tool. For brand recognition and sentiment analysis, some tools are able to mine the data from social networking sites in order to find or discover the sentiment of people towards a brand or business through methods such as natural language processing and pattern recognition.
Common methods of analysis used:
- Data mining
- Transformation
- Natural language processing
- Data pre-processing
- Data visualization
- Hidden pattern evaluation
- Traffic analysis
Examples of social media analytics tools or platforms:
- Google Analytics
- Twitter Analytics
- Facebook Insight
- Hootsuite
