How to harness your data to create better social media posts

A few weeks after you’ve created your social media accounts and started posting, it is time to use the data you’ve accumulated to refine the quality of your content. The likes, shares/retweets and comments on your social media accounts are all collected and interpreted into data. This data is invaluable, as it gives you a unique insight into your social media followers' interests and social media activity. 

Facebook Insights
Facebook Insights is available free of charge to anyone who creates a facebook account for business, NFPs etc. The Insights tab is available at the top of your facebook page and provides valuable recent and long-term data on your followers. For example, through the Insights tab you will be able to see the amount of page likes, page views, amount of engagement (comments, likes, shares) and reach, which is the amount of followers your post was directed to on facebook. The facebook insights data can be downloaded for your use and is available for today, yesterday, the last 7 days and the last 28 days. 

Twitter Analytics
The twitter analytics are available in your drop-down login menu. The data is organised by month in the general analytics tab, with information such as your top tweet, the amount of followers you gained in the month, the amount of tweets you sent out and more available for you to view. Through twitter analytics you are also able to see the amount of retweets, link clicks and the amount of people who have seen each tweet. The twitter analytics can be downloaded and sorted, according to the last 7 days, by month or even between two dates of your choosing.

Instagram Insights
Instagram offers instagram insights for their business account setting, which is free to use. Having an instagram business account not only gives you the ability to see your instagram insights, it also gives your followers a direct way to get in touch. Instagram includes a contact button on business profiles, giving followers the opportunity to get in touch with your charity via a call, text or email. This button makes it incredibly easy for people to contact you when they need it most, while making your charity accessible - and visible - to more people on a global scale. The Instagram insights enable you to see your top posts, along with the reach and engagement amounts per post and even how many people have clicked through to your charity via your profile page website link. 

How you can incorporate this data in the future 
Having access to this data is great, but it isn’t very meaningful if you do not know how to use it. The facebook insights, twitter analytics and instagram insights data provides you with the ability to see what kind of content your followers like, at what times they are most active during the day or week and what kind of content (text only, photography, video etc.) they prefer to see. This priceless information will empower your charity to curate your social media content, thereby providing your followers with relevant, interesting social media posts that will get attention and interest for your charity over the long term.