Kseniya I. Content Marketing Expert

What is the difference between analytics, social media statistics and monitoring?

Companies create communities on popular social networks to maintain customer loyalty and attract new audiences. It is not always clear in which direction you need to move in order to get the most out of social networks. Data collection and analysis come to the rescue:

- Monitoring is needed to systematically collect mentions of the company.

- Social media statistics provides data about users and their activities in the group.

- Analytics helps organize information.

Social media analytics is the process of drawing conclusions from a set of data in order to adjust the vector of action. For example, social media audience statistics will show an increase in the number of users and sharp changes in the rate of influx. And analytics will help answer the question of why such changes occurred.

The difference between statistics and analytics

Social media statistics provide information about users. With its help, you can analyze the audience, its interests, demographics, and profiles of potential customers.

Statistics reflect the dynamics of subscribers, reach, referral sources and other indicators.

Social media analytics helps to choose the best platform for business promotion, build an SMM strategy taking into account the current situation and up-to-date information about users. A more detailed analysis shows links between activity statistics and posts.

The difference between monitoring and analytics

Social media users create a lot of content every day. Companies are looking for mentions and reviews about the brand, its products and services, they reveal the attitude of the audience towards the company or product.

Monitoring is the systematic collection of data on certain parameters. It is needed to know people's opinion about the company and manage its reputation.

This reflects the brand's presence on social media and helps to quickly respond to the needs of the audience. You can monitor brand mentions in social networks using special services, for example, Popsters. Analytics involves the analysis of references: how, when and why.

What can social networks tell about the company?

User content analysis provides information about the target audience of a product or service, and also helps to find target groups.

It's easy to forget about some target audience groups. Coca-cola has released a diet drink for girls under 25. However, the study showed that 43% of product reviews are written by men, and the target audience is men and women aged 23-34.

Social media helps to conduct a SWOT analysis and get opinions about a new product.

For example, in the spring of 2014, analysts investigated the attitude towards the Samsung Galaxy Gear 2 smartphone before the official release. The announcement of a new product in social networks allowed the brand to find out the audience's expectations and supplement the advertising campaign with the slogans "Innovation improves everyone's life", "Real innovation starts with people themselves".

Product reviews make it easier to find reasons why you shouldn't buy.

The manufacturer of household appliances Hansa, using research in social networks, realized that the problem of selling goods is in incomprehensible instructions for the company's equipment. Traditional surveys have failed in this task.

Competitor analysis tells you how to change your own product or adjust your promotion strategy.

Social media analytics

Social media analytics involves processing a large amount of information and takes a lot of time. With the help of social media analytics services, you can reduce labor costs for research. There are many such services on the market, for example Brandwatch.com

You can conduct social media analytics for free using your own site statistics. But it will be superficial and take longer. You will not be able to find out more detailed data, and in order to combine information for different accounts, you will have to manually create a report in GDS or Excel.

So why not save time and collect data automatically using statistics and analytics services? In addition, social media analytics services’ dynamic dashboards are a great tool for creating clear reporting for clients.

Analyze social networks, draw conclusions and apply the results in your wor

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