This Hootsuite Analytics guide will showcase social media analytics best practices. See why social media analytics are important and how easy it is for you to see and understand how your social media efforts are working for your business.

1. Measure Your Social Media Success
GUIDE
Social Analytics
and Hootsuite

2. 2SOCIAL ANALYTICS AND HOOTSUITE: MEASURE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS
Social Analytics and Hootsuite
Measure Your Social Media Success
We’ve Got Analytics to Help You Keep Track
If your business is active on social media and if you are
posting to various social network platforms, it is critical
that you track how your social media activity is doing. By
tracking your activity, you will be able to assign value to
what you are doing. Keeping track will also help you learn
from, improve on and measure your results.
Hootsuite Analytics give you a complete picture of your
social media participation and make it easy to see and
understand how your social media is working for you.
As with any marketing, advertising, or even campaign
launch, measuring the results of your social media
activities is essential when coordinating such a project.
Hootsuite Analytics provide everything you might
need to effectively track your social media activity,
understand your audience engagement, and calculate
your ROI. Whether you want to see how many retweets
you had or see the overall engagement on your year-
long campaign, our analytic integrations will help you
understand your social media efforts. Want to learn
how? Follow along:
This guide will teach you measurement best practices
and how to get started with measuring your ROI.
“With analytics, we monitor our
engagement numbers, track social
customer service sentiment charts
and celebrate increased number of
new followers after social marketing
pushes.”
Cassidy Stockton
Bob’s Red Mill

3. 3SOCIAL ANALYTICS AND HOOTSUITE: MEASURE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS
Analytic and Measurement Best
Practices
1. Set targets and outline a strategy in advance
Businesses need to have a social media presence in
order to gain customer trust, but to do so they need to
have a clear social media strategy.
There’s no point in spending a lot of time posting and
responding to conversations online if you don’t have
a plan to measure, learn from, and improve on your
results.
To get the most out of your social media efforts,
follow these steps:
FF Clarify your business’ social media goals — what
you want to accomplish with social
FF Audit your current social media status — assess
your current social media use
FF Develop your content strategy — figure out who
your audience is and what type of content you will
post
FF Use reports to track progress — check your reports
frequently to see how your campaign is performing
2. Track clicks with an Ow.ly URL shortener
Part of your content strategy should include using URL
shorteners in your messaging. Your URL shortener can
play a large role in the success of your social media
activity and is full of valuable information that you can
use to focus and perfect your social media strategy.
By using an Ow.ly URL shortener you take advantage
of useful data like tracking how many people click your
links, which then helps you determine what content
resonates most with your followers.
For example: If 800 people
click on a URL in a funny
Tweet promoting your
new shopping app but
only 200 people click on a URL in a more serious Tweet,
this knowledge can be applied in future posts. In other
words, URL click data can help inform what is resonating
with your audience and increase the chances of your
followers clicking a link.
If you want to get more granular with Ow.ly data, you
can break down each clicked link by region or referrer
(meaning people who shared or retweeted something
containing your URL). You can also share this and other
URL data with clients or colleagues by exporting the
report as a PDF or CSV file.
“Without measuring your social media
efforts, how are you able to tell if
your social strategy is working?
Use analytics to establish baseline
targets, then create short and long
term goals to work towards.”
Gerard Recio,
Social Media Coach Manager
If you are not familiar with URL
shorteners and specifically Ow.ly,
please read this blog post.

4. 4SOCIAL ANALYTICS AND HOOTSUITE: MEASURE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS
Analytics and Hootsuite
Along with Ow.ly metrics, you are also able to track
analytics from your social networks, including Facebook,
Twitter and Google+, right from your Hootsuite
dashboard. Use Facebook Insights to find out when your
fans are online, how many are seeing your posts and
who’s sharing or responding. Google Analytics can show
you who’s viewing and engaging with your web pages.
Our Top 5 module recommendations for social
media metrics:
1. Twitter, Follower Growth — total Twitter follower
growth for a selected Twitter account during a
specified date range
2. Facebook, Top 10 Per-Post Metrics — top 10 posts
from your Page for a selected metric
3. Ow.ly clicks, Most Popular Links — list of most
clicked links via your Twitter profile during a specified
date range
4. Daily click summary — Total clicks from all Ow.ly links
sent via your Twitter profile during a specified date
range
5. Keyword over time — The ability to track specified
keywords — like competitors’ Twitter handles — over
time
Coach Tip: Remember to match the metrics you are
analyzing with your goals. To ensure you are on the right
path, make sure you examine data that measures your
specific progress towards your objectives.

5. 5SOCIAL ANALYTICS AND HOOTSUITE: MEASURE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS
Setting Up Your Analytic Reports
Along with the above list, Hootsuite Pro users also have
access to a full range of analytic reports. The report
builder is based off of a points system where every
Pro user is given 50 points to put towards building
an analytic report. There are two basic ways to build
a report: pre-made templates and a Custom Report
Builder.
Pre-made templates
Pre-made templates are templates that are ready to
go and are specific to social networks like Facebook,
Twitter, and LinkedIn. These templates are a great
starting point, especially if you are not sure what key
performance indicators to evaluate.
Custom Report Builder
The Custom Report Builder has over 50 analytics
modules available to build customized reports. You
can pull in data from multiple social networks into one
report or view your Team activity. This way you can build
customized reports that reflect how you have set up
your social media strategy and help you measure and
share.
Customize your reports even further by adding your
own branding. You can customize the header image
with your logo and include a brief description. This is
helpful when presenting or sharing your reports with
clients or your boss.
“I start my week by looking over
my Hootsuite customized analytic
reports. It’s a great way to get a
pulse for what’s going on and what’s
resonating most with our fans.”
Joshua Jeffery,
Manager of Digital Engagement,
The Andy Warhol Museum

6. 6SOCIAL ANALYTICS AND HOOTSUITE: MEASURE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS
How to Set Up Your Reports
1. Once you have signed into your Hootsuite
dashboard click the bar graph (Analytics) icon
found on the left side of your dashboard and
choose Build Custom Report.
2. From here you can choose to either build a Custom
Report or a pre-made template.
For an indepth look at building your analytic reports,
watch this webinar. The webinar will walk you through
getting started with your analytic reports. If you have
questions, our social media coaches will be there to help
guide you.
For more information on the point system and how to
apply points to reports see this technical help article.
REGISTER NOW
Resources
Now that we have given you an overview of the
metrics available to you in Hootsuite, we have
more resources to help you continue your
learning.
For more comprehensive, on-demand training
on how to leverage Hootsuite analytics,
and other dashboard functionality, enroll in
Hootsuite University at learn.Hootsuite.com.
To gain insight on creating a social media
strategy, watch this webinar.
To learn more about URL shorteners, read this
blog post.
For an indepth look on how to create a Custom
Report, see this technical help article.
To learn even more ways to measure success
on Twitter with Hootsuite, watch this webinar.
To learn more about Hootsuite analytics from
our Social Media Coaches, register for this
webinar.