Social media analytics are used in determining your relevance and interactions on social platforms. There are many different measurements used and many different providers to choose from. Here is a list with a few options, as well as the most common measurements used in order to assess and improve your social practices.

Chirpaloo
Allows you to import your followers into a database. This database entitles you to followers’ information such as their profile, website, demographic/geographic data, tweets, and social graph. Having this data accessible will help you group influencers and engage in prioritized conversations. It also makes it easy to find a specific follower, i.e. if you searched for someone that is male, has 500+ followers, recently tweeted about SEO, and lives in Chicago.

PinReach
This site lets you measure your overall influence on Pinterest. It provides you with a score and displays tables and graphs to show the most popular boards and pins.

Hootsuite/Buffer/Sprout Social/Social Oomph/Falcon
These are social media management tools with analytics of the platforms controlled within their systems. They allow for multiple platforms to all be run out of one site, and some additionally monitor social interactions mentioning you or your company. They all provide some form of social media analytics and are likely the most efficient way of tracking your social impressions.

Facebook Insights
Facebook implemented their own analytics system for their business pages. It will let you know basic things such as how many users saw your post (total reach), the improvement or decline in likes over the weeks, and engagement across the weeks (through likes, comments, shares, and clicks). These all assist you in deciding which content goes over better with your followers, which times of day are best to post to gain a wider reach, and overall performance of your site.

Blogging Analytics
There are multiple sources for blogging analytics. Most use website analytic tools such as Google Analytics, Piwik, or StatCounter. If you have one, try asking your website host or designer if they offer any blog analytics through their sites.

Comments/Shares
These are metrics that analyze your markets reaction to the content being posted. Obviously the more comments and shares the better the perception from your audience. If you notice more comments and shares on specific content, perhaps your audience would like to find out more about that topic. This is what engages them as a community.

Followers/Likes
The amount of people following or liking your page will help you figure out how popular your page is or how good of a reputation your company has. If you notice a sharp decline in followers during a period of time where no content has been posted, you know you are losing audience members for lack of engagement. If you notice an increase in followers when posting video, you know your audience is looking for and attracted to visual stimulation.

Lead Generation
This can be tracked if there is a call to action on the offer posted, or a trackable link from your home page. Knowing the number of leads generated from your social media can help you support the necessity of it, as well as assist you in determining when there are deficiencies in your site’s performance.

Click-Through Rate
This helps you decide if your promotions or offers are enticing enough that your audience is clicking on them to find out the details. If they’re not compelling enough, your audience will not be visiting your site. This will result in no lead generation.

Visit to Lead Conversion Rate
It will assist you in determining how effectively visitors are converted to leads. Out of all of your site visitors, how many are converting into sales/memberships/signups/etc. This enables you to figure out what is or isn’t working. For instance, if you have a substantial click-through rate, but very low conversion rate, there may be a problem with your lead forms. There could also be issues with your call to actions not seeming quite like the promoted deal once they go to signup.

Lead to Customer Conversion Rate
Building off of the last statistic, this one lets you know how many of those leads from your social site have transformed into clients. This allows you to find out which social channel is driving more clients to your business. This social medium may appeal more to your target market and result in you wanting to put more effort into it in comparison with others.

Additional Metrics
Website analytics also apply to blogging metrics here too. These would include referring links, page views, keywords, bounce rate, and new vs. returning visitors.

Let us know if you have some helpful information to add or if there’s an additional metric that’s keeping you puzzled in the comments below!