How to Use Social Media Analytics to Personalize Your Content Curation Strategy

As a content marketer, chances are you’ve heard the phrase “content is king.” 

And it’s true. Content is one of the best ways to connect with your target audience and build relationships.

But not all content is created equal. Personalized content is superior, with 72% of customers only engaging with personalized messaging. 

So how do you access the proper information to personalize your content curation strategy for each customer?

The answer lies in social media analytics.

Social media analytics data helps you create content that interests and meets each customer’s needs, leading to increased engagement and sales.

Let’s take a closer look at how you can use social media analytics to tailor your content curation efforts for your ideal customer. 

What Are Social Media Analytics?

Social media analytics are the data points extracted from a social media tool or platform that help you understand how people interact with your content. 

This data provides insight into what content is resonating with your audience, which pieces of content you should promote more, and why. They also help you identify opportunities to improve the performance of your social media marketing strategy by showing where there are gaps in your existing strategy or areas where improvement is required. 

So, how do they work?

Social media analytics tools track things like clicks, likes, and shares. This data gives marketers valuable insights into how their audience engages with their brand across different platforms.

These tools can tell you which posts received the most engagement over a specific period. You’ll also get information about who shared each piece of content — and their demographics — which can help you better target future posts toward certain groups within your community, such as millennials or people who live in New York City. 

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Social Media Metrics Worth Noting

While all social media metrics provide valuable insight, a few stand out when personalizing content curation. 

Let’s dive into each metric and how to leverage the data to curate content for your ideal customer. 

Engagement Rate 

Engagement rate is an important metric to consider when measuring your content curation success. 

Engagement rate, or simply “engagement” is the number of times a specific post was liked, commented on, and shared by users. It indicates how popular a piece of content is within your community and can be considered a good indicator of how effective your curation strategy is.

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A part of personalization is about giving your audience the type of content that they enjoy most. So take a look at what kind of posts get the best engagement on your page. Are they videos, interactive polls, photos, user-generated content, or testimonials? Identifying which kind of content gets the most engagement will help you curate more content in that format. 

It’s also important to understand the differences between the platforms when considering the types of content available, as well as the nuances in content moderation rules, if you’re deciding to be a social media expert.

Suppose you notice that some of your posts are getting unusually low share counts compared to other pieces from the same timeframe (or even from previous periods). It might be time to rethink what types of content you’re sharing with them — and whether or not it’s relevant to their preferences. 

For example, analyzing your engagement rate might tell you that your audience doesn’t appreciate your posts created with design templates like you thought they did. They seem to interact more with a trendy curated meme than with your artfully crafted custom graphic. 

Although this information can be disappointing, don’t let it get you down. The good news is that now you know the content that no longer resonates with your customer, and you can adapt accordingly. 

So go whip up some more Michael Scott memes. 

Demographics

Demographics are the characteristics used to describe and classify people, such as age, gender, race, religion, and income. Demographic data is important for content curation because it helps you understand your audience in more detail.

For example, if you have an older male audience in a high-income bracket, they might enjoy watching Instagram reels about luxury cars and watches. But don’t limit your content to just social media posts. Take this information and write some blog posts that compare Ferraris, Porsches, and Lamborghinis’ prices, speed, and features. 

And since you aren’t sure what format they’ll like the most, try embedding links to some YouTube videos in each article so they can easily engage in the format they wish. 

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Demographic information can tell you everything you need to know about your audience. Leverage this information to curate personalized content that helps boost engagement, build trust, and drive traffic to your website. 

Social Sentiment

Social sentiment measures how your audience or customers are talking about you online. It gathers information on what they do or don’t like about your brand.

So, if there is a lot of negative sentiment surrounding your brand, you may need to shift gears to help create more authentic positive reviews from your audience. 

Sentiment analysis is the art of measuring a piece of content’s positive or negative. It can measure how consumers feel about certain topics, brands, products, and services.

And brand perception is fundamental when looking at social media analytics. It lets you understand whether a campaign is working or if you have to pivot your content strategy elsewhere. 

Take Stack Browser, for example. They’ve been working hard to create the latest version of their browser tool. And while they have a solid user base that supports their products, they decided to take it a step further. 

Through sentiment analysis, they identified what consumers wanted to see more of in their feeds by tracking the most popular sources, topics, and influencers shared within their industry. So with their latest launch, they’re going to include their very own Stack NFT for users that purchase a lifetime subscription to their browser.

Always keep an open ear to current trends and try to incorporate them into your business strategy when possible.  

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Referral Traffic

Social media referrals are a percentage of your total traffic that comes from users clicking on links to your website from social media. These clicks can happen in several ways:

• A consumer shares a link to your content, and others click it.
• A consumer clicks the “follow” button on one of your owned channels (like Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram), which means they’ll see your updates in their newsfeed.
• When someone clicks an image or video within your posts, they’re directed to a landing page on your website.

The value of social media referrals lies in how easily they lead people back to your site. So having a site with a professional and clean web design that aligns with your social media is crucial to launching a successful content curation strategy.

For instance, if you are working with a SaaS business, it’s a good idea to check some of their competitors’ websites. Look into their newsletter designs or any other examples of SaaS pages and workflows to familiarize yourself with how the leaders in the industry set up their websites. Mimic the designs that look clean and easy to navigate and avoid the complicated designs. 

Referral traffic is especially important to monitor if you are utilizing or are considering dabbling in influencer marketing. 

Identifying if influencers play a large role in driving traffic to your page will help you cater more to that new audience. For instance, if your new followers found you through Addison Rae on TikTok, curate more content with her interacting with your brand and feature it on both your social media accounts and hers. 

Brand Mentions

Brand mentions can help you see who is talking about your brand. Analyzing the profiles of your followers who directly mention your brand can teach you a lot about their likes and dislikes and even what’s very important to them.

For example, if you are a clothing company selling shoes, then people who mention your brand might be interested in the latest fashion trends. You could then curate content around these topics for your audience to keep them engaged and informed.

Additionally, social listening tools can tell you when people are talking about your brand on social media and how they feel about it. These tools are helpful for providing details about your brand mentions so you can address any concerns when creating new content that resonates with your target customer’s needs and interests. Now, you can align with what they are interested in seeing more of (or less of) from you. 

Wrapping up

Now that you know what social media analytics are and which ones are the most important, you discuss with your marketing team and use your findings to make data-driven decisions about content curation. 

Remember that the goal of this analysis isn’t to create more content but rather to create high-quality content that resonates with your audience. 

When optimizing your content curation strategy for your ideal customer, focus on these metrics: 

1. Engagement rate
2. Demographics
3. Social sentiment
4. Referral traffic 
5. Brand mentions

Don’t forget that this process takes trial and error to nail down the right formula for success. And you might not see results overnight. 

But don’t get discouraged. Stick with it, adapt your content as needed, and soon you’ll start to see an uptick in engagement, more leads coming through the door, and more sales closing. 

Personalization is the name of the game in this digital error. Upgrade your content curation strategy today.