What Is Social Media Analytics?

Social media analytics is the practice of deriving business insights from data mined from social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. As a subfield of social media marketing, social media analytics enables businesses to identify trends and takeaways from how people discuss products, brands, and events online.

Like other forms of big data analysis, social media analytics leverages software tools to process structured and unstructured data into formats that people can readily understand. For example, a company might apply sentiment analysis to social media data to better understand how consumers feel about a new product or service, based on the content of their posts and conversations on social apps. This field can also help companies guide their own social media marketing strategy, including measuring and optimizing social media ROI against key performance indicators (KPIs).

Social media has become second nature in the daily lives of all types of consumers, who produce an ever-increasing amount of data on a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour basis. The sheer volume of activity on Instagram or Twitter, for example, would make it virtually impossible for human beings to track and turn into consumable formats without help from software. Social media analytics enables businesses to sift through these massive piles of social media data for new insights about consumer attitudes, buying behaviors, and more.