As companies conduct daily operations, it’s important that they continuously evaluate their strategy-to-tasks to ensure common business practices are aligned with mission objectives. To do this, they must have a way to assess the various areas of their business operations associated with both internal and external activities. In particular, when it comes to brand awareness, sales, and product/service development efforts, there’s no better way to start your analysis than with your favorite social media analytics tool. On that note, it’s important that brands leverage available data that can help them gain valuable insights about themselves, other market competitors, and most importantly, their customers.

This discussion will outline a few ways for individuals and/or brands to use social media analytics tools to analyze individual and/or brand data on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. In particular, it will highlight tools that use Twitter user-data to perform analysis and generate reports that can be used to improve a person or brand’s recognition. In addition, a general analysis of the brand, The New Primal (Jerky | Spice | Sauce Co.) will be provided using three different FREE Twitter analytic tools and personal research gathered from credible online sources.

The New Primal (Company Overview)

“The New Primal is a grass-fed jerky snacks manufacturer. The Company’s full product line is made from sustainably sourced ingredients and proteins, naturally raised without the use of antibiotics or added hormones. Its jerky, meat sticks, snack mates and marinades are all certified gluten-free, paleo-friendly, artisanal quality and minimally processed.” (Craft, 2020).

Although there are a variety of both FREE and Enterprise-level tools available to analyze social media data, this discussion will only go over a few of the FREE versions.

Tools Review (Twitter Analytics, Sprout Social, Tweepsmap)

Are you looking for ways to analyze social media data? Do you need the ability to analyze your competitor’s data on tools such as Twitter? Look no further. But how will Twitter help you get there? Making use of Twitter analytics tools to measure key data-points like engagement, potential reach, followers, and share-of-voice are just a few of the many ways to get you there. According to Sprout Social (2020), Twitter is a greenfield for content marketers and social media managers. With more than 241M active users, 500M Tweets, and 2.1B searches every day, online users have a large audience to engage with and learn about. It’s a gold mine for data analytics.

Twitter Analytics

To start, here’s an overview of Twitter’s organic analytics tool and its capabilities from my personal Twitter profile.

Source: Corey Seamster (2020) | Image: Screenshot Corey Seamster Twitter Analytics

As outlined above, Twitter Analytics offers users the ability to select a date/time period on the dashboard that reports metrics on Tweet impressions, Profile views, # of Followers, Top Tweets, etc. It’s a great tool to identify influential followers, trending content creation topics, and even engagement metrics. Although I’m not very active on Twitter, I could use the analytic features to better understand the people I engage with and evaluate what they like and don’t like.

Source: Corey Seamster (2020) | Image: Screenshot Corey Seamster Twitter Analytics

Brand Analysis: The New Primal (Twitter Analytics and Other Social Media Research)

Source: Corey Seamster (2020) | Image: Screenshot of The New Primal Twitter Homepage

Unfortunately, I am not able to see much of other user’s data when using Twitter Analytics on my personal profile; particularly for the FREE services model. However, what I can see about The New Primal brand, is that they are not very active on the Twitter network. By comparison, they have 1, 787 followers on Twitter (i.e. .0245 (25%) of total 72.7k followers), 38.4k followers on Facebook (.528 (53%) of total 72.7k followers), 72.7k followers on Instagram and only 31 subscribers on YouTube (i.e. .0004 (<1%) of total 72.7k followers). This shows where they focus their attention in terms of content creation and marketing to their target customers. Without any tool analytics, I can tell you that the data states they use Instagram as their number one social media tool to engage with their customers by sharing both pictures and videos. Facebook is their second leading channel to reach their target customers, followed by YouTube, which is their least used channel with only 31 subscribers. By reviewing the comments section of their individual social network pages, viewers can see which platform is most used for customer engagement initiatives. In this case, it’s Instagram. Furthermore, only three pieces of content was created on YouTube since the brand’s start, which indicates that video isn’t the brand’s primary medium to deliver messages.

Sprout Social (Simply Measured)

Next, let’s look at the tool Sprout Social. According to Zote (2020), while combined with other publishing, engagement and strategy management features, Sprout’s Twitter analytics will give you an all-in-one solution to manage all your Twitter activities in one place. After a review of this tool, it definitely provided me with more functionality than Twitter and I could even enter other users into my report search function to gather insights on them as well. For instance, the tool provides the following features:

• Strategy & Insights Creation
• Competitive Analysis
• Content Performance Evaluation

One of my favorite features is the Twitter Reports. Twitter Reports allows users to get detailed analysis on Audience Growth, Publishing Behaviors, Top Content Tweets, Impressions, and overall Engagement metrics. Additional analysis can be performed by reviewing the Demographics and Profiles tabs.

Source: Corey Seamster (2020) | Image: Screenshot Sprout Social Analytics Tool (Twitter Engagement)

The above image highlights the Sprout Social user-interface dashboard for Twitter Reports. As an overview, the dashboard provides users details on the total Twitter Engagement between a person and/or brand and their followers. According to Sprout Social (2015), engagement tells the story of who is talking to your brand, about your brand, and why. This is why engagement is one of the most important Twitter metrics used today. By using engagement metrics (i.e. @replies, Retweets, Mentions, Favorites), businesses can better identify trends, content types that interests readers or their followers, or Tweets that are likely to go viral (Sprout Social, 2020). Here’s some additional insight I was able to gain from the analytics provided. For publishing behavior, if using Sprout Social, I would be able to breakdown the brands publishing behavior to identify new opportunities or best practices using the analytics features provided. Here’s an example for your review.

Source: Corey Seamster (2020) | Image: Screenshot Sprout Social Analytics Tool (Publishing Behavior)

In addition to the intuitive user-interface, the tool offers users the ability to add more data sets from other user profiles by clicking the add (i.e. +) symbol on the side tools bar of the right of the screen. This allows you to add or remove individuals or brands from your analysis report.

Brand Analysis: The New Primal (Sprout Social Analytics)

For brand’s like The New Primal, Sprout’s Social Analytics tool can be used for a variety of beneficial reasons. In particular, The New Primal can use the mentions analysis to identify and convert fans into followers by attracting Twitter users who may not be following you.

Source: Corey Seamster (2020) | Image: The New Primal data using Sprout Social Analytics Tool (Mentions)

Tweepsmap

Lastly, let’s take a look at the tool, Tweepsmap. According to Zote (2020), Tweepsmap is a great Twitter analysis option to gain a deeper understanding of your Twitter community and how to better engage them. This tool allows users to separate their followers and others alike to assess which segment of categories they fall into in order for customized marketing efforts. Additionally, with paid services, you are able to perform a variety of analytic techniques to gain insight on social media users. Here is a screen shot of my personal FREE account that is limited to what functionality I can perform on other user profile (i.e. role model company).

Source: Corey Seamster (2020) | Image: The New Primal data using Tweepsmap

Brand Analysis: The New Primal (Tweepsmap Analytics)

For brand’s like The New Primal, they can use Tweepsmap analytics to produce Follower distributions by Gender, Location, Age, etc. This will help them create target marketing campaigns for product/service improvements during the evolution of their brand existence. For instance, here’s what the breakdown looks like in Tweepsmap using Team Canada’a profile for data (it won’t let me see The New Primal’s information unless you pay for services).

Source: Corey Seamster (2020) | Image: Reports on Tweepsmap using Team Canada’s profile

With all things considered, there are many social media analytics tools available on the market today that can bring great benefit to companies of all kinds. More importantly, it’s noting that there are many analytic approaches that can help businesses stay competitive within their respective markets. However, it’s equally important for those same business to identify which set of measurements will aid in the maintenance and further development of daily business practices that produce products/services for consumers to ensure both data and intuition are being used to drive the decisions accordingly. With tools like Twitter Analytics, Sprout Social, and Tweepsmap, both individuals and brands alike can either use FREE services or enterprise-level services to meet the analytical needs of their brand. Regardless of the preferred choice, the tools can be used to further develop brand awareness, feedback on product/service offerings, and also to increase follow-ship.