Is It Working? How to Use Analytics to Measure Your Social Network Success

by Emily Wenstrom
published in Community

It’s great to get your posts out there and engage with your fans on social media, but if you’re building an author platform, it’s not enough.

If you’re an author, you’re trying to sell books. And that means your social media platform is part of a business now—you’re going pro.

And as a professional, you need to take responsibility for the results of your social networking. And, yes, quantifying them. With the maths.

I’m an English major who hasn’t been anywhere near a math class since high school, so I completely empathize with your groans of dread. (Or maybe that was me groaning.) But happily, technology takes care of most of the number crunching for us these days, so you don’t need to dust off that monstrous TI-83.

All you need to know is how to find the analytics for your social media accounts, and what to do with them. It’s actually not so complicated, once you know what you’re looking at.

Find Your Data

Most social networks come with basic data readily available—you just have to know where look. Here’s where to find your analytics on the most popular social networks:

  • Facebook: Groups have access to analytics once you have at least 30 Likes. Just go to the Group page profile and select the “Insights” tab.

Regular user accounts don’t get analytics currently. You can tally up a lot of the metrics yourself if you really want to manage your platform that way, but I recommend making your public author account a Group.

  • Twitter: On Twitter, every account gets analytics. Just go to your profile icon at the top right and select “Analytics” from the drop-down options.
  • Pinterest: This network just recently started offering analytics support. From your profile page, select the Settings icon at the top right and select “Analytics” from the drop-down options.

You can also get weekly emails with data highlights and your most popular pin of the week—it may surprise you! For some reason, mine is consistently this Dr. Seuss truffula tree tattoo.

  • WordPress: When you log into your account, some of the data is available right there on the Dashboard. For even more, select “View All.”

Many other social media sites share analytics, too. Just poke around your profile page to find them. These basic metrics are plenty for most of us.  If you want something more robust, well, there’s apps for that.

Know What You’re Looking At

When you take your first look at an analytics page, all those numbers can be disorienting. I call it the “WTF” stage of analytics. To help you find your footing, here’s a rundown of the basic kind of data you can expect to find on most basic analytics pages:

  • Impressions/Views—This refers to how many people were exposed to your posts in their main feed.
  • Visitors—How many users came to your account page.
  • Followers—The number of followers you have.
  • Likes/Favorites—How many users liked or favorited your posts.
  • Shares/RTs/Repins—How many users shared your post in their own feed.
  • Comments/Replies—The number of users who responded to or commented on your posts.
  • Clicks—How many people clicked on a link you shared to see the full article.
  • Top Posts—Many networks will highlight the posts that got the most engagement within a specified time frame, usually a week or a month, including likes, shares, clicks and comments.

Most networks will give you both a hard number (the tally of how many users performed each action) and also a percentage (the amount increase or decrease this week or month compared to the previous week or month) for each post. If those percentages are in the positive, that means your platform is improving. If a particular metric consistently has negative growth, that’s something to work on.

All these metrics can be incredibly useful for making sure your platform is on the right track, but Top Posts is my favorite. Not only does it give me little warm fuzzies to see which of my posts my followers really loved, but this is also my top source for informing my posting strategy moving forward.

Turn Numbers into Actions

Now we get to the cool part—turning all those metrics into an action plan. As you review your analytics, consider what this means for next week or month’s posts. Is there a certain time of day when you get more impressions? What kinds of posts are getting the best responses?

Research indicates that asking questions or including images in a post can increase its engagement rate. Morning is a popular time for higher traffic. Do you find this to be true for your platform? Sweeping trends like these can be useful guides, but every audience is different. Play around with different kinds of posts and different times of day to learn what works best for your audience.

As you start to get more confident in your analytics, you may want to set goals for yourself. This will affect which metrics matter most to you.

For example, I’m focusing on expanding the reach of the platform for my short story website wordhaus on Facebook. My most valuable metrics for this are the number of followers, of course, but also shares—because this is one of the most effective ways to get in front of new users with similar interests.

Visualize a Compass, Not a GPS

Metrics can be a fantastic tool to help you keep your platform on the right track, and every savvy author should know how to use them. But don’t let the numbers hold you back—they’re a compass to help navigate your way, not a GPS to dictate your every move.

Check your analytics at least monthly (weekly is even better), and use them to identify a few top takeaways to modify how you post for the next month. As you develop a better understanding of the metrics and watch them grow, you’ll be amazed how informed and empowered you feel.


By day, Emily Wenstrom, is the editor of short story website wordhausauthor social media coach, and freelance content marketing specialist. By early-early morning, she is E. J. Wenstrom, an award-winning sci-fi and fantasy author whose debut novel Mud was named 2016 Book of the Year by the Florida Writers Association.

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