A Law Firm Guide to Social Media Analytics

Do you know how to measure your law firm’s social media efforts? How to find and analyze social data that will enable you to make smarter business decisions? Having a social media analytics strategy and consistent reporting schedule will enable you to identify trends and new opportunities. You’ll understand what’s working and what isn’t so you can steer your social media marketing campaigns to big wins. In our law firm guide to social media analytics, you’ll discover the importance of social media analytics and how to implement a strategy that works for you.

What are social media analytics?

Simply put, social media analytics refers to the process of gathering and analyzing the data, reports, and metrics offered by one or more of your law firm’s social media accounts. These analytics provide insight into several factors that directly impact the success of your social media marketing efforts. Through social media analytics, you can learn more about who your audience is and what resonates with them, which platforms receive the most traffic, which social content contributes to leads, and how to better engage with your audience overall. 

The primary benefits of social media analytics are:

• Create winning social media campaigns
• Prove your return on investment (ROI) and justify your budget to stakeholders
• Find the best influencers for your law firm
• Benchmark against your competitors
• Identify trending topics

What social media analytics should legal marketers report on?

Legal marketers should report on specific metrics and data points – such as engagements, impressions, and leads – as they relate to a campaign’s overall objective.

Fortunately, there are plenty of social media analytics tools that make reporting easy, and they’re typically customizable so you can pull the data that matters most to you (more on that below). Here are examples of the common reports you should put together in order to present your results:

• Audience reports to showcase your follower growth.
• Published posts reports to show the number of posts you’ve published in a specific time period.
• Interactions reports to present the number of likes, reactions and comments your posts have received.
• Shares analytics reports to showcase the audience members who shared (reposted) your content.
• An impressions report will display the number of eyeballs your posts have received, and we recommend showing comparisons (week over week or month over month).
• A sessions report displays how many web sessions took place on your website that were driven from social media
• A new contacts report will display the number of contacts you’re received as a result of social media. If you social media accounts are synced with your CRM, this information will be easy to pull without manual manipulation.

Social media analytics tools

There are plenty of tools to pick from when it comes to social media reporting. They aren’t all created equal though, so it’s important to spend time finding the ones that are right for your firm. Commonly used tools that you may want to look into are HubSpot Social Media Software, TweetDeck, Tweet Reach, Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Mention. 

Contact us today for a 30 day free trial of HubSpot’s social media software.

How to craft your social media analytics strategy

So how do you get started? Here are the steps you can take in order to begin tracking the right social media analytics. Because it’s important to track and report on metrics that align with your firm’s campaign objectives.

1. Set SMART social media analytics goals. By ensuring goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound, you’ll be better able to focus your strategy on success. Ask yourself what you really want to learn and how you plan to apply that knowledge, and create goals from there. 
2. Choose the most important metrics to focus on and track. There are so many social media metrics you can spend time on. Now is the time to see which ones tie back to your goals. The metrics you can see vary by platform and also which tools you may be using. Consider metrics such as: reach, engagements, impressions, mentions, likes, retweets, shares, follower growth, new contacts etc. 
3. Decide which social media analytics tools you’ll use. As we noted above, there are several to pick from and you need to narrow down your choices based on what makes sense for your particular needs. Ask yourself the following: 
   1. Do you want a tool that works across multiple platforms or channels, or just one? 
   2. What are the metrics you decided to track, and which tools will do that? 
   3. What’s your budget?
   4. Does the tool need to integrate with other technology such as your CRM system? 
4. Measure the success of your social media analytics efforts. Once your chosen tool is implemented, you can understand what’s working and what’s not. Depending on the software you choose, you may be able to set up custom dashboards or pull reporting at regular intervals. You also want to understand the story that the data is telling – what insights can you apply to your future efforts? 
5. Make any necessary adjustments. Once you’ve completed the step above, you’ll start to understand where changes need to be made. Here is where you can update or revise your strategy moving forward. 

Takeaway 

A crucial part of an effective social media strategy is tracking data and then understanding the story those numbers tell. The more you can track and apply social media analytics, the more improvements you’ll see in items that directly affect your bottom line such as marketing ROI and lead generation.

If you need help learning how to measure and improve your law firm’s social media efforts, contact us for help today. We’ve helped countless firms in all different practice areas take their social media performance to the next level.