In-App Analysis Tools to Master

By: Anna Cave

Checking your social analytics without ever closing the app.

Facebook: As you probably already know from the Cambridge Analytica scandal that broke in 2018 (check out The Great Hack on Netflix to learn more), Facebook has a wealth of data that they collect and make available to business accounts. Unfortunately you won't be able to see beyond likes and comments if you have a regular profile, but business are able to use this tool to show them a variety of metrics. Their insights can answer just about any business question you may have about your engagement, reach, followers, etc. You can also analyze individual posts and compare them against each other. Facebook allows you to download your data in the form of an Excel spreadsheet, which makes it easy to create graphs or upload it into different programs, such as Tableau. You can download all the data they have available, but you can also customize which data gets exported by creating custom layouts. The media analytics team at Live Oak Communications uses this technique to inform their clients about metrics that are important to their business goals— and you can too. ​

Instagram: Instagram allows you to view your account insights on their mobile app. In order to view them, you just need to have a business or creator account. Once you update those account settings, you can go directly to your overall insights from your profile or by tapping insights on each of your individual posts and stories. Insights will give you an overview of your past 7 days and will also allow you to analyze posts on an individual level. Post insights will give you a summary of your likes, comments, shares, and bookmarks, as well as how many people people visited your profile from your post. Story insights will show you how many people you reached, how many replied, and how many visited your profile. Instagram also allows you to download a copy of what you have shared on Instagram, as well as all comments and direct messages. This file can give you an overview of everything you have shared on Instagram as opposed to just the last 7 days in the app.

LinkedIn: LinkedIn works similarly to Instagram, where you can view data for each of your posts on the app and also download a complete file of your data. When you view your personal profile on Linkedin you are shown your dashboard, which shows you how many people have viewed your profile in the past 90 days, how many post views you have, and how many search appearances you have appeared in. If you upgrade to a premium account, you will be able to see who all of the people who viewed your profile are (the free version only lets you see a few). Under each of your LinkedIn posts, you will also see how many times the post was views, a summary of your reactions and comments, as well as the locations of people who viewed the posts. If you want to see more than what these insights give you, you are able to download a file of your data. The downloaded file shows a summary of your activity on the app (a full list of what the file includes is available here). You will have to download from a computer rather than your phone, and make sure to do so on a personal computer rather than a public one to protect your privacy.

Twitter: Twitter shows you metrics for each Tweet you post which you can access by clicking on a Tweet and hitting "View Tweet activity." Twitter will show you analytics for impressions, total engagements, detail expands (how many people viewed details about your tweet), retweets, likes, replies, and profile clicks. Like all the other apps, Twitter also allows you to download a copy of your data by going to Settings and privacy, selecting Account, and then Your Twitter data. Twitter provides a full summary of what data it provides in the download.

In-app analytics are a great place to start if you are interested in media analytics. While social media analytics are important in even the most complicated of companies, they are also easy enough to for anyone to understand without having an analytical background. It can be fun to check in on your posts and see which ones are performing well to see what your followers like to see. Let us know if you start using these apps to measure your social media performance!