Guide to Social Media Benchmarking in 2024 [With Tools]

Imagine you’ve been running your business for a while, and you’ve been sifting through various analytics, encountering countless numbers. At this point, you might be feeling a bit overwhelmed, trying to figure out which numbers truly matter and which ones don’t. Well, let us introduce you to the concept of ‘Social Media Benchmarking.’

Social Media Benchmarking, in short, can provide you with a clearer understanding of the significance behind those numbers. Therefore, in this article, we’ve gathered all the essential information you need to know about Social Media Benchmarking, so you can start incorporating it into your strategy once you’ve finished reading. Now let’s dive right in!

What Is Social Media Benchmarking?

In simplest terms, social media benchmarking is analyzing your various KPIs with an average result as a reference or standard to see how your business is doing, compared with other businesses in the same industry.

Because, often, merely looking at a few social media key performance indicators (KPIs) won’t provide you with meaningful insights. This is where social media benchmarking becomes crucial.

Think of the benchmark as a guideline that many businesses aim to meet. Most of them will try to come up with a business plan to reach this established norm. With Social Media Benchmarking, you’re more likely to set realistic, attainable goals and expectations that also challenge you, ultimately leading to the success of your business.

Benefits of Social Media Benchmarking

As we mentioned earlier, Social Media Benchmarking is crucial for your business, as it offers numerous ways to gauge your position within the industry.

It’s a valuable tool for comparison, but it’s not about comparing to make you feel worse. Instead, it provides you with a clear picture of how you can improve and compete with other brands (in a normal and clean way.)

Understanding Your Competitors’ Strategies

Social Media Benchmarking gives you insight into your competitors’ strategies. Now you can identify the differences between their approach and yours and measure the variations in results. Remember, your brand and your competitors often target the same buyer personas, so this analysis helps pinpoint areas for improvement and keeps you updated on industry trends.

Improving Your Content Strategy

Social Media Benchmarking helps you assess the impact of your content strategy, enabling you to create higher-quality content. 

Moreover, due to the previous point, once you uncover your competitors’ strategies, you can integrate some of their techniques to improve your own performance, ensuring your content resonates more effectively with your target audience.

Optimizing Your Budget Planning

Perhaps most importantly, with a better understanding of what’s working and what’s not, you can refine your budget planning. This means allocating more resources to areas that truly require investment instead of wasting funds on less impactful aspects.

How to Conduct Social Media Benchmarking

To successfully conduct social media benchmarking, you’ll need a substantial amount of data. Therefore, considering a third-party Social Media Analytics tool can be immensely helpful, saving you time and providing deeper insights. 

However, that’s just one aspect; there are several more steps you, as a business owner, can take to incorporate social media benchmarking into your business plan. Here’s a list of actions to consider:

1. Understand Your Needs and Establish Your Goals

Just like any marketing plan, it’s essential to be clear about your objectives when you’re venturing into something new. There are many possible reasons for incorporating Social Media Benchmarking.

For instance, you might want to gauge your progress during the second quarter, compare your content’s performance to that of other brands, or simply conduct a general content analysis for your brand.

While these reasons may appear somewhat similar, they carry nuanced differences that can make your subsequent steps much more manageable. By thoroughly understanding your needs, you’ll pinpoint exactly what data you require and what you aim to achieve.

2. Choose Your Metrics

Now that you’re clear on your goals, the next step is selecting your metrics. While there are numerous social media metrics available, here are some key examples that you might find useful:

• Top-performing posts
• Views
• Reach/impressions
• Total engagement rate
• Average engagement rate
• Posting frequency
• Follower/fan growth rate
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Audience demographics
• And more.

If you’re aiming for a general brand analysis, you can decide whether to compare your numbers with either industry’s average or median numbers—it’s entirely up to you.

3. Scope Down the Social Media Channels to Analyze

Moving on to the next step, equipped with your goals and selected metrics, the next task is to identify which social media channels you’d like to focus on.

While most brands today want to be digitally present on multiple social media platforms, if you’re just getting started on the Social Media Benchmarking journey, it is recommended to begin with the social media platforms where your target audience is most active first. 

Then, once you’ve made your channel selection, you can then examine how your competitors are faring in reaching their audience and analyze what strategies you could adopt to enhance your plan. After all, if you’re on the same channel, you’re essentially targeting the same audience group. 

Also, you might want to consider excluding platforms where your target audience

isn’t active, as investing time and energy in those platforms may not yield significant results.

4. It’s Analysis Time!

Up to this point, you probably already have a well-rounded framework and are 

ready to dive into the analysis. As mentioned above, for the analyzing part, you can opt for Social media benchmarking tools to help save time, and we will talk about this later in the article.

Once that is done, one of the most important tasks is to draw actionable insights from your facts and figures. This can be quite challenging because you’re interpreting what the facts and numbers have told you, allowing you to implement changes in your upcoming social media campaigns. You can make a list of actionable insights you have discovered and while you might encounter some obstacles along the way, don’t forget that you can always learn from your mistakes!

5. Report Your Results

Last but not least, once you have successfully analyzed all the data, drawn actionable insights, and implemented some of them into your plan, it’s time to compile the data into your report. Creating reports can be incredibly useful when you want your clients or managers to review the findings and brainstorm better solutions, ultimately enhancing performance.

Tools and Resources

Time is one of the most valuable assets, especially in the world of business. If you’re considering Social Media Benchmarking and you want to save time, remember that you can and you should opt for automated tools to handle the analytics part. 

Now, if you are confused and have no idea which one to choose, here are some of the options you can go for:

Google Analytics

When it comes to automated tools, Google Analytics is often one of the first options that come to mind, mainly because it’s FREE! 

Google Analytics allows you to see which social media platforms are driving the most traffic, which content generates the most leads and traffic and provides valuable demographic data about your audience. With this information, you can optimize your business strategies and adapt your marketing efforts for the future. 

However, since it’s a free option, there are some limitations to what Google Analytics can do.

Mandala Analytics

If you want to dive deeper into analytics, you might need to explore paid options, as they typically offer more personal customization. Mandala AI is one such option worth considering. 

Firstly, Mandala AI helps you track what people are saying about you online across various platforms, allowing you to identify emerging trends before they become mainstream. Secondly, with customization, you can filter out irrelevant data, making it easier to focus on your chosen metrics and KPIs without drowning in a sea of information.

Moreover, whether you’re an individual or a large enterprise, Mandala’s user-friendly interface makes it easy to quickly access and interpret a wealth of data, thus improving your overall efficiency. For more details, you can check a 15-day free trial out at https://www.mandalasystem.com/startfree 

Case Studies

There’s one more important thing you should know: many major brands worldwide have incorporated Social Media Benchmarking into their strategies, among other things.

The food and beverage industry is a prime example. Take Starbucks, for instance. They use data to understand their customers’ preferences and adjust seasonal promotions and products accordingly. And let’s not forget about McDonald’s, which analyzed social media data and realized that customers were seeking healthier food options.

However, not only food and beverage businesses can benefit from this; other service-based industries can utilize this approach too. For instance, Netflix has harnessed social media benchmarking to keep track of the performance of its original content releases, allowing them to tailor their content production and strategies accordingly.

When executed effectively, all of this can lead to enhanced customer satisfaction and an improved conversion rate.

Best Practices

Everyone probably realizes that Social Media Benchmarking requires a lot—not in an unreachable way, but there are undoubtedly going to be some challenges and obstacles along the way. Here are some of the common challenges you will encounter and how you can deal with them:

• Data Quality: For instance, social media data may occasionally be overwhelming, incomplete, marked by inconsistencies, or even fabricated.
• Data Relevance: For instance, social media data can be outdated, inaccurate, or even misleading.

Ensuring the quality and relevance of the data you collect can be quite troublesome. This is why you need to define clear and relevant objectives, select reliable tools, and filter out irrelevant data when diving into Social Media Benchmarking. Otherwise, it will affect your results and decisions in the long run.

Don’t worry too much; many brands, whether big or small, will have to deal with these challenges, so you’re not alone on this journey. You might also encounter other types of obstacles, so take your time and continue developing your strategies.

Begin Your Social Media Benchmarking

Now that you have all the information you need about Social Media Benchmarking — setting your goals, choosing your metrics, selecting your social media channels, conducting the analytics, and reporting your data — don’t forget that the next step, which is perhaps the most crucial, is to put it into action.

No rewarding results will come from zero trials and errors. emerge without experimentation and learning from mistakes. Implement this strategy, along with the many others we’ve discussed in previous articles, while also utilizing automated analytics tools, and integrating them into your business plan to strive for success! 

And if you found this article useful, please consider sharing it with your fellow business owners!