Social media analytics involves measuring and analyzing the audience of a brand’s or organization’s posts on social networks. This practice generally focuses on organic posts, but can also include paid or sponsored content. It can aim to evaluate the entity’s own posts as well as those of its competitors, for competitive intelligence purposes. Sometimes, it also examines consumer phenomena, trends, or crises, seeking to assess their scope and evolution within an overall strategy.

Social media analysis conducted by a brand on its own posts allows it to manage its community management activities and evaluate its return on investment. To do this, it relies on audience and social engagement data provided by the various social platforms monitored. However, this approach can be hampered by transparency issues due to the opacity of the methods used to measure key performance indicators (KPIs), as well as by questions about the true value of these indicators. Indeed, it can be difficult to assign real importance to a post view if it only appeared briefly on the screen of a user quickly scrolling through their news feed.