Social media prompts and ideas are so helpful for busy office managers, business owners and social media marketers, but they don’t fill in all of the gaps. When you’re trying to create a robust social media strategy, you want to include things that work: post at the right time, on the right platforms and in the right format.
- Does your audience prefer video?
- Will they answer your questions?
- Will they engage more in the morning or the evening?
- Is it helpful to send an email with links to your top social media posts to get them talking?
- What are your top social media posts?
These are all questions that can be answered if you track your social media data over a period of time. It takes the guesswork out of your strategy and makes planning oh-so-much easier! Here are 5 ways you can record activity on and from your social platforms for use in the future (and adjusting on the fly, if you need to).
1. Monitor Your Engagement Rate (Not Just Likes)
Likes are vanity metrics – they look nice, but they do not tell the whole story. Engagement rate (reactions, comments, shares, saves, link clicks) tells you how deeply your audience values your content.
High engagement rate means your content resonates.
Low engagement rate signals a need to adjust messaging, format or audience targeting.
Why it matters: platforms reward content with strong engagement by pushing it further into feeds.
2. Track Your Website Traffic From Social Media
Your social posts should drive meaningful actions and one of the clearest indicators is website traffic.
Use tools like:
- Google Analytics
- UTM tags on posts and ads
- Link-in-bio tracking tools (Linktree, Later, Metricool, etc.)
This helps you see exactly which posts or platforms send users to your site – and which ones do not.
Why it matters: traffic that converts helps you understand ROI and prioritize the channels that deliver.
3. Understand Your Audience Insights
Every major platform provides demographic and behavioral insights – age, location, active times, top interests and more. Reviewing these monthly will help you tailor content that aligns with your audience’s habits.
Key questions to ask:
- Are you posting when your audience is most active (not just when you’re open)?
- Are you attracting the right age groups or regions?
- Do your followers match your target customer profile?
Why it matters: when your content matches your audience’s real behavior, performance improves dramatically.
4. Track Conversion Actions – Not Just Impressions
Impressions and reach tell you how many people saw your content, but conversions tell you who acted on it.
Depending on your business, conversions may include:
- Website purchases
- Form submissions
- Appointment bookings
- Email sign-ups
- Direct messages from posts or ads
- Phone calls from profile buttons
Set up conversion tracking on your website and in your ads manager so you can connect social activity to real business outcomes. But don’t forget about those live calls and direct emails you receive too! Ask them how they heard about you and jot it down with pen and paper if you have to. The online tools are super helpful, but many small and medium sized business still get contacted the old-fashioned way. Your latest Instagram post might be what reminded them to call you!
Why it matters: conversions reveal which content actually moves your business forward.
5. Review Your Top-Performing Content Monthly
Consistency in reviewing your high-performing posts will show you patterns:
- Which formats perform best (videos, stories, carousels, static graphics)
- Which topics spark conversation
- Which calls-to-action drive results
- Which styles create the most shares or saves
This is your roadmap, your best content leaves clues.
Why it matters: once you know what works, you can replicate it intentionally instead of guessing.
Data Turns Social Media Into a Strategic Growth Channel
Posting consistently is important. But posting strategically is transformative.
When you track your social media data, you no longer wonder: “Is this working?”
You will know – because the numbers tell the story.
But remember, all good things take time. Reviewing data over the week, month, quarter and year will paint an amazing picture for you – so don’t rush it!
At Green T Design, we help businesses move from intuition to insight, from scattered posting to strategic execution. When social media becomes data-driven, it becomes a powerful, predictable engine for growth.
If you want support evaluating your analytics or developing a strategy built on real data, our expert marketing team is ready to chat!
