Social media data and how to use it to grow your brand

Social media data is one of the most important levers available to marketers who want brand growth.

Every post, comment, click and conversation generates signals that tell you what your audience cares about, what they aren’t interested in, and what motivates them to act. Most marketing teams collect a huge amount of social media data without realising it, but many struggle to use it properly.

Understanding how to analyse social media data and use insights to sharpen strategy, refine content and influence campaigns can not only accelerate growth but optimise return on investment.

This post breaks down what social media data is, why it matters, and how marketers can use it in a practical, repeatable way.

What is social media data – and why it matters for growth

Social media data is the information captured every time someone interacts with your brand on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube. It covers everything from reach and impressions to user behaviour, audience demographics, click throughs, comments and content performance.

Marketers often underestimate the value of this data. They see it as reporting. Or as something to use once a month in a slide deck. But social media data is a growth asset. It tells you what your audience responds to, what they scroll past, where they spend time, and how your content influences their behaviour.

Teams that use social media data strategically:

• Build campaigns based on evidence, not opinion.
• Understand their audience more clearly.
• Improve content performance faster.
• Allocate budget with confidence.
• Spot opportunities before competitors do.

Using social media data is about making smarter decisions, backed by clear data signals, no hearsay.

Below is a 7-step process that will help you use your social media data more effectively.

Step 1 – Audit your social media data to get a clear baseline

A social media data audit gives you the truth. Not assumptions. Not gut feeling. A baseline audit shows exactly where your brand stands, what is improving, and what needs fixing.

What your audit should include

Focus on pulling core metrics for each platform.

• Reach and impressions.
• Engagement rates.
• Follower growth rate.
• Top performing content by format.
• Average watch time and retention.
• Click through rates and traffic.
• Trends over the last 3 to 6 months.

How to run the audit without drowning in numbers

1. Use native platform analytics before investing in tools.
2. Look for simple patterns.
3. Compare week on week and month on month trends.
4. Summarise findings in a simple social media data report (that can be easily repeated).

This baseline becomes your reference point for growth.

Step 2 – Track follower and audience growth with context

Follower growth rate tells you whether your brand is expanding its reach.

Why follower growth still matters

• It reflects brand momentum.
• It indicates awareness and reach potential.
• It becomes a directional signal for campaign success.

But follower growth without engagement is a warning sign. It suggests misalignment between audience expectations and content.

How to interpret follower data properly

1. Tie growth spikes to specific posts or campaigns.
2. Compare growth rate between platforms.
3. Visualise growth over time using simple charts.
4. Prioritise platforms where growth aligns with engagement.

Consider using social media data visualisation tools to help see trends clearly and act on them.

Step 3 – Use social media data to truly understand your audience

Many teams rely on static audience personas built from surveys or demographic assumptions, but these are based on a snapshot in time. Social media data gives you real behavioural data.

What to look at

• Age, gender, and location breakdowns.
• Interests and related accounts your audience follows.
• Which types of posts they consistently interact with.
• Content they share, not just like.
• Common questions or themes in comments.

This is user generated audience research. It is ongoing, always fresh and grounded in what people are actually doing.

How to build audience profiles from social media data

1. Group followers into mini segments based on behaviour.
2. Identify their recurring needs, motivations, and problems.
3. Map which pain points appear most frequently in comments and DMs.
4. Use these findings to shape content pillars and campaign ideas.

Social media data for research gives you a clearer picture of your audience than any traditional persona ever could.

Step 4 – Let social media data shape your channel and content strategy

Social media data reveals where your audience actually spends time and which channels deserve more or less investment.

Using data to choose the right social media platforms

Look for:

• High engagement per follower.
• Strong watch time.
• Positive follower growth rate.
• High quality comment patterns.
• Conversion signals like clicks and enquiries.

This helps you decide where to double down and where to scale back.

Designing content pillars based on what works

To refine your strategy, analyse:

• Your top posts by engagement.
• Content formats with highest retention.
• Topics that consistently drive conversation.
• Hooks that stop the scroll.

From the results, build three to five data supported content pillars.

Step 5 – Turn insights into experiments, not just dashboards

Data only matters when you do something with it. Brands can grow quickly by running small experiments, learning quickly and applying the insight.

Use social media data analytics to form hypotheses

Examples:

• “Posts with customer stories outperform feature posts.”
• “Reels with text overlays have higher retention.”
• “Content posted at 7pm spikes engagement.”

Each hypothesis becomes a test.

Build an ongoing growth loop

1. Test one variable at a time.
2. Measure the impact using consistent metrics.
3. Document lessons in your social media data report.
4. Apply the findings to your strategy.

Small experiments compound into meaningful growth over time.

Step 6 – Make social media data easy to see and share

Teams cannot act on data they cannot see. This is where dashboards, tools and social media data visualisation play a major role.

Build simple dashboards

A good dashboard might typically include:

• Platform performance over time.
• Best and worst performing content.
• Audience trends.
• Follower growth rate.
• Conversion indicators.
• Key observations or highlights.

The goal in creating an effective dashboard is clarity, not complexity.

Choose tools that simplify insights

For most brands there isn’t the need for complicated enterprise-level tool and platforms. Start with:

• Native analytics.
• Google Analytics.
• A lightweight social media data platform if needed.

Step 7 – Use social media data responsibly

Using social media data responsibly is about respecting privacy, platform rules and audience expectations. Focus on:

• Aggregated trends, not individual tracking.
• Behaviour patterns, not personal identification.
• Transparency about how you use data internally.

Final thoughts

Social media data is already being generated by your brand every minute. The difference between slow growing brands and fast growing ones is simple. Fast growing teams turn their data into insight. Insight into decisions. And decisions into repeatable growth.

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Related reading:

• Social media and search engine success: what you need to know
• YouTube Shorts metrics: a marketer’s guide to what matters
• Social media strategy: 12 steps to build a plan that works