Data Analysis

Data drives decisions and tells a story. But what happens when that story is written with invisible ink?

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Like many instructional designers and content creators, I've had plenty of opportunities to dig into the quantitative and qualitative data to identify successes and areas of improvement. But there have also been times when the data I need to make more informed decisions is unavailable. In such instances, it would be easy to simply "do the best with what I have." But that's not how I roll.

When the data is buried, I dig.

The Problem

One of the most intensive data excavations of my career occurred while I was managing social media accounts for Conservice. At the time, we had pretty easy access to the standard social media vanity metrics: views, reactions, comments, etc. But we also had 9 audiences (or markets) to communicate with, and I wanted to ensure our content was resonating with the right audiences at the right time. We didn't have access to any of this data in our social media management platform and we couldn't afford subscriptions for the platforms that did have the data we needed—so I built my own solution.

The Solution

I used our project management software (Monday.com) and a dedicated social media project board to track every metric from each social media platform, while also adding a few categories for myself.

• I added columns for the market, days of the week, time of day, and content type.

• I created formulas to calculate the averages for each vanity metric.

• I built 2 comprehensive reporting dashboards that would pull the data from my social media project board and categorize it. (See my Post Time Stats dashboard below).

The Finished Product

Did it take some time to build and manage these things in our project management platform? Absolutely! But the effort paid off in many different ways.

With these self-built, integrated reporting dashboards I could . . .

• Establish performance baselines, or KPIs, for each post and audience type to more clearly define "success"

• View metrics for every day and hour of the week to identify ideal post times for each content type and market type

• View metrics for each content type to determine which content was most appealing to each audience

• Identify and learn from high- or low-performing content,

• Generate content at a higher quantity AND quality

• Increase the overall visibility of our social media efforts

• Strategically grow our metrics and audiences

The Impact

• The average # of posts per month went from 20 (2019) to just under 40 (2021)—and sometimes reached nearly 60!

• The amount of content shared per market was pretty even, except for higher-priority audiences such as Sustainability (26.1%) and Multifamily (19.5%) which warranted more attention.

• The number of followers on our primary platform (LinkedIn) steadily increased month-over-month, jumping from 3302 to 4398 followers—a huge accomplishment for such a niche B2B market.

• In 2021 alone, we experienced an astonishing amount of growth for each of our standard "vanity" metrics:

  • Avg. Impressions Per Month jumped from 27,490 (Q1) to 79,018 (Q4)

  • Avg. Interactions Per Month went from 1261 (Q1) to 6409 (Q4)

  • Avg. Clicks Per Month went from 531 (Q1) to 4550 (Q4)

So was the data gone or the effort fruitless? No. Every second I invested in that dashboard paid off in the end. Our performance skyrocketed, and I finally had the visibility I needed to develop the right content, for the right people, at the right time.

Tools Used: Monday, Microsoft Excel, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, HubSpot,

Post Time Stats Dashboard Sample