Content creators are fueled by inspiration. It could be music, surroundings, art, other creators, or… Even all of them. That’s the beauty of social media — it’s an entire universe of possibilities and mind-blowing ideas in the palm of your hand.

And, in a world where analytics, brand awareness, growth, and engagement are (and should be) part of a content creator’s strategy to get notorious reach… Social media insights are a brutally important part of the journey.

That’s why in today’s insight article, we’ll dive deep into the social media ocean to shine some light on why social media insights are essential, how to find them on each platform, and how to use them to boost your content creation efforts.

What are social media insights?

Social media insights are the compound of key analytics that, in specific, affect a campaign and symbolize the effectiveness of your creative efforts over a particular period of time.

Let’s try a more straightforward approach to it, just like Mentionlytics did here:

“To put it simply, social media insights enable the marketer to intimately understand the people they’re communicating with at any given time.”

This means… It’s a detailed observation of your audience’s behavior across the channels they engage with, which you can always use to tweak your brand awareness strategy and measurement as a content creator.

Simple, powerful, and effective. Just what we love.

Why do they matter?

Simply put, without social media insights, you’re entirely blindfolded. 

Think about it — if you don’t have analytics to measure, how could you know if you’re even moving in the right direction?

That’s one crucial reason why social media insights matter, but certainly not the only one.

Just like IAG says here, there are at least 6 main reasons why you, as a content creator, should start considering social media insights as a huge part of your brand awareness strategy:

1. They help you understand your audience
2. They show you what your best social networks are
3. Social data can help you create better content
4. Social data can help you understand your competitors better
5. Social metrics can help you create a better strategy

These social media analytics are there for you to improve your knowledge about your audience. A great example of this is how to determine what your best time to post content is. By checking these social media insights, you can discover which time of the day works best for you as a creator, and which time your audience is more likely to engage with your content.

With insights on your channels if you have more than one — understanding which social media channel your content performs best at, will help you redirect your content and efforts more effectively. You want to be consistently posting where your fans are.

Social data is a must for content creators — to keep sprucing up your content, you need to have key performance indicators to help you navigate through this challenge. That’s why having a deep understanding of which content your audience engages with the most will give you the necessary data to create something they can obsess over.

Checking on your competitors is a smart strategy. These insights mean, it’s okay to check what they are doing every now and then to stay on top and gather crucial insights on what’s trending, and what’s not. Keep an eye on them.

Lastly, with your social metrics, it’s all about strategy. Strategy is always necessary to implement a correct growth plan. But, that won’t happen overnight. In fact, it’s most likely you stumble before you start walking… As every strategy needs to be refined based on your social media insights of course.

How to find social media insights on each platform?

This is a point you don’t want to miss. We’re laying out how and where to find social media insights on each major social media platform, so you know exactly what to do in a few minutes.

Let’s start with TikTok, Gen Z’s sweetheart platform.

Disclaimer: To check Tik Tok’s insights, you’ll have to upgrade your account to Pro. Reason is, TikTok doesn’t allow access to insights… For now.

So, the first thing you’ll need to do is head to your profile, and click on the three lines in the upper right side of your screen.

Something like this:

Then, you’ll pop up at your account’s settings. Click on “Manage account”.

Finally, click on “Switch to Business Account” as seen in the screenshot below.

This will enable you to get access to your account’s insights.

Here’s a sneak peek at an account’s overall performance and metrics:

As you can see, there are many insights to look into — from time frames to specific content, you can access all gathered information from your activity and followers’ engagement, allowing you to check how your content has been impacting others over time.

Now, let’s get into Facebook. 

Again, you must have a Business Page to access your insights — that’s the first thing you need to address.

Then, go to your Page, and click on Insights.

This will take you to an “Overview” page where you’ll find a compound of your posts and the activity around them. You can go as far as 28 days in the past.

As you can see in the screenshot below, there’s a dropdown menu with all the kinds of insights you can get immediate access to, which as a creator, you might want to check them all.

It’s Instagram’s turn. A crowd’s favorite.

We’re taking direct inspiration from Instagram’s help page to break this one down. Even though it’s very simple.

Same as in TikTok and Facebook, you must have a business account to check your insights.

You must…

1. Go to your profile
2. Click the “Insights” button
3. Tap on the specific metrics you want to see

Among these, you’ll find:

• Recent highlights
• Accounts reached or engaged
• Total followers
• Content shared
• Interactions
• Discovery
• Ads

Easy peasy.

Finally, we have YouTube — where video magic happens.

To access your YouTube Insights, you can just go to your account, click on the account icon, and then select Creator Studio. This will show you the analytics page on the right side of your screen.

You’ll see insights like…

• Overview
• Real time
• Watch time
• Audience retention
• Demographics

The Overview reports will tell you exactly what happened over the past 28 days of activity and how your audience behavior has changed over that period. 

When it comes to Real time insights, it refers to the actual live data of your 5 most recent videos uploaded to the platform.

You’ll see something like this:

This will give you clear insights about what to tweak if a video isn’t performing well — considering audience, targeting, etc.

Now, Watch time is one of the most important metrics here, because it’s deeply connected to the main reason why everyone goes to YouTube — to watch videos. And you want your audience to stay as long as possible. 

Audience retention is also connected to Watch time, as it will measure how much your content is engaging your audience to stay watching your videos. Something to consider in every growth strategy.

And, finally… Demographics. If you’re targeting a specific location, this might come in handy, as it will tell you exactly from where your audience is watching. 

How to use insights in deal negotiation?

Not only are social media insights great for perfecting your growth strategy and engagement with clear analytics, but they are also an amazing resource for deal negotiation as a content creator.

See, brands are mostly about numbers. Not only your charisma, authenticity, or incredibly good content will convince them to offer you a deal — that’s when your analytics come in to blow their socks off.

The thing is, depending on what the brand is aiming for, your insights might become a crucial conversation point when negotiating. 

Let’s say… A brand like Nike is really into the latin-american market. And you happen to be a content creator who creates sport-related content with a large latin-american audience.

You could use your insights from any platform to back up that claim, and depending on how well your metrics are, this could be a turning point to balance the negotiation in your favor.

That’s something Curastory does fairly well, since we track data from first party tools instead of unreliable third party insights which are not synced, or inaccurate at some times.

This empowers and enables our creators to showcase exactly why their video content rocks, and use it as a compelling reason to engage with brands they are matched with.

For example, to help creators track insights, Curastory has a comprehensive dashboard that compiles every relevant insight from your Creator Ad Reads™, like return on advertisement spend (ROAS) for the brand. 

If you are obtaining high ROAS on all of your videos, say 8+, that means the brand has benefited 8 times more in revenue than what they paid you for. Time to hike up those video content prices. 

This makes negotiations easier for creators, as they have a reliable source of information and tracking when it comes to their ads, something every brand will value. 

We want to make sure our creators win

At Curastory, we’re all about making your video content creation journey as smooth as possible with pro-tips and how-tos explained in plain, simple terms.

Got any extra questions? Just reach out, we’ll be happy to help. 

See you next time, 

– The Curastory Team