Let's talk about a feeling that every single person who has ever posted anything on social media knows all too well. You've just shared a brand-new and a fantastic piece of content. It could be a beautiful and an inspiring photograph on your Instagram feed, it could be a witty and a clever tweet, or it could be an insightful and a valuable article that you have just shared on your LinkedIn profile. You hit that "post" button, and then you wait. A few, little "likes" start to trickle in. But that one, big question is always hanging in the air: is this actually working?
It is so, so easy for us to get completely and totally obsessed with all of the simple, and the often very misleading, "vanity metrics." We will obsess over our total follower count, and we will get a little dopamine hit every time that we get a new like. But do these numbers actually mean anything? Are people really and truly engaging with the content that you are creating, or are they just passively and mindlessly scrolling right past it?
The native and the built-in analytics that are on platforms like Facebook and Instagram can be incredibly deep, they can be powerful, and they can also be very, very complex. Where do you even begin to look? What if you could get a quick, a simple, and a high-level "health report" for any social media account that you wantedy our own, or even one of your competitors? That is the simple power of a social stats checker, and it is a fantastic and an invaluable tool for being able to get instant and actionable insights.
Before we get into the easy "how," let's just make sure that we are all on the same page about what "real engagement" actually is. It is so much more than just a simple, passive "like." True and meaningful engagement is a measure of the active participation of your audience with your content.
Of course, you have your likes and your reactions. These are the most basic and the most common form of engagement. They are a simple and a quick, "hat tip" from your audience. A much stronger and a much more valuable signal is the comment. A comment means that a person was so moved by your content that they actually took the time and the mental energy to be able to formulate a thought and to write a response. But the absolute, undisputed, holy grail of all social media engagement is the share or the retweet. A share means that a person liked your content so much that they were actually willing to broadcast it to their own, personal audience, and to put their own, personal reputation on the line by recommending it. And on a platform like Instagram, you also have the save, which is a powerful and a private signal that your content was so valuable that the person wants to be able to come back to it again, later.
So, why should you, as a busy business owner or as a content creator, be so obsessed with monitoring all of these different metrics?
The number one and the most important reason is so that you can see what's working. This is the absolute core of any good content strategy. By looking at your stats, you can see which specific types of posts are getting the most and the best, real engagement. Do your followers here in Sri Lanka absolutely love all of your behind-the-scenes videos, but they are completely ignoring your beautiful, scenic photographs? This is an incredibly valuable and an actionable piece of data that should immediately guide your future, content strategy.
It is also a fantastic way to be able to understand your audience on a much deeper level. The comments and the shares that you get are a direct and an unfiltered look into what your audience is thinking and what they truly care about. And finally, it is an incredible tool for competitor analysis. You can look at the social stats of all of your biggest and your most successful competitors. Which of their posts are going viral? What are they doing that you are not? It is an absolute and an undeniable goldmine of competitive intelligence.
So, for years, what has been the traditional and the very manual way of trying to track all of this important, and of this valuable, information? Well, the answer is a slow, a tedious, and a soul-crushing spreadsheet nightmare.
You would have to go to each and every one of your different social media profiles, every single day. You would have to look at each and every one of your new posts and you would have to manually and very painstakingly record the total number of likes, the number of comments, and the number of shares in a massive and a very complicated spreadsheet. Then, if you were a really dedicated marketer, you would have to do that exact same, tedious process for all of your top competitors as well.
As you can imagine, this is an incredibly slow, a mind-numbingly boring, and a very frustrating task. It is almost completely impossible to be able to do this on a consistent basis, and it makes it very, very difficult to be able to see all of the big-picture trends that are happening over time.
This is where a modern, an elegant, and an incredibly simple online tool comes in to save the day. The way that these tools work is actually very clever. They use the official and the public APIs, which are the Application Programming Interfaces, of all of the major, social media platforms.
When you enter a social media profile's username or its URL into one of these tools, the tool will send a secure and an official request to that platform's API, and it will ask for all of the public data that is associated with that one, particular account. The API will then send back all of the important and of the public information the total follower count, the total number of posts, and in many cases, all of the engagement data for all of the most recent posts. The online tool will then take all of this raw and of this messy data and it will present it to you in a clean, a simple, and an incredibly easy-to-read report. The best analogy is to think of it like you have your own, personal research assistant who has a special, and a magical, library card that’s the API key that gives them access to all of the public archives of every single, major social media platform.
This pressing need for a fast, for a simple, and for a completely consolidated way to be able to view all of this important, public data is exactly why a Social Stats Checker is such an incredibly useful and such a valuable tool for any modern marketer or for any creator.
This type of tool is a powerful, dashboard that is designed to be able to give you a high-level and an at-a-glance view of all of the most important and of the public metrics for any social media profile that you want to analyze. The workflow is an absolute dream. You just go to the tool. You will choose the social media platform that you are interested in, for example, Instagram. You will then just enter the username of the account that you want to analyze. You click the "Check" button, and in just a few seconds, you will get a detailed report that shows you their total follower count, their average engagement rate, and a whole host of other, key stats. And the fantastic thing is, with the kind of powerful and completely free tools you can find on toolseel.com, you can get access to this valuable, competitive insight without ever having to pay for an expensive and a professional-grade, social media analytics suite.
As you begin to explore these wonderfully simple and useful tools, you'll find that the best and most useful ones are designed to be fast, accurate, and incredibly easy to understand. They are built to give you actionable insights, not just a bunch of confusing, technical data. A really top-notch online tool for checking social stats should have a few key features. It should include:
A tool with these features is an invaluable asset for any modern and for any data-driven marketer.
Now for the golden rule, the part of the process that turns a simple, raw data report into a real and a winning, content strategy. The online tool has done its job. It has given you the numbers. Now, your job is to be the human strategist and to be able to interpret what those numbers actually mean and what you should do about them.
First, you should analyze your own content. You should look at your own, personal report. Which of your most recent posts had the absolute, highest engagement rate? And why do you think that is? Was it a video? Was it a post where you asked a question? Or was it a behind-the-scenes look at your business? Your immediate and your correct action is to go and to do more of that!
Next, you need to analyze your competitors. Look at all of their top-performing posts. What are the common themes that you see? What kind of questions are they asking their audience? What kind of hashtags are they using? This is your brand-new, and data-driven, source of inspiration for all of your new, content ideas. The tool is the thing that tells you what is popular; your job is to figure out why it is popular and how you can create something that is even better.
Let’s be honest, in the noisy and the incredibly crowded world of modern social media, just simply posting a bunch of content and then hoping for the best is not a strategy. You need to be able to understand what is actually and truly resonating with your audience. A social stats checker is the fastest and the easiest way to be able to get a quick and a data-driven snapshot of your own performance and of the performance of all of your competitors.
So, it's time to stop just posting into the void and hoping for the best. It is time to take all of the guesswork out of your social media strategy. By using a simple online tool to be able to track your engagement and to be able to analyze what is working in your industry, you can make smarter and more informed decisions, you can create more of the content that your audience absolutely loves, and you can start to build a truly engaged and a truly loyal community. Your data-driven, social media success is just one, simple click away.