One of the starting points in User Experience (UX) and Customer Experience (CX) design, and the key to business longevity, is understanding our users.
Who are our users? What are their needs? Through which touchpoints will they interact with our content?
We have previously discussed the importance of knowing our users to provide them with the best possible experience, tailored to their specific needs. But what tools do we have to get to know them? And what basic questions should we ask to plan an analysis to better understand our users/customers on social media?
What motivates them and how do they behave?
Social media has become indispensable for promoting a business, as part of the marketing plan, and also for getting to know and retaining our users, as a component of the relationship plan. To leverage the full potential of these tools, we need to be aware of the content our users actually want to receive, because the amount of available information and the speed at which users consume it makes it easier than ever for potential users to abandon us. In this sense, a mistake in the content we publish online can be very costly.
At the Chile Digital Congress, Guillermo Arduino (host of the Clix program on CNN) told us that it took radio 40 years to reach 50 million users, television 13 years, the internet 3 years, Facebook 1 year, and Twitter only 9 months. This means that just as quickly as users can abandon our platform, they can also find it on social media. But it's not about blindly gaining thousands of followers. If we have a good plan to grow our social media accounts, our followers should tend to be similar in more than one aspect. And this is where we should pay attention: our social media followers are our users, and we need to know them.
And how can we do that? By looking at data such as:
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Who follows us?: Are we creating an interface with the right people in mind?
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Do we have users we hadn't considered?: Here we might find surprises. Perhaps there's interest in our business from groups we hadn't considered, which could translate into new opportunities. Therefore, it's important to also ask ourselves: What other users could we reach?
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What other accounts do our users follow?: Are they interested in any of our competitors' businesses? If we're not careful, our users might abandon us and migrate to some of our closest competitors. We must always keep in mind what we can do to improve the experience users have on our platform.
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Where are they from?: Thanks to social media, we can easily find out where our users come from. Are we reaching the cities or locations we want to impact?
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How do they interact with our content?: What percentage of our users visit our platform from social media? And what devices do they use when they do?
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What are their habits?: Social media is a great tool to discover, for example, at what time of day and on what days users connect to the internet. Basic errors can be avoided with this data, such as performing maintenance during peak traffic hours and reinforcing servers for high-demand periods.
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Are they satisfied with our service?: Social media often serves as a channel for our users to provide us with their opinions. It's the fastest channel and the first place users turn to when something isn't working.
- Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it's necessary to consider the interests of our followers when designing experiences: they are meeting points for creating interactions that could turn into business opportunities.
In addition to the user and behavior analysis functionalities that each platform has, here are some tools that will allow you to get the most out of your brand's or competitors' social media data:
Sprout Social
https://sproutsocial.com/es/
Here you will find different options to analyze the behavior of your followers on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Additionally, you can evaluate the performance of your content and measure the impact that social media has on your platform.
Social Media Bakers
https://www.socialbakers.com/
With Social Media Bakers, you can track your competitors and see their performance on social media.
Hootsuite
https://hootsuite.com/es/
Allows you to publish, manage content on social media, and analyze the impact your content has on users. It also allows you to schedule your content for the best possible performance.
CrowdFire
http://www.crowdfireapp.com/
This tool allows you to track the behavior of your Twitter followers: who unfollows you, who starts following you, and which followers are inactive. Additionally, you can find potential users with the "Copy Followers" tool, which shows you a list of your competitors' followers.
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