Social media is no doubt a place of constant change. The unexpected is what’s expected. Seeing something new, exciting, or different is what keeps us coming back to these platforms. Understanding your audience is a major key to success when using social media as a tool to grow your brand or business. Without being able to interact with the audience directly, it could be challenging to know if you are performing as well as you should be. Lucky for us, all of the major social media platforms collect data on a wide range of details from your posts and profile. While each social media platform has a different system, each one has a ‘dashboard’ where you can view all of the data collected from your account. 

We must acknowledge why social media analytics are important. Yes, the whole point is to understand your audience on a deeper level, but why? It is because this data can help you make informed decisions about what, when, why, and where you are posting. 

That is a very broad concept and it should be. Every account, brand, and business has different goals, so the data that is collected encompasses everything under that umbrella. While this is helpful, it can also make navigating all of the understanding what the specific metrics are and how they are measured will help you make more informed decisions that suit your specific goals. 

For example, a clothing brand isn’t going to consider views and likes as the most important metric, because those elements don’t directly translate to sales. If the company has two posts, one with 1 million views, and one with 500k views, the video that creates the most profile visits and website visits would likely be considered the more important post (if sales are your goal). Even within this tiny example, you can start to see that these metrics can be used in different ways. Sticking with the clothing brand example, if you have a new clothing brand and are focused on acquiring first-time customers, views and likes might be a much more important aspect of the data to consider.

Overall, it is essential to understand that your social media is going to create an experience for whoever the viewer may be, and the data that is collected helps us gain insight to the impacts of that experience. Author of “What Is Social Media Analytics & Why Is It Important?”, Keri G, states, “95% of all purchase decisions are made with emotion.” Whether or not you are directly selling a product, by posting, you are creating an experience for the viewer, and it is your responsibility to make sure you are creating the right type of experience for your goals.

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The post I am examining today is a post of the Dallas Maverick’s Luka Doncic after he scored 73 points in a game this past week. It was posted on 1/26, late at night following the game.

The post has a staggering 313,509 likes on it. Undoubtedly that is a very high level of engagement. However, looking deeper, you’ll notice that this is a “collaborative post” between @Sportscenter, @Espn, and @NBAonEspn. Across these three accounts, they total over 70 million followers. Considering that, the 313,509 likes doesn’t seem so large anymore. 

In addition to that, the post in question was the third post of three in a row by these same accounts, covering Luka’s tremendous feat. The first post of the trio received 827,571, significantly outperforming the latter two. Considering that they are not the only media outlet posting about this accomplishment, it may point to the speed of news and or volume of coverage for sports media. Perhaps most people didn’t see all three posts by ESPN, but if they follow other basketball accounts, this easily could’ve been the 5th+ post they encountered on this topic. At that rate, no one would care or even want to see another post about this. I understand that it is a fairly subjective take, but I think the volume of same-topic posts is very important to consider. For some content types, it might significantly boost the post’s performance. In this case, where it’s more of a piece of news, I believe the repetition diminishes the post’s performance. 

Moving along to the actual media of the post, it is a singular, unedited image. It is actually an homage to Wilt Chamberlain who once scored 100 points in a game. There is a picture of Wilt in the locker room holding up a piece of paper with the number 100 written on it. Today, when NBA players have very high-scoring games, they replicate the picture. That’s what Luka is doing here. To the average fan, it may appear to be a boring image, but for the more dedicated fans, it is a nice way to pay respect to past generations. 

The comment section of this post is very polarizing. I have found that to be a very common element in any type of sport’s comment section. The beneficial aspect of this is that it invites even more comments because people enjoy both agreeing and disagreeing. The top comment was a negative one being, “70 the new 40 fr.” This is more or less a claim that it is easier to score in todays NBA and diminishes the accomplisment. The comment generated 4,700 likes and 58 replies. Among these responses are people agreeing, disagreeing, attacking Luka, or attacking the original commenter. 

Overall, I would argue that this was a successful post. I do not know for sure, but I assume ESPN cares much more deeply about their engagement totals across all posts and rather than the performance of an individual post. This post is just a drop in the bucket of all of their different accounts on instagram and other platforms.