Crime The Media

This essay focuses on the depiction of law and agents of law in the American films Young Mr. Lincoln and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. These are films with legal concepts in representation of the law. These films depict drama within courtrooms during the delivery of justice. Law films may provide some fundamental insights on how the criminal justice system works.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Crime The Media specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The major concern is whether these depictions do portray facts or provide useful insights to viewers. However, we have to recognise that films tend to portray surprising and dramatic events instead of providing factual accounts of cases. Films are parts of popular cultures, which influence law and justice systems. Friedman notes that popular culture is â€Å"a part of law and some of the most obvious aspects of laws are exceedingly prominent in popular cultures† (Friedman, 1989). Concerns of whether such depictions are â€Å"influential, acceptable, or accurate† (Rafter, 2006) lead to many questions. Creations of courtroom films have resulted from the public’s fascination and the desire to understand the criminal justice system. Some of the notable trials include OJ Simpson in the US, and Louise Woodward trial in the UK (Rapping, 2003). We have to note that films and other popular news channels do not convey the real courtroom drama. Given the role of popular media in shaping the public perception, the public will understand â€Å"lawyers and law processes through diverse channels† (Rafter, 2006). We have to ask whether law films are extensions of the criminal justice system or whether they compromise the integrity and the delivery of justice. Law films may portray various social issues and the courtroom as a centre for the drama. In this sense, law films and television series show that the public can also debate legal issues and determine legal consequences. We realise how the issue of depiction of agents of law and the criminal justice system is complex when we review contemporary films. Machura observes that law films usually have both justice and injustice figures. Injustice figure creates the discrepancy in the justice system.Advertising Looking for essay on criminology? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More On the other hand, the justice figure comes as a hero in order to resolve the situation (Machura, 2007). The main of aims of law films are to portray the idea of justice to viewers. The general belief is that the law provides justice in a dispute. In the film, Young Mr. Lincoln, we look at the idea of right and wrong in the delivery of justice. We can also observe that the process of delivering justice is a major challenge. For instance, lawyers must go beyond the written law and find solutions in moral arguments. In the film, Henry Fonda (Lincoln) demonstrates that lawyers can deviate from the written law in order to achieve justice to suspects. They may bring a moral argument as Lincoln does, â€Å"I may not know so much about the law, but I know what’s right and what’s wrong†. Young Mr. Lincoln is a manipulative film. Lincoln achieves a high status in a short time than expected. It shows a rookie lawyer, who delivers justice to accused brothers. This transformation represents unrealistic aspects of law films. Such a transformation enhances the delivery of justice. At the same time, such changes influence the process of an actual delivery of justice. If we analyse Young Mr. Lincoln within its context, then we see a young lawyer, who experiences transformation in order to deliver justice. Law films may also depict cooperation or hostility among agents of law. In some cases, lawyers may work together. Still, the presiding judge and lawyers may also cooperate in a case. This is what Young Mr. Lin coln portrays when the judge supports the lawyer during the trial (Machura, 2007). Such acts of cooperation may also extend to interrogation procedures in order to establish the legal truth to a case. Young Mr. Lincoln raises concerns related to how a legal system works to deliver justice. In other words, it focuses on who should the justice system favours. Law films tend to create extraordinary lawyers. For instance, in Young Mr. Lincoln, the lawyer claims that he does not know much about law. However, he tends to show that we should rely on natural law or use common sense during trials. In this context, lawyers should use the law to protect law-abiding citizens and not to protect powerful individuals. Therefore, the justice system should work in any given circumstance, irrespective of the experience of the lawyer.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Crime The Media specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The law film, T he Man Who Shot Liberty Valance depicts challenges related to establishing an effective political order using the rule of law in a lawless state. Some critics have argued that the film shows that, â€Å"American history and the democratic process itself are something of a sham, a confidence trick played on the public by slick politicians and compliant reporters† (McBride, 2001). This explains why the newspaper editor sees it as important to write about the legend instead of writing the truth about the man who killed the Liberty Valance. It shows that issues of law and order are not among priorities in the primitive areas of the US. However, the Old West had to pave a way for civilization. The young and naive lawyer introduced the concept of law in a town run by criminals. Such criminals have used existing law to protect themselves. For instance, based on the law of East Coast, Liberty Valance has immunity. The only way to punish Liberty Valance involves a duel with guns. The film shows how lawyers can shape political situations of nations through democratic processes. As a political drama unfolds, we also observe some aspects about the freedom of the press. Powerful figures had to control the content of the press. In some case, media have defended criminal justice systems. However, in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a part of lawlessness includes restricting the freedom of the press, which has gone against the position of cattlemen. It is the lawyer, who must defend the freedom of the press against the town gang. In fact, Liberty Valance has tried to silence both the media and Dutton Peabody. Confrontation between Liberty Valance and Stoddard shows different views of the concept of law. Stoddard is a lawyer from a well-established society. On the other hand, Liberty Valance tears several law books of Stoddard. According to Liberty Valance, laws from the East do not stand a chance in the Old West. Therefore, Stoddard must notice the law of the Old West (Livingstone, 2007). People of the Old West elect Stoddard because he is a good lawyer and can throw a good punch. These are the two outstanding characteristics, which make the lawyer get the delegate position. Shinbone needs both physical force and knowledge of law in order to create effective rule of law.Advertising Looking for essay on criminology? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Lenz’s work focuses on the relationship between the criminal justice system and public opinion using law films (Lenz, 2003). This reflects positions the public about crime during a given period. Some law films depict the criminal justice system as a growing matter of concern. Others show that crime is not acceptable especially in lawless states and violence may be the necessary tool to end such crimes. For instance, the only person who can eliminate Liberty Valance must use violence in order to restore law and order in Shinbone. It shows the continued struggle to establish effective political power in a town run by gangs, who also use their laws to justify their actions. These films reflect a continuous struggle between crime and order. Law films depict uncertainty as no audience can predict the outcomes. However, agents of law depicted in such films usually emerge as heroes against criminals. Both the Young Mr. Lincoln and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance highlight social re sponsibilities of lawyers as they emerge as heroes in their societies. This is what Asimow and Mader point in their work (Asimow and Mader, 2004). The authors achieve such depiction by combining social and film history within the context of legal systems and issues. Some studies show that whatever law films portray is not always true (Surette, 1998). Surette notes in every subject category like â€Å"crimes, criminals, crime fighters, the investigation of crimes, arrests, the processing and disposition of cases, the entertainment media present a world of crime and justice that is not found in reality† (Surette, 1998). These scholars argue that such processes of criminal justice systems do not exist in reality. As a result, they believe that the films portray exaggerated events of the criminal justice system and now question whether media portrayal of crimes may increase the rate of crime (Rafter, 2006). Such law films may appear fragmented. This reflects how films distort cri me in society and provide distorted approach to the criminal justice system. In this sense, films construct their own reality and transmit to the audience. This only results into confusion. Law films play significant roles in shaping public opinion in comprehending crime. They enable us to learn what is right or wrong. However, law films have raised contentious issues regarding the use of social power in society. Some scholars consider such films as means of providing opportunities for crimes, rebellion, and use of the justice system to restore order (Rafter, 2006). Rafter sees crime films as the best reflection of social, political, and economic problems in society. Consequently, such films influence the audience’s thoughts about issues in society. Through analysis of film history, crime, the justice system, and other factors that can explain crimes, we can understand influences of media on viewers. In fact, various forms of media tend to report crimes for sensational purpos es. However, Carrabine expresses the reality behind such reports. In addition, we have to understand how such law films with bad endings influence the audience’s attitudes about crimes (Carrabine, 2008). Such observations have renewed the debate about the relationships between films and crime. The concern relates to harmful effects or influences of media on viewers. Carrabine notes that crime offers great fascination to the media because of numerous programmes focusing on both real and imagined crimes. The issue remains whether the media invoke feelings and tendencies of viewers to express their obsession with crimes. Given such effects on the audience, it is necessary that films should portray real events of crimes. This can eliminate unrealistic expectations of the audience in real-life situations. We have to realise that watching law films like Young Mr. Lincoln and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance can provide entertainment and provoke thoughts among viewers. We have to re cognise that these law films portray agents of law who are rookies. However, these lawyers perform exceptionally well. The films give these lawyers extraordinary power to turn impossible situations using both written and conventional laws. Most people do not have contact with criminal justice systems. As a result, they rely on the media to learn about criminal justice systems. However, for diverse reasons, media presentations of criminal justice systems remain erroneous and do not focus on facts. Events in both law films are not realistic. As a result, they may lead viewers to form unrealistic expectations based on what they watch. Both Young Mr. Lincoln and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance portray lawyers as people with extraordinary qualities. The films demonstrate the effectiveness of lawyers in a form of a drama to the audience. The only challenge is that we cannot gauge influences of filmmakers and their acting agents of the law. Under such confusion, filmmakers usually give ge neral information about the purpose of the film as Machura observes (Machura, 2007). Some of the notable ways of misrepresentation include â€Å"the voting rule, the behaviour of lawyers in court and the decorum of the benches among others† (Machura, 2007). Filmmakers know that some of the elements in the films originate from laws of various nations and do not conform to laws of the country at the time of production. Reference List Asimow, M, and Mader, S 2004, Law and Popular Culture, Lang, New York. Carrabine, E 2008, Crime, Culture and the Media, Polity, Cambridge. Friedman, L 1989, ‘Law, lawyers and popular culture’, Yale Law Journal, vol. 98, pp. 1579. Lenz, T 2003, Changing Images of Law in Film and Television Crime Stories, Lang, New York. Livingstone, D 2007, ‘Spiritedness, Reason, and the Rule of Law: John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’, American Political Science Association, pp. 1-27. Machura, S 2007, ‘An Analysis Sc heme for Law Films’, Baltimore Law Review, vol. 36, pp. 329-345. McBride, J 2001, Searching For John Ford, Martin’s Griffin, New York. Rafter, N 2006, Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society, Oxford University Press, Cambridge. Rapping, E 2003, Law and Justice as Seen on TV, NYU Press, New York. Surette, R 1998, Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice: Images, Realities, and Policies, Wadsworth Publishing, Belmont, CA. This essay on Crime The Media was written and submitted by user Harlow Hebert to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

How To Use Social Media Analytics To Create The Best Content

How To Use Social Media Analytics To Create The Best Content Data is the currency of social media marketing. It’s the lifeblood of your campaigns. Without it, there’s no way to properly analyze your audience or measure your results. Data is what justifies the time we spend writing posts, crafting campaigns, and connecting with our audiences. Understanding social media analytics is essential for making data useful. Modern analytics tools provide power that marketers could have only dreamed of just a decade ago. However, tools are only as effective as our ability to use them. In addition, data is only valuable as the insights we can extract from it. Download Your Free Social Media Analytics Kit In order to  apply the advice in this post, download the kit below. It includes: A Social Media Marketing Performance Report  Excel template  to help you track your performance metrics. A Social Media Content Creation + Measurement spreadsheet to help you write social posts, organize post images, and store post-level performance data. A Social Media Content Performance Presentation PowerPoint template to help you nail your next reporting presentation. A Social Media Content Strategy template to help you apply your data insights to create better content. The challenge thus facing social media marketers is threefold. Successful practitioners must understand each of the following: How to know which  data needs to be measured. How to find and analyze that data. How to use data  insights  to create better content. In this post, you’ll learn exactly how to slice and dice data like a social analytics ninja. How To Use Social Media Analytics To Create The Best ContentIntroducing  Social Analytics: The Easiest Way To Understand Your Social Media Engagement Bring your social media data together, all in one place, with . With our new Social Analytics capabilities, you can: Measure the success of every social message so you can re-share your most engaging content (and improve future messages). Use real data to prove the ROI of the work you do. Identify trends and understand what your audience wants. Know what's working (and what's not). Save time and see how all your networks are performing within a single dashboard. See Social Analytics  in action:Social Analytics in helps you easily PROVE  your ROI!So, What Does Social Media Analytics Mean, Anyway? This term can mean different things to different people. Are we talking about overall performance on social media? Or, perhaps we could be referencing social media content analysis?  Could we even mean social media audience analysis? This topic gets complex fast, and any of the above answers could be correct. To make things simple, this post will focus on how to understand three  things: How your social media profiles are growing. How your social media content is performing. How to turn data  into action to create better content. Build Your Social Media Analytics Toolbox Every good craftsperson has a quality set of tools. Here are the options we recommend for doing social media analytics work: Google Analytics:  It’s free and powerful. In-App Analytics:  Most major social media networks provide fairly robust internal analytics. Cyfe:  This freemium web app is essential for building custom data dashboards. Simply Measured: These folks offer some excellent free tools to help perform a variety of social media tasks. There are certainly more tools available. However, these are the options we’ll use for the purposes of this post. How To Set Social Media  Goals You need a purpose for gathering and analyzing your data. This means you need to set goals. After all, how are you supposed to hit your target when you’re unsure what you’re aiming for? Let’s outline five basic social media marketing goals you could potentially establish: Traffic: Social media is a vital traffic driver to blogs and websites for many publishers. Follower Growth: The more people following your accounts, the more people you can reach, more easily. Engagement: This is the â€Å"social† part of social media. Likes, shares, mentions, and comments are equal opportunities to build connections with your audience and prospects. This can include industry influencers, current or potential customers, or the audience for your content. Reach / Impressions: Social media content exists to be seen. Getting in front of more viewers means more awareness for your brand and content. These may seem like soft metrics, but there is value in gaining exposure  (as long as you’re not being discussed in a negative light). Conversions: Marketing is ultimately about driving sales. Converting organic social media traffic can be tough. Paid advertising, while inherently more conversion-centric, presents challenges of its own too. However, it is possible to  drive conversions from your organic content. It’s also important to tie social media goals to overall business objectives. Follow this visual guide to map your metrics to your bottom line: Recommended Reading: What Really Is Your Social Media ROI? Align social media goals with business objectives.How To Use Google Analytics For Social Media Analysis Google Analytics provides so much data, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Before we dive into each specific network, let’s look at how to use this tool to find two key metrics (which apply to all networks): Referral Traffic Blog / Website Conversions Here’s how to find each of these pieces in Google Analytics. 1. Visit your Google Analytics account. Then, click through Overview All Traffic Channels Social. 2. Here, you’ll find data from your referral traffic from every social network. 3.   Next, let’s help you figure out how to find conversions from your social media referral traffic. This requires setting up a Goal in Google Analytics. Once this step is completed, you’ll see Conversions here: If you haven’t set up Conversion goals  for your site or blog, this official video from the Google Analytics team will show you how to do this: How To Understand Social Media Analytics On Every Platform Every social media network has unique purposes and strengths. Before we dig into understanding analytics on each one, let’s ensure you’re using the right platforms to achieve the right goals first. Did you know Google Analytics can help measure social media performance?Facebook Analytics: Which Metrics  Should You Monitor? Facebook’s declining organic reach has made the network tougher than ever for marketers. Here’s how to find the data you need to ensure  your posts are  laser-focused on the right audience: Post-Level Metrics Likes: People may not take time to comment. However, a Like is a quick indication that your post resonated. Pay attention to other emotions expressed too (such as humor, anger, or sadness). Comments: Positive comments mean your post hit the mark (unless your post was intended to elicit a negative reaction). Pay close attention to negative comments as well, however. They might teach you about things you can improve. Shares: You’ve probably heard your boss talk about â€Å"going viral.† Share counts are, in a sense, a measure of virality. More shares generally reflects greater interest in your content. Referral Traffic: Moving users from Facebook to your website helps get your content read. This helps establish your brand as an authoritative voice while increasing the odds your blog and website content will convert readers into customers. Reach: It's getting tougher to reach folks on Facebook. However, it's still an important metric for knowing how many people see your posts. Page-Level Metrics Page Views: More people looking at your page equals exposure for your brand. Engagement Rate: Facebook calculates engagement rate  by weighing the number of people who like, comment on, or share your posts against the total number of people who see your content. The higher this number, the more interesting users find your content. This is helpful for determining what your audience does and doesn’t like. It also provides a barometer for how your efforts are performing overall. Video Metrics: If you’re posting videos natively on Facebook, it’s important to know how long they’re being viewed. Page Fan Growth: More fans means more people see your posts. That equals more people seeing your content, which in turn helps build your authority and even drive conversions. However, do keep in mind that quality beats quantity here. Conversions: If you’re creating Facebook posts that direct to blog posts or web pages with conversion steps, use Google Analytics to monitor those conversions. This will tell you whether the messaging in your posts matches the messaging on your destination pages. It can also validate the persuasiveness of your copy. How To Find This Data Here’s how to use each tool in your box to gather this data. The Facebook Insights tab on your company’s brand page is an easy place to start. It provides an incredible amount of data completely for free. 1.   Find your Facebook Insights tab. 2. Next, you’ll see your Overview page. Here, you can get a quick glance at: Actions On Page Page Views Page Likes Reach Post Engagements Videos You’ll also see an option to Export Data to an Excel or .csv file. This makes viewing detailed Page Data, Post Data, and Video Data a bit easier. 3. Beneath the Overview tab, you’ll find access to more detailed data: Here, you can find everything you need to know when it comes to your page engagement data. How many of these Facebook marketing metrics are you monitoring?Twitter Analytics: Which Metrics Should You Monitor? Twitter analytics are only slightly simpler than on Facebook. Here are the  metrics you should monitor for Twitter: Post-Level Metrics Retweets: Again, odds are someone in your organization has asked you about â€Å"going viral.† The more retweets, the more your content spreads. Replies: A lot of people see a lot of tweets each day. That makes earning  responses difficult. However, if you’re able to generate discussion and replies, you know you’re striking a chord with your audience. Referral Traffic: This is a big one. With Facebook organic reach in decline, Twitter may have more relevance than ever for driving traffic back to blogs and websites. Tweets Linking To You: Feel your ears burning? That’s just all the folks talking about your content and sharing your links on Twitter. Tweet Likes: Validation feels good. More importantly, Likes mean your content is appreciated. The more Likes, the better. Tweet Impressions: Tweets don’t always have to earn engagement to have value. Getting your brand and content seen can yield benefits by itself. Think of it like placing billboards on the information superhighway (we’re going to bet no one under the age of 25 got this joke). Page-Level Metrics Profile Visits: This indicates interest in your brand and what you’re about. Follower Growth: The more followers, the better (as long as you’re attracting the right kinds of people). Ideally, that means people who find your content valuable (and might one day want to buy your products or services). How To Find This Data Twitter offers fairly robust analytics within its web app. 1. Log into your account and visit Twitter Analytics. 2. The first page you’ll see if your Analytics Home page. Here, you can find (as you’d expect) a high-level overview of your performance for the last 28 days. This includes: Tweet Impressions: This is how many people saw your tweets in their feeds. Profile Visits: Self-explanatory. This is the number of times users visited your profile. Mentions: Tracks the number of times your profile was tagged in a tweet. Follower Growth: This is worth keeping an eye on, particularly if growing your following is a priority (as it should be). Tweets Linking To You: This is the number of tweets including links to your website or blog. These are valuable for sending traffic to your blog. You can also quickly see your top performing tweets. All in all, this is a fair amount of data (for free). Pro Tip: Your Top Tweets and Top Mentions are great  places to see which content resonates most with your audience. 3. Next, click the Tweets tab. At the top, you’ll find your daily tweet impressions for the past 28 days. Below that, you’ll find impression and engagement rate data for all your individual tweets. These can be sorted to include All Tweets, Top Tweets, and Tweets And Replies together. The right-hand panel also provides: Overall engagement rate Link clicks Retweets Likes Replies 4. Now, bounce over the Audience tab. The level of data Twitter provides here is almost astounding. You can quickly find out what your audience is most interested in, their household income, what kinds of products they buy, and more. Pinterest Analytics: Which Metrics Should You Monitor? Pinterest is interesting (or shall we say, â€Å"pinteresting† †¦ sorry, we’ll leave jokes to professionals from here on). These are the metrics that you should be monitoring: Post-Level Metrics Saves: These show interest in your content, suggesting it’s something they don’t want to forget. Clicks: Clicks equal traffic. More traffic equals greater chance for conversions. Likes: Likes indicate interest in your content. Make note of what gets clicked and what doesn’t. Page-Level Metrics Average Daily Impressions: Getting in front of more eyes raises brand and product awareness. Average Daily Viewers: Same as above here. Average Monthly Engaged: Impressions are great. Engagement is even better. It means your content was compelling enough to click. Impressions: Similar to other networks, impressions are useful to gauge content exposure. Even if a user doesn’t click, you’ve still created a mental connection. How To Find This Data Simply log into your company’s Pinterest account. Next, check out your Overview page. Here, you can find daily and monthly viewer and impression data: Clicking the More button drills deeper into each top-level section. Your Pinterest Profile: This view displays more data from your top performing pins and boards. It’s worth noting that adjusting the dates allows you to view progression going as far back as you’d like. People You Reach: This view under the Demographics tab provides a simple breakdown of your audience based on location, language and gender. Clicking the Interests tab yields interesting information about what your audience likes. This can be immensely helpful for guiding which content you should pin: Activity: The Activity tab is useful for getting specific data on which pins from your website are driving the most engagement. This is extremely useful for gauging blog content performance on Pinterest. Are you overlooking key insights in your Pinterest Analytics?LinkedIn Analytics: Which Metrics Should You Monitor? This video provides a good oversight of how Insights work for company pages on LinkedIn. Post-Level Metrics Impressions: Each impression is an opportunity to get your message to a viewer. Clicks: Even better than impressions, more clicks means more traffic (and maybe even more conversions). Interactions: Even if it doesn’t result in driving attention to your blog or website, interactions still imply interest in your post. Page-Level Metrics Engagement Rate: This is a clear indicator of how valuable your content is to your audience. Reach: Ideally, you’ll want your content to drive shares so it gets seen by more than just your followers. This measures how many people see your content in their feed. Engagement (Total): While it’s useful to check engagement at a per-post level, this gives you a high-level overview of your overall performance. Visitor Demographics: LinkedIn is a professional network. Therefore, it’s safe to assume most followers will be folks working in your industry. However, this is useful to look at periodically to see what experience levels your followers have. If you’re looking to attract entry-level recruits, but only senior-level managers follow your page, you might consider switching up your content strategy. This is just one example of how this data can be helpful. Page Views: This tells you the number of times someone visits your page. The more interest and exposure you earn for your brand, the better. Unique Visitors: This tells you exactly how many individuals are viewing your page. Again, the more, the better. Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Guide On How To Use Pinterest For Marketing Where To Find This Data There are two ways to gather this data: Manually monitoring each individual post. Under the Analytics tab. Let’s check out the Analytics tab. Start by visiting your company’s profile and clicking here: Scroll down and you’ll find your Reach and Engagement data: The Reach tab is particularly useful for understanding exactly how many people see your posts. Take some time to click  each tab under Engagement as well.  This can give you a detailed view of how your content is performing across the following metrics: Clicks Likes Comments Shares Followers Acquired Engagement Which metrics are most important for marketers to monitor on LinkedIn?Google+ Analytics: Which Metrics Should You Monitor? Google+  makes it possible to analyze performance both within Google Analytics and your Google My Business dashboard (both for Local Pages and Brand Pages). Between these two resources, you can get a decent look at how well you're performing (even if the process of analyzing Google+ performance is slightly more complex, and just a touch less in-depth, than other networks). Fortunately, the folks at Online-Behavior.com have built an excellent guide on the technical intricacies of analyzing Google+ performance using Google Analytics. Plus, our friends at Steady Demand have written what might be the most authoritative post on analyzing Google+ marketing that we've seen.  We'll defer to them for this section. Instagram Analytics: Which Metrics Should You Monitor? Instagram doesn’t provide much data to analyze (yet). However, it’s worth monitoring some basic metrics to ensure you’re getting the most brand awareness for your time spent on this visually-driven network. Here are some of the metrics you should be monitoring: Likes: Given the limited number of data points made available on this network, Likes provide a clear and immediate indicator that your content is compelling. Comments: More comments equal greater interest in your content (provided they’re positive). Engagement Rate: This will let you know if your content is interesting to your audience. Clicks: Links can be placed in bio boxes. This represents one way in which Instagram can drive engagement that goes beyond branding and awareness. Total Followers: More followers means more opportunity to be seen. Where To Find This Data: As of this writing, Instagram is promising to roll out several new analytics features. Head over to the Instagram for Business Blog  to learn more. For now, the team at Simply Measured offers a free Instagram Analytics Reporting tool. You’ll need to provide an email address, but it’s a quick and easy way to get some useful data. These reports can be exported as Excel files or PDFs. How do measure marketing success on Instagram?Blogging Analytics: Which Metrics Should You  Be Monitoring? Lastly, let’s discuss blogging analytics. This may seem like an odd fit in a post about social media analytics. It's also a much deeper topic than we can cover completely here. However, if you run an active blog, it’s important to monitor how your blog content is performing  on social media. These are some of the things you'll want to be monitoring: Traffic: You want readers, right? The more, the better. Visitor Demographics: This tells you if the people visiting your blog actually fit the audience you’re trying to target. Page Views Per Session: If people visit multiple pages per visit to your blog, then you know you’ve hooked their interest. Bounce Rate: If people don’t find your content compelling, they’ll leave. A high bounce rate could mean your content doesn’t match reader expectations, or is otherwise poor quality. Conversion Rate: If your blog posts use lead generation forms to gather email sign ups, this metric tells you how well your calls-to-action are performing. It also tells you  whether the value proposition for signing up seems worthwhile to readers. Social Shares: This is the key to â€Å"going viral† (something you’ve probably heard your boss harping about). Where To Find This Data: If you’re using WordPress (or another blogging platform), it’s likely your blog CMS includes an analytics section somewhere. Google Analytics is also essential here. If you’re looking for a Google Analytics alternative, Piwik  is another similar option to look at. How do you measure the success of your blog posts on  social media?Pulling It All Together: Consider Using Cyfe Cyfe  is a data aggregating web app that brings together data from tons of other sources and services. It accomplishes this by enabling users to create custom data dashboards using widgets. This is extremely useful for doing social media analytics work, allowing you to create dashboards for most major social networks and view your data in one place. A free account allows for five widgets, which may provide enough basic functionality to be useful. Stepping up to a paid account at $19 a month unlocks unlimited dashboards and user accounts. Follow Cyfe’s guide to building a custom social media dashboard  to get started. Another Alternative: View Sharing Stats In If you’re a customer, you have one more option for finding social sharing data. Every blog post within the calendar interface features integrated social sharing stats: You’ll notice Twitter sharing stats are missing due to restrictions with that platform’s API. However, this is otherwise one more useful option to quickly get a bit more insight into your social media performance. How To Turn Social Media Analytical Data Into Actionable Insights You now know where to find data from your social media channels. That means it’s time to figure out how to make use of that data. We’ll do that by building a social media analytics report. NOTE: To complete this process, download the social media analytics template bundle included in this post. For our purposes, we’ll focus on our five main social media goals. These are: Traffic Follower Growth Engagement Reach / Impressions Conversions These aren’t the only goals you could conceivably aim toward. However, they’re the ones we feel the majority of content marketers and social media managers may value most. We also know you’re likely hard-pressed for time. That’s why we’ve built the included Social Media Marketing Performance report  template to be simple to use for quick analysis.  It looks something like this: This template is designed to allow you to track your data all year. Bringing all your metrics into one place makes it easier to view progress over time. The Excel sheet includes some fields pre-filled, but is intended to be easily editable to suit your own selected metrics and purposes. I'm using these free templates to rock my social media analytics:Select Specific Metrics For Each Channel For each channel, select metrics that best support your business goals. Then, set a baseline for performance for each metric on each channel. Your baselines are expected standards for performance. If you fall below your baselines consistently, you know you’re underperforming. Likewise, if you consistently beat your expectations, you’re on the right track (and may need to readjust). Set baselines for every metric following these two steps: 1. Find your average performance for a given metric for the past 90 days. If you're not a mathematician, use the calculation here. 2. Set goals within a reasonable range upward from there. Done. Find The Why Behind Your Data With Social Media Content Analysis The next step is understand the why behind your social media content performance. This requires some subjective analysis of your posts. 1. Look for spikes and valleys in your data. 2. Identify which content was published on or around the days and months where activity rises and falls. 3. Perform a quick content analysis. Look at the content you posted on days where performance spiked (or dipped). Then, find your top three performing posts overall (on a single network) and analyze the following points: Post Copy: [   ] How long is this post? [   ] Does this post pose an open-ended question? [   ] Does this post pose a close-ended question? [   ] What day and time was this post published? [   ] What kind of emotion does this post aim to elicit? Post Image: [   ] Is this a design image or a photograph? [   ] Is this a single image or an image gallery? [   ] Is this image consistent with the company brand and style standards? [   ] Is this image an optimal size for its given social network? [   ] Does this image feature text? Post Link: [   ] Is the content linked to high-quality? [   ] Are the copy and image relevant to this link? [   ] Do links use URL shorteners for data tracking? [   ] Are link descriptions (if applicable) accurate? [   ] Does the on-page content on the linked page clearly connect to this post? Recommended Reading: How To Increase Visibility With Social Media Optimization Use these insights to guide future content creation. If something works well, do it more often. If something negatively impacts performance, stop doing it. It's as simple as that. Over time, you'll get better at understanding which factors influence which behaviors in your specific situation. If you’d like to keep your social media content and analytics in one place for easy analysis, use the Social Media Content Analysis template included in this post download. It looks like this: This template makes it simple to create and store your content assets (copy, images, URLs, etc.) in one document. Then, store your post performance data in the Measurement section. It’s designed to be edited easily, so feel free to add or delete rows, columns, or sections to suit your needs. Are you analyzing your social media content the best way?Use Your Data To Create Better Content Data is most useful when it helps you create better content your audience loves. However, how do you actually execute better content marketing? Start by applying the data you’ve gathered to refine the topics and tactics that perform best. These posts on our blog will help you sharpen your skills too: The 6 Types Of Social Media Content That Will Give You The Greatest Value How to Get Insanely Loyal Followers On Social Media How To Develop A Winning Social Media Content Strategy How To Build A Social Media Editorial Calendar The Easy Way This Is The Social Media Posting Schedule That Will Boost Your Traffic By 192% Don't Forget About Social Media Analytics In Each individual social network offers useful analytics functionality. However, will soon let you bring more of that data together, all in one place. With our new Social Analytics capabilities, you'll be able to see what is (and isn't) working, prove ROI, and understand the impact of your efforts across all your networks. Recommended Reading: An Insider's Look At What's New (And What's Next) For Do You Feel Like A Social Media Analytics Maestro? There you have it! You now have a basic social media analytics framework to help you find the data you need fast. In addition, you’re able to store, analyze, and present useful insights from that data to impress your boss and create better social media content. Hopefully, this will help you do more efficient and effective analysis and reporting. We wish you the best of luck in your efforts.