Every scroll, share and comment provides key insights into audience behavior. But without translating this data into boardroom-ready insights, your data points are just random numbers without a story.

That’s a missed opportunity for competitive advantage.

Social media analysts turn raw data into insights that drive everything from product tweaks to customer service overhauls. They spot social media trends and link them to business metrics, translating digital buzz into tangible strategies.

So, what makes a great social media analyst? And how do analysts turn raw data into growth strategies that work?

In this article, you’ll learn six ways analysts contribute to business growth and six ways to supercharge your career as one.

What is a social media analyst?

A social media analyst assesses a brand’s owned data, content performance and social listening data, and translates them into actionable business recommendations. From refining audience targeting to optimizing content strategies, they help businesses pinpoint the steps to strengthen their brand’s market position.

Card defining the role of a social media analyst. It says, "A social media analyst assesses a brand's owned data, content performance and social listening data, and translates them into actionable business recommendations."

The fundamentals of the role include:

  • Comfort with social media analytics tools to report on critical KPIs
  • Problem-solving to support overall social performance and achieve goals
  • Understanding social platforms and how each of them uniquely impacts audience behavior and content performance
  • Recognizing how social data can grow every aspect of their business and helping others see social differently

Businesses often lump social media data analysis into other social media and community manager roles. But that’s not the most efficient way to build a social media team.  Social media analysts help other social roles do what they do best. They handle most data-related tasks so other social team members can focus on engaging audiences, creating new content, and providing customer care.

Their analysis shows exactly what works—for example, how posting video tutorials at 2 PM leads to 3x more views than other content and how customer service response times under 30 minutes lead to 70% more positive reviews. This is imperative because precise data-driven insights help brands tailor their strategies for maximum results and reach goals and larger business objectives faster.

An X post from the head of Digital at Joy that says Most clients have significantly increased their focus on data driven decisions prioritizing media metrics that are closely aligned with business outcomes.

What does a social media analyst do to grow a brand?

Social media analysts highlight social media value and help drive growth in these six ways.

Analyze audience engagement patterns

Social media marketing has no ‘one size fits all’ approach because every brand has unique goals and audiences.

Analysts track reach, click-through rates and follower growth to gauge how content, engagement and publishing strategies are performing. They also keep a pulse in real-time to provide actionable insights for content creators, marketers and managers to make data-driven decisions.

When a content creator wants to know which types of content to start, stop or continue with, analysts provide owned data that validates or challenges assumptions. They test variables, analyze trends over time and adjust strategies based on what they discover to ensure continuous improvement. They also monitor the data and adjust recommendations to support proactive marketing efforts.

 

An X post that says good content, consistency and engagement in the key to growing your audience.

Collaborate and communicate

Analysts play an active role in bringing stakeholders together, sharing insights and guiding collaborative discussions.

They invite strategists, creatives, community managers, paid media specialists to the table and use storytelling to:

  • Connect data points
  • Create compelling visualizations
  • Adapt their presentations to accommodate different learning styles

They contextualize data so it’s relatable and resonates with the audience.

An analyst might say, “In February, our top engagement types on LinkedIn were likes, up by 9.5% month-over-month and link clicks, up by 15% month-over-month. Comments however were down to 137 for the month.”

While that might not mean much to a visual learner or a person who isn’t as familiar with specific benchmarks, social media analytics tools like Sprout Social simplify this process. Analysts use these tools to automate visualizations that show engagement trends clearly and make data accessible to everyone.

Identify the ‘why’ behind trends

Metrics without context can lead to missed insights and misguided strategies. That’s why social analysts also investigate the why—which is essential for brand monitoring.

Let’s say content hits a plateau and social engagement is down month-over-month.

Using a social media analytics tool like Sprout, analysts can review past quarterly or yearly performance to identify patterns and consider specific variables such as posting times and audience demographics that might impact engagement.

They might analyze changes in audience sentiment by reviewing shifts in positive, neutral and negative feedback, helping them understand how brand perception could impact engagement. If it’s dwindled or dropped drastically, analysts can review negative messages and find more detailed information that might explain why content is underperforming.

Sentiment analysis dashboard for Sprout Coffee, showing an 82% positive sentiment summary and sentiment trends over time.

Predict social media outcomes

So much of social media marketing is about planning content calendars and looking forward. But with social media trends shifting so rapidly, how can you confidently plan for the next three to six months? The answer is social data.

With social data, analysts can turn hunches into real and actionable ideas. They identify recurring patterns in customer behavior, analyze relevant listening data, evaluate the content types that consistently engage your audience and track the way content performance varies across channels over time.

Using social media search for market research is invaluable for businesses looking to understand customer behavior. With this information, your team can create more targeted content for your audience, apply collective insights to larger marketing campaigns and even surface specific product improvements based on audience feedback.

Focus beyond their own brand

Competitive analysis is a critical skill for analysts. This analysis helps identify successful strategies, unique content opportunities and areas where your brand can differentiate itself better.

Analysts can manually review competitors or use competitor reports and listening tools like those in Sprout to streamline the process.

Competitor analysis dashboard comparing Sprout Coffee Co.'s Facebook performance with Java House, including fan counts and audience growth trends.

Analysts also review industry trend reports to spot emerging themes and examine data from social channels to gauge platform-specific dynamics.

On top of that, they layer social listening data to understand cultural nuances and shifts in public sentiment—a benefit that social media uniquely provides.

Once analysts have the data, they share their findings far and wide, so teams across their org can use that competitive analysis to create new or improved products, campaigns or creative assets.

Help manage crises

Social media analysis isn’t just useful for retrospective reporting and can drive proactive decision-making—which is essential during a crisis.

When negative sentiment spikes or potential issues emerge, analysts provide real-time monitoring and data-driven recommendations that help brands respond rapidly and decisively.

For example, if customers start reporting product issues across social channels, analysts can track conversation volume, reach and sentiment shifts to measure the scale of the problem. They monitor key influencers, identify main themes in public reactions and give leadership data-backed recommendations for immediate action.

This rapid response capability, powered by Social Listening and analytics, helps brands contain issues before they escalate into full-blown crises. By tracking changes in sentiment, conversation patterns and reactions, analysts help organizations decide the best timing and approach to handle potential crises.

6 essential skills for a social media analyst

Like all things social, social media analysts’ jobs too, are always evolving—and quickly. As AI tools and consumer behavior trends reshape how we analyze data to strategize business decisions, it’s important to keep up. Here are six skills that can help if you’re looking to become an analyst or for existing analysts to further their craft.

Use advanced AI-driven data analysis

AI is reshaping how we interpret social data and analysts go past simple metrics to find more meaningful insights.

AI helps you:

  • Spot patterns in customer behavior
  • Forecast content performance
  • Analyze sentiment in large volumes of comments
  • Gather insights through social listening

All these insights can help you identify high-performing content and engagement strategies to reach your social media goals. But it’s not just about the tech. Blend AI social listening with human intuition to maximize the ROI of social media listening. Use tools like conversational analytics to spot patterns across massive datasets, then use your expertise to put those findings into context and strengthen marketing strategies.

Excel with social media reporting tools

Making data-driven decisions in social media requires using enterprise-grade reporting tools that offer both high-level overviews and granular insights.

Tools like Sprout Social provide a unified view of metrics across multiple channels, enabling you to not only track essential metrics but also create custom dashboards and reports tailored to strategic business goals.

Dashboard showing social media post performance for Sprout Coffee Co. across multiple platforms with engagement metrics and content previews.

Google Analytics is also crucial, linking social media activity with website behavior, which gives a full-circle view of how social efforts drive traffic and impact digital strategy.

By linking social engagement metrics to indicators like session duration, bounce rate and conversion paths, you can illustrate the direct impact of social strategies on business results. Such as increasing lead generation, improving customer retention and optimizing the customer journey.

With AI and automation taking over repetitive tasks, you and your team can dedicate more time to discovering emerging trends, refining audience targeting and optimizing content strategies for long-term business growth.

Be a compelling data storyteller

Raw data, stripped of context, rarely inspires action. Your data should inspire your brand story and social content as well as provide critical insights that resonate with your leadership teams for executive buy-in.

An X post that talks about the importance of blending your data story, brand and audience to stand out from the competition.

Weave data into narratives that resonate with decision-makers by:

  • Using tools like Tableau to create intuitive dashboards and visualizations and turn complex data into compelling stories.
  • Correlating social metrics with concrete business outcomes integrating CRM insights from platforms like Salesforce.
  • Creating interactive reports with visual storytelling techniques that help leaders and teams explore data on their own to find insights they can act on.
  • Framing the brand’s position in a way that clarifies competitive strengths and gaps.

Through business intelligence reporting, distill vast amounts of information into clear, strategic insights that inform key decisions—from market entry to customer engagement strategies. Highlight key trends, flag potential risks and spotlight opportunities for growth.

Stay current on platform changes

Social media platforms evolve at a dizzying pace. Facebook tweaks its algorithm, X (formerly Twitter) adjusts its metrics and new contenders like Meta Threads reshape the landscape—each shift can drastically impact content visibility and engagement.

Monitor official platform announcements, industry news and forums to anticipate how they may impact social strategies.

For example, when Reddit introduced new features like its Conversation placement for ads, you’d typically adjust your Reddit social listening techniques to gauge grassroots sentiments and user behavior. Or as short-form content rises on YouTube, focus on video engagement metrics across platforms to gauge audience preferences and adapt content strategies.

Custom reporting becomes crucial here. You can design flexible dashboards with Sprout and add new metrics and data sources to keep reports up-to-date as platforms change.

Facebook performance summary for Sprout Coffee Co. in December 2021, displaying key metrics and a graph of daily publishing behavior by content type.

Be ahead of social media trends

It’s crucial not to just react to trends but anticipate them. Do this by:

  • Monitoring influencer marketing trends to understand how these partnerships influence audience trust and drive engagement, then use these insights to refine brand collaborations.
  • Tracking customer service trends to enable brands to deliver faster, more personalized support that builds loyalty and encourages positive word-of-mouth.
  • Keeping a pulse on platform-specific trends, such as Instagram trends’ focus on Reels or YouTube trends’ emphasis on Shorts, to tailor content strategies.
  • Exploring social commerce trends to uncover new in-platform shopping experiences that drive conversions and create a seamless path to purchase for users.

Staying ahead of these trends gives your brand an edge. Not only does this help your brand maintain relevance and agility, but it also builds deeper connections with your audience—ensuring your brand adapts to shifts before they happen.

Always learn

Embrace a growth mindset and constantly refine your skills and approaches:

  • Optimize strategies through rigorous A/B testing and use data to refine content types, ideal posting times and engagement tactics that resonate most with your audience.
  • Adopt AI customer service solutions and assess how automation improves response times and user satisfaction by enabling faster, more accurate support.
  • Experiment with AI analytics tools and use machine learning to forecast emerging trends before they become mainstream.
  • Regularly upgrade your data analytics skills through courses and certifications to expand your toolkit.
  • Seek feedback on your reports and presentations to refine how you communicate insights to ensure clarity, relevance and impact.
  • Develop and refine customer engagement models, like personalized marketing and customer support strategies, based on social data insights.

Through ongoing learning, you can equip yourself to turn social data into insights that drive action.

Supercharge your career as a social media analyst

You have the power to break social data out of the marketing silo and impact every area of your business. Your deep data analysis skills are invaluable, whether you’re part of a larger team or working solo.

If you’re on a team, use your unique perspective to drive cross-departmental insights and strategies. And if you’re still working as a social team of one, embrace the skills and habits of an analyst to become a more well-rounded, influential marketer.

Ramp up your skills and learn how to use social media competitive analysis for new strategies to gain an edge.