Welcome back to Musician’s Arsenal. This week we’ll be going over analytics. Too few artists actually pay attention to their social media analytics. Some just don’t know analytics for social media exist, some don’t know where to find them and some don’t think it’s important. It’s time to remedy all of this here and now. Crowdbooster recently launched the public version of their site (it had been in private beta for a while), and they join a legion of other social media analytics solutions available to musicians. I chose Crowdbooster to write about due to its ease of use and affordability (how’s free?). Crowdbooster provides straight ahead, no nonsense analytics in an easily digestible format.
Crowdbooster focuses on Twitter and Facebook Fan Page analytics, and for most musicians in need of social media analytics, this will be enough. For Twitter they measure four main components; Impressions, Follower Growth, Influential Followers and Top Retweeters. Through graphs and tables (you choose which view you like more) Crowdbooster will tell you how many impressions each of your tweets has, how many retweets each tweet is getting and how many replies each is getting. This helps you measure the effectiveness of your tweeting strategy and gauge what your fan base responds to. Pay attention to these stats and react accordingly. Measuring stats like Influential Followers and Top Retweeters is also quite valuable. It’s important to be able to reach and influence your influential followers. These individuals will have a large follower base which you have the potential to tap into. Figure out what these influential followers like to retweet and develop relationships with them so they can help push your tweets out to their followers, thereby increasing your own influence. 
Identify and reward your top retweeters. Make sure you’re reciprocating their digital love by retweeting their tweets as well. If these retweeters are avid fans of yours, maybe offer to put them on the list next time you play a show in their city, chances are they’d bring a friend along. However you do it, make sure these people know you appreciate their efforts. This sort of attention paid to people who actively engage you on social media definitely pays off. 
Crowdbooster’s Facebook analytics looks fairly similar. Here Crowdbooster measures Impressions, Fan Growth and Top fans. Much like with Twitter, it’s important to look at which posts are getting the most responses from your fan base and continue to post similar status updates. And obviously, adjust your strategy on posts that receive very little to no feedback. The whole point to these analytics is to perfect your engagement strategy by figuring out what your fans like to hear. What really sets Crowdbooster apart, is its ability to make intelligent recommendations. Crowdbooster analyzes the performance of your tweets and the activity of your followers and is able to tell you when you should be tweeting/posting status updates based on this information. Given the short life span of tweets, it’s vital to tweet important information at appropriate times. Crowdbooster helps us do this.
Crowdbooster also tells us when highly influential individuals (they measure influence with Klout) follow you so you can make sure to engage with them. Couple this information with intelligent recommendations and you can quickly increase your influence. Engage your highly influential followers at the right time and they are more likely to retweet your tweets out to their network, increasing the number of impressions for that tweet exponentially. The information you can gain from Crowdbooster’s intelligent recommendations is extremely valuable. You should be constantly aware of the effectiveness of your engagement strategy. Too many musicians blindly tweet and post status updates with no strategy in mind and with no regard to whether or not their fans are responding. Don’t be that artist. Pay attention to your analytics and allow them to guide your posting efforts. Because an engaged fan is much (much) more likely to buy your stuff, come see you live and share your music with friends (you know, all that stuff you want your fans to do). As always, be sure to leave me your thoughts. Do these tools help you increase your engagement level with your fans? Are the Crowdbooster analytics as easy to understand as I make them out to be? Are they in depth enough to make a difference for you? Let me know and stay tuned for the next edition of Musician’s Arsenal, it’s sure to be a doozy! Hit me up on Twitter - @jloom718