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Planable is the best client-facing social media tool we’ve ever used and we’ve used a lot.
Email marketing is one of the oldest and best tricks in the communication playbook, and newsletters are an excellent tool for brand awareness, audience engagement, and lead nurturing. But newsletter planning is challenging. Coming up with and delivering fresh ideas...
Apr 5, 2024
This session was part one of our “Decoding social media analytics masterclass”: a 5-part series where we cleared the fog away from social media analytics.
In this 1-hour session, Nick Gudumac, Founder & CTO at Planable, deep-dives into how social media analytics tools work. You’ll get insights into how native social media platforms transmit data, and why the numbers sometimes differ between native platforms and third-party apps.
Nick is a Co-founder & CTO of Planable. With a computer science background, he’s previously worked in a digital agency and built innovative advertising campaigns using-cutting edge technology for big brands. Nick is also an alumni of Techstars and MongoDB Accelerator, and has been featured in Forbes 30 under 30 list.
Interviewer: Noa Lupu
Noa is an experienced Account and Project Manager turned Customer Success Lead at Planable, where she combines her background in social media management with firsthand knowledge as a former Planable customer. Now leading the Customer Success team, Noa focuses on ensuring client satisfaction, building strong relationships, and enhancing customer support processes to deliver an outstanding experience.
One of the primary methods through which third-party analytics tools retrieve data is through APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). Think of an API as a “waiter” that brings your data from the kitchen (social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram) to your analytics tool. However, this waiter can only serve what’s on the platform’s “menu” (the available metrics), and the menu doesn’t always include every ingredient in the kitchen. This means that while platforms have the complete data, APIs limit the metrics that third-party tools can access, sometimes making analytics data feel less comprehensive or incomplete.
Social media platforms are constantly evolving, with new features and content types, like Reels or Stories, being introduced regularly. However, when platforms roll out these new features, the analytics data for them might not immediately be available to third-party tools through the API. These platforms prioritize their native analytics dashboards, meaning it can take weeks or even months for new data types to show up on third-party analytics tools. So, if you notice a lag in data availability, it’s likely due to the platform’s slow release of updates to the API.
Another key limitation with APIs is the amount of historical data that analytics tools can access. Each platform provides a different window of historical data through its API—for instance, Facebook allows for up to two years of data, while TikTok typically only offers two months. This restriction can affect how much historical information you can pull in to analyze long-term trends. So, if you want a comprehensive view of your data, it’s crucial to connect your social accounts early on to ensure ongoing access to a complete timeline of analytics.
While native platforms and third-party analytics tools may use similar terms like “engagement” or “reach,” the way these metrics are calculated can vary. For instance, one platform might count a “follow” as an engagement, while others may only count reactions, comments, and shares. LinkedIn, for example, considers page follows as part of its engagement metric, which might result in higher engagement numbers than platforms that don’t. Understanding these subtle differences in calculation is essential to interpreting analytics across different tools or comparing native data with third-party data.
Some analytics discrepancies are simply due to unavoidable technical issues. For instance, data in native tools is often reported in the platform’s default time zone, while analytics tools attempt to display data in the user’s local time zone. This can lead to small differences in daily metrics. Additionally, some APIs occasionally miss entire days of data, skewing graphs and totals. Third-party tools may attempt to approximate certain metrics—like cumulative reach or engagement over a custom period—using formulas, but these calculated values won’t always match native data exactly.
Want to learn more? Get the full breakdown in our on-demand recording. Enter your email below to access the full webinar and get exclusive tips on making the most of your social media analytics tools!
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