Social Media Analytics to Measure the Growth of Your Cannabis Business

If you’re in the cannabis industry, chances are you already know of the struggles social media restrictions can cause. However, with 69% of American adults using Facebook, 37% using Instagram, and 22% using Twitter, many owners find it’s worth the risk to upkeep accounts[1]. While paid ad spend may not be an option on these platforms, organic content and reach becomes incredibly valuable for the cannabis industry.

Just like your products, your audience is unique to your brand. To truly understand their digital behavior, you must first understand your social media analytics. Let’s take a look at how you can measure these metrics, what they mean, and how you can use them to grow your cannabis business.

Engagement

Likes, shares, mentions, and comments are commonly used to track how well a social post has performed. However, it’s not always about having a high number of these indicators. With engagement, you’re looking to connect with your audience and potential customers. Specifically through comments, interact with your followers! Even achieving just five to ten shares or comments can mean five to ten more conversions.

Followers

Page followers increasingly become crucial when it comes to the organic social media game. When you can’t utilize ad spend to get your content in front of a large number of people, you must rely on growing your followers for higher visibility.

Reach and impressions

The difference between these two metrics is that reach is the total number of unique people that have seen your content, whereas impressions are the number of times your content was displayed. Reach will only count a person once, and impressions will count the same person no matter many times your content was presented to them. When you begin to grow your following, you’ll see an increase in reach and impressions and, therefore, brand awareness.

Traffic

For cannabis businesses especially, landing page visits are significant to having a digital presence. Social media is a great way to promote your website and blogs. After all, in the cannabis industry, the general audience is looking for more educational and substantial content than a sales pitch.

Conversions

Although there are more potential conversions than we may think of (link clicks, calls, and form submissions), making a sale is the ultimate goal. This is where things may become tricky. While it’s quite easy to track those other conversions, sales can present a different challenge, a majority of cannabis businesses are brick and mortar rather than e-commerce. Due to banking and shipping restrictions from federal law, cannabis-related products may be okay but cannabis itself is not.[2] When launching your social media campaign, it’s crucial to keep this in mind, especially when planning your goals.

Once you begin keeping track of these social media analytics, you can determine what kind of content your audience best responds to and when they are most active. These insights will become the path to follow that will lead to organic social media growth.

To truly get the most out of your social media presence, get in touch with Herban Creative. Our team of strategic experts are ready to launch your cannabis business’ digital presence and grow your online following. We work with you to build a campaign centered around key goals, and build you a detailed analytics report to show you the results! Contact us today to learn more

References

[1] “Under The Influence Of Instagram: Cannabis In The Age Of Social Media.” Forbes, 6 May 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrebourque/2019/05/06/under-the-influence-of-instagram-cannabis-in-the-age-of-social-media/#1798ccb14746

[2] “How Cannabis Ecommerce Challenges Are Driving Web Innovation.” GreenEntrepreneur, 31 Jan 2017, https://www.greenentrepreneur.com/article/288022