Monitoring social media performance is a key part of modern digital strategy. Whether you’re tracking engagement, follower growth, or sentiment, you need accurate, real-time insights to make wise decisions. SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) provides you with the tools to consolidate all that data in one place, analyze it, and turn it into actionable insights—with the added support of partner specialists who can help tailor SAC solutions to your unique business needs.
Here’s how to use SAP Analytics Cloud to monitor your social media KPIs effectively.
1. Start with the Right KPIs
Before diving into the tool, clarify which social media KPIs are most important for your business goals. Here are some common ones:
- Engagement Rate (likes, shares, comments per post)
- Follower Growth over time
- Click-through rate (CTR) from social posts to your site
- Reach and Impressions
- Share of Voice vs. competitors
- Sentiment Analysis (positive/negative mentions)
- Conversion Metrics (sales, leads from social traffic)
Choosing the right KPIs helps you focus your dashboard and analytics setup around what really matters.
2. Connect Your Social Media Data Sources
SAP Analytics Cloud doesn’t collect social media data on its own—you need to connect it to the platforms or third-party tools that do.
There are three main ways to bring social data into SAC:
- Direct API integrations: Some platforms, like Twitter or Facebook, allow you to access their data through APIs. You can use SAP Data Intelligence or SAP Cloud Integration to pull in this data.
- Third-party connectors: Tools like Supermetrics, Funnel.io, or Domo can extract social media data and feed it into SAC.
- Manual uploads: If you don’t have access to APIs or connectors, you can export reports from social platforms and upload them as Excel or CSV files.
Once connected, you can automate data refreshes so your dashboards always stay up to date.
3. Model the Data for Analysis
After importing the data, the next step is to model it. This means organizing it in a way that supports clear, flexible analysis.
In SAC, you use the Modeler to define your metrics (measures) and categories (dimensions). For example:
- Measures: Number of likes, retweets, followers, CTR
- Dimensions: Date, platform (Twitter, LinkedIn), campaign name, region
You can also create calculated measures, such as engagement rate (total engagement divided by total followers) or sentiment score.
Good data modeling ensures that your dashboards are accurate and your visualizations meaningful.
4. Build an Interactive Dashboard
Now the fun part—turn your data into a dashboard you can use.
SAC makes it easy to build visualizations with drag-and-drop tools. Here are a few tips:
- Use line charts to show follower growth over time
- Add bar charts to compare engagement across platforms
- Use pie charts or donut charts to break down audience demographics
- Include heat maps or geo maps to show where your audience is most active
- Create scorecards for high-level KPIs like total followers, reach, or conversion rate
SAC dashboards are interactive, allowing users to filter by platform, date range, or campaign with just a few clicks. That means you can transition from a high-level overview to a detailed analysis in seconds.
5. Use Predictive Features to Spot Trends
One of the unique advantages of SAP Analytics Cloud is its built-in machine learning and predictive features.
With Smart Predict, you can forecast metrics like:
- Future follower growth based on historical trends
- Projected reach or impressions for upcoming campaigns
- Sentiment trends over time
This helps social media teams move from just reporting on the past to anticipating future performance.
You can also use Smart Insights to automatically generate explanations for data spikes or drops, like why engagement was unusually high on a certain day.
6. Share Insights Across the Team
SAC enables you to share dashboards with various stakeholders securely. You can:
- Set permissions by role or user
- Create scheduled reports that email summaries regularly
- Embed dashboards into other tools or websites
That way, the right people always have access to the data they need, without sending spreadsheets around.
7. Set Up Alerts for Key Changes
You don’t want to wait for a weekly report to spot a major shift.
In SAC, you can set threshold alerts for your KPIs. For example:
- Notify me if sentiment drops below 50%
- Alert when engagement rate drops by more than 20%
- Flag any sudden spikes in unfollows or negative mentions
These alerts help you act fast when something changes—before it becomes a bigger problem.
Final Thoughts
SAP Analytics Cloud gives you a powerful way to monitor your social media KPIs in one place. By bringing in your data, modeling it effectively, and utilizing the platform’s predictive and visualization tools, you gain more than just charts—you achieve clarity.
With better insights, your team can create stronger content, respond to trends more quickly, and demonstrate the impact of your social efforts across the business.
You don’t need to be a data scientist. You need the right setup, and SAC provides you with the tools to achieve it.