How to Make the Most of Willow Analytics

‍What is Willow Analytics and why should you use it?

Willow Analytics provides a complete overview of how your social media channels perform. It collects important numbers such as impressions, likes, comments, shares, and new followers from your connected accounts in one place. This makes spotting trends and chances to improve much easier. For example, if you see one post getting much more attention than others, you can create similar posts to keep growing your audience. Willow also offers more meaningful metrics like the Social Health score, which helps track your long-term growth rather than just short spikes.

Overview: what does this tab show?

The overview tab is your first stop to understand your social media results. What questions does it answer? It shows how many people saw your posts (impressions), how many interacted (engagement), and your audience growth (new followers). For instance, if your impressions are high but engagement is low, you might need to adjust your content or posting times. By regularly checking this overview, you gain quick insight into overall channel health and know where to dig deeper.

For example, if your LinkedIn business page gained 200 new followers last month with a 15% engagement rate, this tab highlights that success. You can then compare it with your Facebook page to know which platform to focus more on.

Analytics summary: what are the key metrics?

Willow highlights four main metrics: impressions, engagement, total audience, and new followers. How can you use these? Impressions tell how many times your content was seen. Engagement covers likes, comments, and shares. Total audience counts all your followers, and new followers show recent growth.

Willow also compares these figures to a previous period. This helps identify trends. For instance, a 10% rise in engagement compared to last month reveals your strategy is working. You can also spot declines early and adjust quickly.

The four graphs add valuable context by showing progress over time. For example, if engagement steadily rises over 90 days but suddenly drops in the last week, you might investigate recent posts or platform changes.

How to change the reporting period?

Need to see your social media performance for different time frames? Simply click the calendar icon at the top right corner on the analytics page. You can select 7, 30, 90, or 180 days.

Why choose a longer period like 180 days? It helps see your steady progress and spot seasonal trends. For instance, you might notice higher engagement during holiday seasons. Shorter periods like 7 days are great to review recent campaigns or posts.

The default setting is 30 days, which balances detail and trend insight well. This way, beginners or busy users get a solid overview without feeling overwhelmed.

How can you choose which channels to view?

Willow lets you focus on specific social media accounts. Wondering how to do that? Just click the social media icons next to the calendar. You can select or deselect channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram.

This feature is handy when managing multiple business pages or personal profiles. For example, you might want to see just your company’s LinkedIn page metrics to measure professional reach, without being distracted by personal profile data.

By filtering channels, you get targeted insights to tailor your content better per platform. For example, Instagram might have a younger audience, so content can be more visual, while LinkedIn needs more professional posts.

What is the channel breakdown?

The channel breakdown gives you detailed stats for each business profile you manage. You’ll see data on audience size, impressions, engagement, and post count. Why is this useful? It highlights which business pages attract the most interest.

For example, your Facebook business page might have 10k followers with moderate engagement, while your LinkedIn page has 3k followers but higher engagement. This data can guide where to focus your efforts or boost weaker profiles.

Note that personal pages are excluded here, keeping the breakdown focused on business targets. This makes performance tracking more relevant and easier to compare.

What is employee engagement tracking?

Willow tracks employee engagement via connected personal LinkedIn profiles. The leaderboard shows who posts most often and who gets the most engagement.

Why track this? Employee advocacy boosts brand visibility and trust. For example, if a sales team member regularly shares company content that receives high likes and comments, it helps expand your reach organically.

Seeing top contributors motivates others to join in. It also identifies potential social media champions within your organisation, whose content might be worth amplifying further.

How does the post overview help you?

The post overview tab ranks your best performing posts by engagement, impressions, and overall post score. What does this tell you? Which content resonates most with your audience.

For example, a post announcing a new product might have high impressions but low engagement. Another post sharing a behind-the-scenes video might score higher on engagement. Willow helps spot these differences so you can replicate winners.

You can also see the engagement breakdown by hovering over the engagement number. This shows likes, comments, and shares for each post, helping you understand what type of interaction your content sparks.

By default, posts are sorted by highest engagement, but you can change sorting to impressions, engagement rate, or post score. This flexibility helps tailor analysis to your goals. For instance, if brand exposure matters most, you might sort by impressions.