Customer service metrics enable companies to track their support efforts in an on-demand, multi-platform world. Plus, keeping tabs on your customer service metrics is an important way to measure the overall health of your brand. Happy customers make repeat purchases, reduce the load on your customer service team, and increase the reach of your brand through positive word of mouth. 

Keep reading to find out how to efficiently track customer success and satisfaction, and help your team stay on top of all things customer service. 

What are customer service metrics?

Customer service metrics are a set of key performance indicators used to measure the performance, quality, and efficiency of a business’s customer support efforts.

Tracking common metrics for customer service allows a business to allocate necessary resources, understand which channels customers use, and identify recurring issues or bottlenecks in the support process.

Customer service metrics are also used to measure client satisfaction. This includes direct feedback from customer surveys or polls, and also reports that calculate how long it takes for tickets to be resolved.

18 customer service metrics to track in 2023

Here’s a breakdown of the top customer service metrics that matter.

1. Net promoter score (NPS)

Your Net Promoter Score measures how likely your customers are to recommend your company to others. It’s one of the most important customer engagement success metrics. Only those customers who are on good terms with your brand are likely to recommend you to others.

To measure NPS, send a short survey to customers after a purchase or customer service interaction. Ask them one simple question: How likely are you to recommend the brand? NPS is usually measured on a scale of 1-10, but some use a five-point scale instead.

Source: Shaw Mobile text survey

To measure NPS, subtract your percentage of detractors (those who would not recommend your brand) from your promoters (those who would). Leave out those who fall in “maybe” territory—these people are considered “passives” and don’t impact your score. 

NPS = Percentage of promoters – Percentage of detractors 

2. Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)

Like NPS, CSAT involves asking your customers a simple survey question. However, in this case, you just ask them to rate their experience.

So, instead of asking whether they’d recommend you, you’re just asking how satisfied they are with you. This is one of the most valuable customer service success metrics. It encapsulates the entire customer service experience in one response.

You can send an NPS survey either after a purchase OR after a customer service interaction. For CSAT, it’s most common to send the survey after a customer service interaction only. You can use a numeric scale, or get creative, like Booking.com did in this CSAT survey:

Source: Booking.com email survey

To calculate CSAT, divide the number of positive scores on your survey by the total number of replies. Multiply by 100 to get the percentage. 

CSAT = (Number of positive scores/Number of replies) x 100 

By the way, Hootsuite Inbox can automatically send CSAT surveys after each customer service interaction and automatically pull the results into Hootsuite Analytics for easy analysis and reporting. 

3. Customer effort score (CES)

This is another metric determined by a simple survey. At first, the survey question looks very similar to that for CSAT. But in this case, rather than asking how satisfied the customer is with the service, you instead ask how easy it was to get the service they needed. 

Source: TurboTax email survey

This gives you a good sense of how well your customer service program is set up. Where CSAT measures the success of a specific interaction, CES measures the ease of accessing support in the first place. 

Hint: Offering customers support on all the channels where they expect it is a key way to improve CES. Hootsuite Inbox is a great tool to manage customer support across all social channels, keeping customers happy and boosting your CES.

The formula for calculating CES is the same as for CSAT—it’s just that the survey question addresses a different aspect of customer success. So to calculate CES, divide the number of positive scores on your CES survey by the total number of replies. Multiply by 100 to get the percentage. 

CES = (Number of positive scores/Number of replies) x 100 

4. Support ticket categories

For companies that organize their support tickets by type of issue, it’s important to keep tabs on which problems arise most often. If your CES is high, analyzing which categories receive the most volume can help you identify where customers exert the most effort.

Support ticket categories may include:

Sales question
Technical issues
Cancellations
Returns
Shipping
Product availability

Traffic, page views, Frequently Asked Questions pages, and help articles offer another way to measure where customers require the most assistance.

5. Ticket volume

In addition to tracking which issues come up most often, it’s just as important to keep an eye on the volume of tickets you receive over time.

Suppose the number of tickets you receive is on the rise—especially in a specific area. In that case, it may be necessary to revisit communications strategies, help articles, or even policies and operations. It’s also crucial for managers to be aware of how much pressure their support teams are under, so they can provide necessary assistance before burnout becomes a problem.

How do you calculate ticket volume? Record how many tickets you receive at regular intervals: day by day, week by week, or month by month. For visual analysis, plot these results on a line graph (like we do in our customer service report template, which you can download here).

If you notice spikes, try to pinpoint what may have caused them, such as product releases, global events, or even a social media crisis. That way you can devise plans and better allocate resources in the future.

6. Customer retention rate (CRR)

A customer retention rate measures the number of clients a company retains over a select period.

This metric is vital for companies that provide a regular or subscription-based service. Depending on the industry, companies may record retention rates weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually.

To calculate customer retention rate, you’ll need to record:

S = Number of customers at the start of the period

E = Number of customers at the end of the period

N = Number of customers added during the period

With that information, calculate customer retention rate with the following formula:

[(E-N)/S] *100 = CRR

For example, say you have 100 customers at the start of your timeframe (S), 90 customers at the end of the period (E), and you added 15 customers (N). Your customer retention rate would be 75%.

7. Churn rate

Remember: Good customer service is about building long-term relationships with customers. Churn rate measures the percentage of your customers that leave your brand versus those that stick around.

Customer churn rate is measured for a specific amount of time. The most common timeframes are monthly, quarterly, and annual. 

To measure churn rate, take the number of customers you lose over the period and divide it by the total number of customers you had at the start of the period. Don’t include new customers acquired over the period in your equation, since that will skew your results.

Churn rate = (Customers lost over a period/Customers at the start of the period) x 100

You can also compare churn rates for different segments of your customer base to see if some products or product bundling strategies are creating greater customer success than others.

Source: J.P. Morgan Global High Yield & Leveraged Finance Conference presentation by Jean-François Parent, Vice President and Treasurer, Quebecor Inc., QMI and Videotron

8. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

Customer acquisition cost tracks the average amount of money spent on sales and marketing to obtain each new customer.

This metric provides a partial way to track the ROI of social media, marketing, and sales teams. In an ideal situation, as teams scale their efforts, CAC should go down, and ROI should go up.

The formula for CAC is straightforward: The amount spent on sales and marketing over a given period divided by the number of customers acquired in the same timeframe:

CAC = Sales and marketing spend / customers acquired

For example, if you spent $10,000 on sales and marketing and acquired 20,000 customers, your cost per acquisition is 50 cents.

A lower amount is a better result—but it could also mean you have a low sales and marketing budget. That’s why it’s essential to view this figure in tandem with customer service satisfaction metrics and growth and performance results.

9. Customer lifetime value (CLV)

Customer lifetime value is a measure of how much you can expect to earn from a single customer over the entire lifetime of their relationship with your brand.

CLV that’s higher than the average initial purchase means that customers make multiple purchases from your company over time. That indicates a healthy brand relationship and great brand loyalty.

In order to measure CLV, you’ll need to have a few data points about customer behavior.

CLV = Average purchase value x Average purchase frequency x Average customer lifespan

For example, one research analyst estimated Amazon’s customer lifetime value as $2,283 from Prime members and $916 for non-Prime members. 

This is also an important metric for understanding how much you can afford to spend on social media advertising to acquire a new customer. 

10. Recurring revenue

Recurring revenue is another way to measure how many of your customers are sticking around. It can also give you a sense of whether people are upgrading or downgrading their recurring level of spend. 

You can measure recurring revenue on any time period that aligns with the renewal/notice period for your subscription products or services. The most common options are monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and annualized recurring revenue (ARR). 

To measure MRR, multiply your number of active users by the average monthly revenue per user. 

MRR = Number of active users x Average monthly revenue per user

11. Expansion revenue

The recurring revenue metric above measures how much you’re bringing in on a recurring basis. Expansion revenue measures how much revenue comes from upgrades, premium products, and so on. This is a great measure of customer success because it indicates customers are willing to spend more than the basic amount required to access your service.

To calculate expansion revenue, tally all the revenue brought in from add-ons, upgrades, and so on. 

To calculate expansion revenue per user, divide the total by the number of users. 

Expansion revenue per user = Total revenue from adds-ons and upgrades/Number of users

12. Revenue contraction

Revenue contraction is the opposite of expansion revenue. In this case, you’re measuring how much revenue is lost from downgrades. This is similar to churn in that it indicates people are not seeing success with their premium plans. 

Churn measures how many customers you lose entirely. Revenue contraction measures how much income you lose from customers who stick around but downgrade their plan. 

One interesting example of revenue contraction comes from streaming services, many of which have recently introduced ad-supported lower-cost plans. Research from analysis company Antenna shows that downgrades from an ad-free plan represented 29% of new additions to the ad-plan offering over the first 13 months. 

Source: Antenna

Keep in mind that while HBO MAx loses subscription money from these downgrades, they gain ad revenue. So it’s not a straight income loss. But it is still a good measure of the value customers place on premium versus basic plans. 

To calculate revenue contraction, tally all the revenue lost from downgrades. To calculate contraction per user, divide the total by the number of users. 

Revenue contraction per user = Total revenue lost from downgrades/Number of users

13. Average revenue per user (ARPU)

If you don’t have a subscription model, you don’t necessarily have recurring revenue. But it’s still important to keep an eye on how your average customer spend is changing over time. Customers who are experiencing success with your brand will generally spend more, while those who are less satisfied will spend less. 

To measure ARPU, divide your total revenue over a period by your average number of active users over that period. 

ARPU = Total revenue/Number of active users

Since ARPU is such an important measure of brand health, it often appears in earnings and investor reports. 

Source: Meta Earnings Presentation Q1 2023

14. Average response time

Average response time tracks how long it takes for customers to first hear from a support agent — it essentially measures the wait times involved in speaking with your team.

A short reply time is a mark of good customer service, especially online, where customers pretty much expect service on-demand. For this reason, many companies rely on bots to handle initial queries.

There are plenty of automation tools, such as Hootsuite Inbox, that provide average ticket handling time reports.

If you’d like to calculate it manually, use the following formula:

Average response time = Total time taken for first response to customer queries / Number of queries

15. Average resolution time

Average resolution time measures how long it takes for customer tickets to be resolved. For a customer and an organization, the sooner customer issues can be resolved, the better.

If you receive a high volume of customer queries, the more necessary it is to use tools to calculate resolution times accurately. Here’s how to calculate it manually:

Average resolution time = Total time spent on resolved cases / number of resolved cases

16. First contact resolution rate

Another key customer service performance metric is first contact resolution rate. Customers don’t like to be passed from one agent to another. Not only does this reflect poorly on the organization, it also often leads to longer resolution times.

If you have a low first contact resolution rate, chances are you’ll also have a high customer effort score (CES). Especially if the customer is asked to explain their issue more than once.

Like average response rate and resolution time, many platforms automatically calculate this for you. Here’s the manual formula, just in case:

First contact resolution rate = Number of cases resolved with one agent / number of resolved cases

17. Overall resolution rate

Not all cases end with a happy resolution. That’s normal. But a good resolution rate should always be the goal.

Here’s how to calculate your overall resolution rate:

??Overall resolution rate = Number of resolved cases / number of unresolved cases

If your resolution rate is low, it’s necessary to do a little more digging—especially if your customer retention rate (CRR) is low as well. Get more granular by looking to see if there’s a specific ticket category that’s bringing your overall resolution rate down and develop relevant solutions.

18. Preferred communication channels

In order to deliver top-rate customer service, it’s necessary to know where customers expect to receive support.

Keep track of the methods and platforms customers use to contact your businesses so you can allocate resources accordingly. For example, if you receive a high volume of support requests on Twitter, it may be time to open a customer service Twitter account.

Free customer service report template

We designed a simple customer service report template in Google Sheets to help you keep track of your customer service efforts month by month. To use or customize this template, go to “File” and “Make a copy” first.

The first tab has a tracker for all your primary and secondary customer service metrics.

The second tab contains a ticket volume tracker, visualized in a line graph where you can easily see which type of tickets you get the most of and identify any rising problem categories or spikes. You can also use this chart to communicate with the product team if, for example, you see spikes in returns, technical issues, or product availability.

The third tab contains all the formulas and definitions you will need to fill out your report, almost like a customer service metrics calculator. Below is a screenshot of the NPS calculator.

Save time on social messaging and improve your customer service metrics with automated responses, smarter workflows, handy surveys, and friendly chatbots — all in the Hootsuite Inbox.

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The post Customer Service Metrics: 2023 Guide + Free Template appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.

Originally posted on July 6, 2023 @ 7:41 pm

Social media archiving for government is a critical component of compliance planning. Social channels are a forum for communicating with constituents and the general public. They are subject to open records and First Amendment laws, just like any other public communication.

Content posted on government social media pages is, by default, publically accessible. But open records laws require a much more thorough archiving of data than the social platforms themselves can provide. Agencies must ensure their social content is archived for access by citizens and journalists. Keep reading to find out how to stay compliant with a smart archiving workflow.

What is social media archiving for government agencies?

Social media archiving for government agencies is a component of open records laws. Social media is a public forum, and must be archived as such.

A proper archive of your social media content and communication also allows you to respond to public records and freedom of information requests. You also need archived social comments if you are faced with a First Amendment challenge.

How is social media archiving regulated in the government sector?

Social media archiving regulations vary by country, and even by state. The common component is that social media is generally considered a public record.

Government organizations and agencies need to maintain an archive of social media content. That includes all comments and conversations. This information needs to be accessible to citizens and journalists who request it.

The requirements for archiving are quite specific and can include:

Collecting social media metadata
Maintaining a record of content in its original format
Keeping social media records for s specific period of time
Archiving comments even if they are deleted or hidden
Maintaining a contextual record of all comments threads
Maintaining data in a specific geographic location

Each jurisdiction also has its own privacy regulations. These impact what government agencies can post on social media. For example, the Government of British Columbia has Guidelines for Government Use of Social Media. These specify that the following topics are off-limits:

Anything currently going through the court system
Confidential information like policy advice and draft legislation
Information about identifiable third parties without statutory authorization

Citizen engagement can encourage people to share personal information on social media. This is especially true when people share photos. This is a particularly important area to consider when thinking about data collection and archiving.

How to archive records on social media and stay compliant

Social media compliance is an ongoing challenge for all government agencies. Especially for those involved in active citizen engagement.

You need a comprehensive strategy for social media archiving. This ensures you have all the records you need to:

comply with legislation
respond to FOI requests,
address First Amendment challenges, and
improve transparency in government.

Set up archiving policies and procedures

Like any good compliance strategy, your archiving system must be built on a solid foundation. Your archiving policies and procedures are the supports upon which all of your recordkeeping is built.

As you build your policies, do a thorough review of the legislation applicable in your jurisdiction to make sure you comply with every detail.

For example, Australia’s privacy and public data policies require social content to be archived in Australian data centers. That means Australian government agencies can only work with archiving solutions that have data storage options within Australia – like Brolly, which is built into Hootsuite.

Build your archiving policies and procedures into your overall social media guidelines. That way, all staff who deal with social media have easy access to your most current policies at all times.

Be sure to include a clear process for approving new social media accounts. The more accounts your agency uses, the more you need to archive. Does every department need its own social channels? Perhaps they do, but there should be a strategic purpose for each new account. Before any new account goes live, make sure to add it to your archiving process.

Capture and preserve all social media content

Like we said above, social media content is considered part of the public record. That includes ALL social media communication on or with your social channels.

You might wonder why you need a special archive of your social media content. After all, it’s publically available on your social accounts. But social media platforms themselves are private-sector companies. They are not subject to open records laws. That means there’s no guarantee the social platforms will preserve your content forever.

Plus, if you ever delete or edit content, you need to keep a record of those changes. Open records laws require you to archive every version or every post presented to the public.

You also need a record of all comments made on your social accounts. That applies even if you have to delete or hide those comments for reasons like:

identifying information,
threats of violence,
profanity,
and so on.

You also have to consider that people might delete or edit their own comments. You still need them in your archive. Without an archiving solution, you have no way to retrieve a constituent comment that they delete from your page.

In addition to open records laws, you need to protect your organization in case of a First Amendment challenge. That means you need an archive of all deleted or hidden comments

Comments posted to official government agency social accounts generally fall under First Amendment protections. Your social media policy should include an acceptable use policy that indicates what types of comments may be deleted and why. Your archive then allows you to prove there was cause for removal.

You should even keep a record of all content in which you are tagged or mentioned, since this can count as communication. Monitoring content in which you’re tagged or mentioned is a best practice for all social media users. It’s an important way to understand the conversation about you online. For government agencies, it’s critical.

In other words, you need purpose-built social media archiving tools for government. This is the only way to fully archive the conversation with constituents and comply with the law.

As a side note, social’s designation as a public record means you cannot block people from following your government agency social accounts. Archiving is one part of compliance with public records laws, but it’s by no means the whole picture. Check out our detailed blog post for everything you need to know about compliance for government agencies using social media.

Include metadata and contextual information

Open records legislation in many jurisdictions requires you to preserve social media content with metadata and contextual information. For example, U.S. courts have generally found that screenshots alone are not a sufficient record of a comments thread.

Why? Because a screenshot is just an image, and images can be edited. That’s why social media archiving for government must include metadata and contextual information.

Let’s look at metadata first. Metadata is not visible on a social media page. But it lives in the background of all online content. Metadata captures information about every post and comment, including:

Who posted it
Exactly when they posted it (timestamp)
What device they used

That means you can see, for example, if one person uses multiple accounts to post multiple comments from the same device. More importantly, all of this metadata together allows your agency to prove that the records in your archive are authentic. It shows they are complete and have not been modified. Without metadata, a social media archive file is unlikely to be accepted in court.

Contextual information captures the context in which a comment is made. Context is important because it helps capture the full intent of what was posted. Content can also provide insight into why a comment had to be deleted or hidden.

For example, a standalone comment might appear to have no reason for deletion. But what about in the content of a comments thread? If constituents are responding to one another, that comment might be seen to provide identifiable information about a third party that violates privacy regulations, or to indicate a threat to another commenter.

An archive with complete metadata and contextual information allows you to reconstruct an entire social media conversation. You’ll have details and content that would otherwise be lost.

Make archived content accessible and searchable

The whole point of archiving open records information is that you can access it and provide it to citizens or journalists that submit a freedom of information request. For that to work, your archive needs to be secure but easily accessible by the appropriate members of your team.

It also needs to be searchable so that you can find all relevant content when it’s requested. Social media archiving tools for government should include advanced search capabilities. You should be able to find content from a specific date range, using specific keywords or user data. The ability to tag content and add notes within the archive also comes in handy when you need to retrieve social content.

Again, it’s important that you can access hidden or deleted content and comments. This is especially true in case of a First Amendment challenge. The full context is important to validate any decisions about removing public commentary from your page.

Failure to comply with a freedom of information request or legal challenge can have serious legal and financial consequences. A complete and easy-to-use archive helps protect your agency from lawsuits and other punitive action.

The bonus? A detailed, searchable archive helps you understand comment and question trends. These may reveal that you need to create more resources around a specific program or policy.

Audit your process on a regular basis

Social media changes fast. Social media legislation doesn’t move quite as quickly, but you can’t assume it will stay the same forever. And the tools available to archive social media content and improve compliance continue to evolve.

That means you need to review your archiving process regularly. You can choose what “regularly” means to your organization, but plan for a thorough social media audit at least quarterly.

For government agencies, that social media audit should include an audit of your archiving process and procedures.

Make sure any new social media accounts have been added to your archiving system. Review the archiving policies and procedures with staff both old and new. Assign someone on your team to monitor any changes in legislation. Be sure to voice these at the regular reviews if they have not yet been addressed.

Social media archiving with Hootsuite

When choosing your social media archiving tools for government compliance, it’s important to work with a trusted and secure vendor. To ensure the security of government and citizen data, the U.S. government requires all cloud services used by federal agencies to pass the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, aka FedRAMP.

Hootsuite is FedRAMP authorized. This identifies Hootsuite as a viable automated government social media archiving solution. Hootsuite also meets the requirements of FCA, IIROC, SEC, PCI, AMF, and MiFID II. This is why more than 2,000 government and public sector agencies use Hootsuite to manage their social media.

Hootsuite integrates with compliance solutions like ProofPoint and Brolly to keep your government social media presence secure. Brolly specifically creates a secure archive with social content, including context, metadata, links, images, and videos.

New posts and comments are automatically archived in real time, including edits, deletions, and hidden comments.

That real-time capability is important because people can change their minds quickly when engaging in a heated debate. You need a record of comments that appear on your page for only a few moments.

Within the archive, you can use tagging, notes, and advanced search to find the information you need to comply with FOI record requests or legal discovery. You can also export your archive to your eRDMS, either manually or on an automated schedule.

Inform and engage constituents, and manage archiving on social media with Hootsuite. From a single dashboard, you can schedule and publish content to every network, monitor relevant conversations, and measure public sentiment around programs and policies with real-time social listening and analytics. See it in action.

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The post Social Media Archiving for Government: How to Stay Compliant appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.

Originally posted on July 4, 2023 @ 3:41 pm

Recent changes to API access on Twitter and Reddit have brought the topic of social media APIs into the news.

APIs power many of the tools and features we use every day in apps and marketing tools — but they’re essentially invisible to everyone but developers. So, what do you need to know about APIs as a social media user or professional?

In this post, we cover everything you need to know about social media APIs to understand how they affect the online tools we use every day.

What is a social media API?

API stands for application programming interface. A social media API is a piece of code that allows social media networks to integrate with third-party apps and tools — for example, social media management tools like Hootsuite.

At its heart, an API is a communications channel. Different programs use it to “talk” to each other and share data in real time. As such, social media APIs allow developers to create apps and services that extend the functionality of social media platforms.

Everyone wins. The social media platforms benefit from this additional functionality without having to build new features themselves. Developers benefit by building new for-profit apps. And users benefit by gaining access to the functions developers create using API data access.

How do social media APIs work?

A social media API works by connecting social media platforms with external tools and apps. It gives external developers access to certain kinds of data that social media-related tools require to work.

All popular social media networks have APIs that developers can use to create social media management tools. You can dig into details on each network’s site for developers:

Instagram APIs
Facebook APIs
YouTube APIs
Twitter APIs
LinkedIn APIs
Pinterest API
TikTok APIs

How does this work in practice? Social media tools like Hootsuite have seamless integrations with all major social networks based on API access. The APIs connect Hootsuite with your social media accounts. Thanks to them, you can manage all your social accounts from one centralized dashboard rather than switching between tabs to handle profiles on different platforms separately. This includes scheduling and publishing posts, putting together analytics reports, replying to messages and comments, and so on.

Networks decide how much social media data their APIs give developers access to. That means apps and other tools that help you manage your social media accounts have to play by the rules set out by the social platforms. That’s why connecting social accounts to a third-party tool for the first time can be cumbersome — social platforms will typically ask you to confirm your consent to share data before granting initial access through their API.

The social media APIs also dictate what features third-party tools can — and can’t — provide. Does it seem like your social media management tools are making you jump through hoops to accomplish a task? It’s likely because they are working around the limitations of a social platform’s API.

For example, Instagram has two main APIs. The Instagram Basic Display API allows developers to create consumer-level apps (e.g. apps that allow users to feature their Instagram feed on their website). These only require basic access to an Instagram account.

The Instagram Graph API provides greater functionality. It’s intended for apps that allow professional Instagram accounts to manage their entire Instagram presence — like Hootsuite.

What are the different types of social media APIs?

Open APIs

Source: Camwilliams96, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Open APIs are publicly available interfaces. These are also sometimes called public APIs or a free social media API.

Generally, these don’t provide access to proprietary or copyrighted data. Instead, they are designed to help developers make use of data that is publicly available.

For example, the Google Maps JavaScript API allows anyone to create a map with a specific place marker and embed it on their website. This is a custom use of data already publicly available in Google Maps.

Here’s what the code would look like for a basic webpage with a custom map created using the Maps JavaScript API:

Source: Google Maps Platform

Developers might need to register for access or authentication to use open APIs. In the example above, you can see the API key, which is a form of authentication. The other form of authentication sometimes required for open APIs is called an OAuth.

To use the Facebook APIs, for example, developers need to create a developer account. Before an app using the Facebook APIs goes live, the developer must add a verified business to the app. They also have to answer some questions about their data handling practices. The app then goes into review.

Partner APIs

Partner APIs are only available to approved business partners. Before developers get access to the API, they need to apply for approval. Then, they are granted a specific type of access in the form of a license or a rights agreement.

Since these APIs provide access to data that is not publicly available, they are much more limited in use. They are usually restricted to performing one specific task. Authentication is usually required in the form of an access token.

Internal APIs

Internal APIs are used to help different systems within one social network work better together. They provide access to backend data for developers who either work for the company or have been contracted by the company. These are not accessible to outside developers. These are also sometimes called private APIs.

Are social media APIs secure?

One of the main benefits of APIs is that they use various security protocols to protect information as it is transferred between applications.

Remember, the “I” in API stands for “interface.” The interface works like a middleman between applications and your devices. The applications only share the information they need to perform specific tasks.

APIs provide users choice in what data is made available to third-party tools. For example, when you grant an app or tool like Hootsuite access to your LinkedIn account, you’ll see a screen asking you which data you want to share. You can also edit this access at any time from the Settings & Privacy menu on your LinkedIn profile.

But even with these guardrails, APIs definitely do have vulnerabilities, since they create a potential data access point for bad actors. Hackers exploited vulnerabilities in Facebook’s APIs in a massive breach in 2018. An API vulnerability also resulted in a Twitter hack in 2022.

APIs are critical to social media platform functionality — so social media companies are consistently working to improve security. On the user side, it’s a good idea to limit your use of third-party social media apps to those that have their own security protocols in place.

6 more interesting facts about social media APIs

1. Social media APIs power interactive chatbots

APIs are the connecting force that allow personalized, interactive, and AI-powered chatbots to run on social media platforms. Have you ever interacted with a chatbot on Facebook Messenger? That conversation was made possible by the Facebook Messenger API.

2.Social media APIs from different platforms can be used together

Each social network has its own API(s). But developers can use those APIs in combination to create tools that provide functionality for multiple social networks. This makes life much easier for anyone who has more than one social media account.

For example, each social platform has its own native analytics information. You can access the analytics for each of your accounts by logging into the account and navigating the the analytics tab. But an API-powered management tool like Hootsuite uses analytics APIs from multiple social platforms. This provides an analytics tool that shows results from multiple platforms all on one screen.

3. Social media APIs have generally been free—but Twitter recently changed that

Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead

— Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev) February 2, 2023

Twitter sparked major debate about the use of APIs in February 2023, when they announced their free API access would be shut down. In May they launched API tiered access pricing:

Free for “write-only use cases and testing the Twitter API”
$100/month for “hobbyists or prototypes”
$5,000/month for “startups scaling their business”
And reportedly up to $42,000/month for “businesses and scaled commercial projects”

Reddit soon followed suit. They announced that commercial API access would require a significant monthly fee.

This has led to the shutdown of many smaller third-party apps for Twitter and Reddit. It remains to be seen if this trend will continue to other social platforms.

4. Social media platforms continue to create new APIs

As social platforms build new functionality, they need to create and release new APIs.

For example, Meta added an Instagram Reels API in late June 2002. They followed up with a Reels API for Facebook in September. In May 2023, Meta added Instagram Stories to the Instagram Content Publishing API. This resulted in announcements like this:

5. Social media APIs could help prevent chronic disease or improve disaster response

Social media APIs provide valuable information for researchers that can be used for the public good—such as preventing chronic disease or getting early warning about natural disasters.

For example, the World Health Organization created a pilot project to gather COVID-19 data from public online conversations, including through social media monitoring API. Other researchers analyzed data related to nicotine poisoning using TikTok hashtags and APIs.

The latest proposal is to develop a system to help prevent chronic disease by identifying potential risk factors based on information collected through social media APIs.

Source: Diana Braga et al. / Procedia Computer Science 220 (2023) 820–825

Researchers have also suggested that data gathered from social media APIs could help governments and rescue organizations better understand what’s happening on the ground in disaster areas so they can improve their response.

6. LinkedIn has adopted an API-first approach

This is an interesting indication of how much value LinkedIn sees in the tools created by third party developers. In the summer of 2022, they began versioning their Marketing APIs.

As part of this change to their API platform, they determined that new features would launch on the partner API at the same time as they launched on the LinkedIn user interface. In some cases, they would actually launch first on the partner API.

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The post Social Media APIs Explained (In Simple Terms) appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.

Originally posted on July 5, 2023 @ 1:41 pm