Anyone actually using social media analytics successfully?

If the goal is leads or sales, the platform dashboards can't tell you - they stop at the click. Put UTM tags on every link you post (source, medium, campaign) and read the results in GA4. Then you can say which platform brought customers instead of which one brought likes.

The trap is opening the dashboard and trying to read all of it. Pick three or four numbers and ignore the rest for a quarter. Ours ended up being reach, saves plus shares, profile clicks and the clicks through to the site, all of which the native insights on each platform give you without paying for anything. Look monthly, not daily - daily numbers on a small account are mostly noise and you end up reacting to a bad Tuesday. And write down what you changed each month, or the numbers tell you nothing.