In this post I tried to attempt at defining Social analytics and its usefulness to businesses in accomplishing their goals.
Businesses have been collecting and
analyzing web traffic data for the past twenty years, however it is only
recently that businesses started focusing on tracking data from social media
blogs and sites like Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pintrest, etc. The
process of collecting data on the number of mentions, referring domains, likes,
retweets and key terms associated with the businesses in the social media and
analyzing it to develop key performance indicators (KPI) to determine the return
on advertising (ROA) for the business is called social analytics or social
media analytics.
Social analytics can be broken down
into two steps [1]. Step 1 is collection of data. In this step, data from
social media is used to develop metrics. According to Avinash Kaushik the
following four metrics conversion rate, amplification rate, applause rate and
economic value can be used to adequately predict the KPI of the business growth
in social media. Avinash in his Occam’s
Razor blog describes the relevance of these metrics and their importance in
understanding a business success in social media. In addition, it is also
important to understand that not all social media sites are created equal. For
example, the key difference between Twitter and Facebook is that in Twitter
information is broadcasted to the public and is content based, while on
Facebook the information is relayed through sharing between the people
(friends). Given the differences between the social media sites, business need
to be wary on where they post their ads to target the right audience [2]. The
second step in social media analytics is to find patterns in the behaviors of
the users. Patterns help in understanding the mood and sentiments of the users
in social media. This will help businesses to proactively performing predictive
analysis to tailor the content. According to social media data and predictive
analysis article published in Customer Relationship Management, Nov issue, MTV
had to change the characters behaviors in its Teen Wolfe show. With the help of
Networked Insights and the data obtained from Facebook, MTV introduced romantic
and gruesome characters in their teen show to appeal to both male and female audience,
which in return caused the show to become popular. Few other discovered
patterns like countries that tweet most (60% Twitter posts come from USA
followed by Brazil at 22%), mood of the audience (mood perk up at breakfast and
around 6 PM), 53.5 billion minutes pr month is spent on Facebook by Americans,
women are more likely to engage on Facebook than men.
Social media analytics is still in
early stages. There are multiple vendors that provide this information to
businesses. Adobe Social, Google analytics, crowdbooster, IBM business
analytics, and many more. These tools offer easy to use dashboards that help
capture the required which in turn help
businesses find the right platform to interact with its audience.
Reference:
[1] Why Social Media Analytics
Matters: http://www.1to1media.com/view.aspx?DocID=33972
[2] Social Analytics, Mashable Media
Summit:
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