Social media analytics are tools used to understand data derived from social media. There is a lot of data created every second on social media, and some of it pertains to your company. Finding relevant data and analyzing what they mean about your brand, marketing campaigns, reputation, and the trends related to your field empowers you to make smart decisions.
Listening in on social media
As an example, Netbase Quid is a commonly used social media analytics tool. It has a social media listening function that collects data from social media, both text and image-based. Advanced search functions allow you to direct it to only collect the data pertinent to your business and field. It then applies sentiment analysis to identify the emotions being expressed in words and images in social media about your company and field. Finally, it generates useful reports describing the data and what the findings mean for your company.
Tracking the effects of marketing campaigns
Social media analytics tools need to be able to integrate with tools such as Google Analytics, which monitors and analyzes the use of your company’s website. By combining website analytics with social media analytics, you can track the downstream effects of marketing campaigns on people’s behavior, emotions, and thoughts.
These powerful tools can tell you exactly what is driving traffic to your site. They can tell you what types of people are responding positively to your marketing campaigns. They can precisely tell you which ads are having an effect, and identify the most effective sites and times for ad placement. They can track the responses to your company’s social media posts and email campaigns.
Who is buying, and why
Tracking sales on your website allows you to monitor sales, but it doesn’t tell you who is buying your products or why they are buying your products. If you track social media data, you can determine which demographic groups are interested in your products and why they select your products instead of similar products. This information allows you to target new marketing campaigns to specific groups and design products targeted to specific groups.
Stay on top of trends
Another important use of these tools is to track trends on social media and give you early warning of trends that you might want to leap on, head off at the pass, or avoid at all costs. For example, a media story on outrageous worker abuse in a factory overseas might trigger a trend on social media of consumers trying to find out which companies use similar practices so they can avoid patronizing them. If your social media analytics tool alerts you of the upcoming trend you can proactively post on social media that your company does not engage in such practices and avoid being negatively affected by the trend.
Keep an eye on the competition
Tracking and analyzing social media can also allow your company to be fully aware of what your direct competitors are up to, allowing you to respond proactively to their marketing campaigns and social media posts. This knowledge may also allow you to piggyback on their marketing campaigns and re-direct consumers to your products instead of theirs.
In conclusion
In conclusion, in today’s multi-media and interconnected world, your company needs to use social analytics in order to stay on top of the game. You need these tools to optimize your marketing campaigns and maximize your brand awareness among your targeted consumer population.