Key applications of social media analytics

Social media has been growing at an exponential pace since 2004 and is an indispensable part of our lives today. Nearly 45% of the current global population are social media users and this number is still growing (Emarsys). Once a communication platform, Social media, has evolved so much in these past years that today it is an incredible source of news and information. Above all, Social media has become a crucial tool for companies in establishing and maintaining a brand’s voice. 

What is social media analytics 

Social media analytics is the process of collecting and analysing data across social media networks to make customer-centric decisions instead of brand-centric decisions and improve productivity and revenue.  

Each social media platform has its own attributes to measure customer engagement. For example likes on Facebook, retweets on Twitter, tagging on Instagram, etc. Hence, traditional data analytics is not the right approach to extract insights across social media platforms as an increase in followers or engagement not necessarily means conversion or lead generation. This led to the evolution of social media analytics. 

Benefits of using social media analytics 

Social media is a treasure trove of customer insights that can be unearthed via proper social media analytics tools. The following are the key benefits of social media analytics that businesses can luxuriate in: 

See-through customers: Nearly 71% of consumers are likely to recommend a brand to their friends and family if they have had a positive experience with the brand on social media (Lyfemarketing). ‘Outstanding Customer Experience’ has always been one of the cherished aspirations for companies. Social media is a something of a repository of customer sentiments. By understanding their sentiments, brands can engage with them on a personal level and offer products and exclusive promotions as per their preference. In short, social media analytics can enable businesses to garnish their services with personalization. 

Improve marketing efforts: 49% of consumers consider influencer recommendations on social media before making purchase decisions (Fourcommunications).  By analysing social media data, marketers can obtain timely insights on various aspects like demographics, psychographic characteristics of customers, influencers, etc. With this knowledge, marketers can refine their marketing strategies, particularly internet-based marketing campaigns. 

Decode competitors’ strategies: Apart from knowing their customers, businesses can also identify their potential competitors and understand their strategies with the help of social media analytics. Also, businesses can cross-compare customer feedback of their products against their competitors’ products and arrive at a definite conclusion on their product’s performance in the target market. By knowing what customers feel about them and their peers, businesses can gain a competitive advantage and use the pros and cons to take appropriate actions to fill gaps. 

Drive Innovation: Social media analytics can not only empower businesses to drive revenue but can also enable them to drive innovation. Social media analytics can simply be considered as a digital crowdsourcing method, with which brands can examine the likes and dislikes of their customers with their products/services. Using this information, they can easily and clearly figure out what their customers are looking forward to in their future products and services.  

Brand Health: A brand’s online presence has become extremely important in the digital age, since modern customers have started exploring and researching products/services over the internet before hitting the brick and mortar stores. Over 54% of social browsers research products through social media (GlobalWebIndex). Brand health refers to the process of measuring and analysing customer attitudes, experience, behaviour, etc, towards a product/service. Social media can contribute largely towards measuring brand health, as customers today are more comfortable in sharing their opinions across social platforms than on feedback forms.  

Summing Up 

Social media is crucial for businesses to become customer-centric in the age of personalization. Using social media analytics, businesses can avoid getting distracted from their goals and achieve them more effectively. Even more so, they can meet  their customers’ expectations while also meeting revenue targets.