Earning and Retaining Customers with Social Media Analytics

No business can exist in isolation. The need to delve deep into understanding customer behavior and trends has become all the more crucial in this age of Social Media omnipresence. A powerful tool, Social media analytics (SMA) is a veritable boon for companies to unearth prevalent customer preferences by gathering and analyzing data spread throughout the Web, on diverse online platforms such as social media websites, blogs, photo and video sharing sites.

This vast chunk of information enables businesses to gain valuable insights and proficiency; and helps them gauge the pulse of the market, which ultimately aids in converting information into robust actionable strategies.

Partner with Social Media Channels for improved Outcomes

The Internet has completely transformed the manner in which business is conducted today, and social media is a definitive communication tool in this journey. In this advanced and complex scenario, social media channels provide a plethora of opportunities that were hitherto unavailable to companies. Customer engagement is the key and by employing the right methodologies visibility of brands can be increased manifold―both at the local and international levels.

Utilizing social media analytics makes perfect sense, because costs incurred in inbound marketing are pretty low and at times even free. Given this fact, companies everywhere, regardless of their size, are steadily taking the inbound marketing route to reach out to a larger mass of customers, while substantially reducing market spend.

In time, social media platforms have become a kind of one-stop-shop for building and sustaining a strong brand presence. This naturally translates into an upsurge in brand loyalty and increased sales.

Market Dynamics revealed through Analytics

Instead of blindly rushing into the process, enterprises must leverage social media analytics to decide the kinds of goals that will be advantageous to the organization, given the wealth of gathered data. Among other aspects, the primary objectives include an increase in profit margins, reduction in customer service costs; acquiring concrete feedback on products and services and more importantly, enhancing public perception about the brand as a whole.

With these parameters in place, businesses next need to look into adequately defining key performance indicators (KPIs). This step is critical as it helps to ensure a proper and thorough evaluation of the data on hand, which will finally become valuable insights. If you are analyzing Facebook traffic to your company page, the levels of customer engagement can be measured by maintaining a count of followers and Likes.

This apart, any and every mention about your company in the social space is a massive plus point. Different kinds of software tools are available for analyzing unstructured data found in social media.

Choose appropriate Tools and Never lose sight of the End Goal

By meeting basic requirements of tracking consumer behavior on social media, the next step will be to decide whether you want to gather data for a particular campaign or a recent social media phenomenon that’s taking the market by storm. To achieve these diverse needs enterprises will have use an array of tools designed to pull out information on specific focus areas.

Concentrating solely on traffic statistics will help if the desire is to study website engagement on social media. But whenever the campaign is greater in scope, a more befitting metric would be Twitter results, for example. Always remember that you can derive the best results by using social media analytics tools only if they are utilized efficiently.

Social media is synonymous with immediacy. In fact, it would not be far-fetched to say that this aspect is in many ways its USP. This propensity for instantaneous flow of information/data/feedback is vital for companies to evaluate the level of success their products and services enjoy.

Utilize Social Media Analytics for:

· Mine consumer data from social channels to reveal prevalent trends, opinions and attitudes.

· Manage online reputation and tailor campaigns according to metrics.

· Improve customer satisfaction by customizing campaigns and promotions to suit preferences.

· Augment strategic business decisions by analyzing and reporting data for better outcomes.

Almost everyone is a part of social media platforms nowadays. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest and Flickr boast of billions of active users the world over. With such an amazing degree of engagement, the concept of sharing news, views, images and information of any and every kind has flourished in leaps and bounds. This is therefore without a shadow of doubt, the age of instant information.

Enterprises must comprehend that there is a voluminous amount of social media data up for grabs which encompasses user data, geo-location details, comments, types of Web interactions and so on. These components can be mined comprehensively into intelligible and easily configurable dashboards, tables, charts and more.

The ROI-Analytics Connection

In the past, various traditional marketing practices faltered due to their shortcomings such as being unable to measure ROI precisely. As a result, the numbers were most often tremendously subjective. One must keep in mind that without the active and proper use of social media analytical tools, measuring the ROI of inbound content marketing from social media channels is no cakewalk either.

Enterprises that are lackadaisical in their approach to adapting to the latest online realities are headed for certain failure. As mentioned earlier, it is the new generation of informed consumers that dictates trends of attitudes.

By utilizing social media analytics companies can keep pace with market demands and in one stroke address various issues including heightened customer service, amplified marketing techniques and support methods. In addition to these benefits, businesses can also meet with a horde of other requirements that range from supply chain management to human resource policies.