Social Media Analytics
Exploring Social Media Analytics
Overview:
Social media analytics is a prominent tool in the business world today. It is the process of compiling data from blogs and social media sites to help make business decisions. Objectives that use social media analytics include increasing revenue, reducing customer service costs, receiving feedback on products and services, and improving public opinion of a product, service, or company as a whole. Some examples of popular social media analytics tools are 33Across, Hootsuite, and Topsy. 33Across is used social media analytics with marketing. SocialDNA targeting technology analyzes how a brand’s online audience interacts with their social media. 33Across helps companies determine the best angles and focuses for their marketing efforts. Hootsuite offers a single online dashboard where a company can manage all their social media accounts. This platform supports scheduling posts, managing content, as well as analysis of collective social media activity. Topsy offers up to date information about what is trending or happening across the whole social media landscape in general or at an exact moment. Topsy is great for determining competitor reach and influence. Social media analytics are very powerful and offer a great deal of information and aid to the success of a brand or business.
How social media analytics relates to the material covered in MIS2502:
Social media analytics supports the course objective: “Discover trends in analytical data stores using the data mining techniques of clustering, segmentation, association, and decision trees.” Social media analytics discover trends within a company’s social media accounts. This software analyzes buying patterns and trends to assist product developments teams, what is being said and implied and how to protect brand image, as well as micro segmenting customers to refine marketing efforts. Social media analytics can also be used by HR to find new hires and gather data that can foster improvements in the overall customer and employee experience. As learned in MIS 2502, the gathering, organization, and analysis of this information is highly integral to business success.
An example that describes how social media analytics has been applied in practice:
Verisk Insurance Solutions uses social media analytics to derive business intelligence regarding recent social and technological advancements such as ride and house sharing, 3D printing, and self driving cars. Because traditional data sources such as policy and claim databases do not give timely analyses, Verisk uses social media analytics to look at emerging risks. This new information will help them gain a greater understanding of the underlying issues.
Sources:
Hardawar, Devindra. “Top 10 Social Media Analytics Tools: The VentureBeat index.” VentureBeat. VentureBeat, 20 Dec. 2013. Web. 17 Apr. 2015.
Rouse, Margaret. “What Is Social Media Analytics? – Definition from WhatIs.com.” SearchBusinessAnalytics. TechTarget, n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2015.
“Social Media Analytics Applied to Emerging Risks.” Verisk Monday Web Seminar Series RSS. Verisk Insurance Solutions, n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2015.