In the recent few years’ social media have proved to be a powerful place for consumers and an excellent place for brands to connect. Social media usually have the power to provide you with a brand first and brand last impression, and it’s the work of social media managers to ensure that the two are positive and good for the brand. Unfortunately, most businesses starting their journey into data analytics usually train their focus on brand-centric. At times, this kind of focus can be termed dangerous for your business and brand as a whole.
Social media analytics is a new concept in the marketing industry, and most businesses usually misunderstand this fundamental concept for what it is not. It’s essential to mention that social media usually offers brands and companies a ripe ground with already eager consumers for any communication. One mistake brands and businesses commit is forgetting that social media is not about brands and consumer engagement. Still, it gets designed for people to share their life experiences and connect. The interactions in social media get purely based on shared interests people have, daily interruptions, and issues that people go through daily.
One might be wondering, what is social media analytics? Social media analytics is defined simply as the approach or methodology used in collecting data from across the social media platforms and undertaking these data into the evaluation to make business decisions. The whole point of undertaking this task is to go over and beyond and understand the relationship between consumers and the various brands they connect with, unlike the perception of just monitoring tweets and retweets and post likes.
When we mention the term social media, it’s essential to understand that the focus should not get limited to only Twitter and Facebook. Still, it’s a whole series of blogs, forums, and review sites that comprise the entire media and news industry. In short, any platform that allows a consumer to share their opinions, beliefs, and also, to some extent, feelings can get regarded as social media and can get used for data analytics.
The majority of the brands lose on the advantages and benefits social media offers because they do not go the extra mile of figuring out what this platform has to offer. Mostly, brands approach social media with a lot of noise, and they forget to go through stuff such as bots, spam, and trolls to understand the power of social media on their brand awareness and recognition.
The other major mistake brands make regarding social media is running one campaign and calling it good. Online and social media platforms require persistence to build and maintain a relationship with their consumers. Also, consistency leads to brands collecting enough data that can get used in social media analytics. Understanding brand fluctuations and other interrelated factors can only come to light through a more profound analysis of the data generated from the brand’s engagements with its current and potential consumers.
One of the goals of social media managers is that the ability to cut and sieve through the social media noise and pursue a highly competitive market requires a lot of consumer intelligence. Also, combining the above with a deliberate and consistent tracking of all conversations on social media is quite effective for stable social media analytics.
A brand that invests in the latest technology and data harvesting tools has found social media as one of the most profound platforms for getting and gathering both brand and consumer insights that one cannot get anywhere. The only thing brands and businesses relying on social media for brand awareness has to maintain is its high competitiveness and frequent changes in this space.
