The Role of Social Analytics
January 25, 2012Social analytics comes with a dizzying number of vendors and the traditional blurriness associated with a new business concept, so spending some time to prepare the organization’s strategy is crucial.
Social media’s role in our society is growing. It’s being adopted by a wide spread of demographics all over the world. This is where your consumers are hanging out. This is where they are expressing themselves – what they like, what they don’t like, what they want. This is where they are talking about you.
Consequently, many organizations are feeling pressure to jump into this space. Unfortunately, this amounts to a poorly managed Facebook page or neglected Twitter account for those organizations that don’t put enough thought into their planning. At best, these efforts are a waste of resources for the organization, at worst, they can actually be damaging since the information being released isn’t being monitored and regulated. Social media initiatives should be thoroughly planned and managed in order to be effective.
One area of the social media initiative that has been undervalued is the role of social analytics. Analytics should be used to shed light on the results of your project, providing modifications for current efforts and guidance for future ones. Anyone contemplating a social media initiative should also be giving thought to social analytics.
Use of social analytics is most likely to influence social media success
Social Media Management Platforms (SMMP) often include features providing analytical capabilities, and their level of sophistication varies widely. Organizations often find the need to adopt multiple applications – anywhere between 3 and 12 – when trying to create a whole solution to support their social media efforts. Fortunately, there are plenty of vendors in this space to help them achieve this; unfortunately, there are so many vendors in this space, it can be difficult to sort through them.
Some of the vendors currently offering social media support:
When considering a social analytics initiative, there are a couple different types of analysis which have become popular: Social Listening and Sentiment Analysis. Social listening uses text analysis to see what words are being associated with your brand and with competitors’ brands. It reveals:
- Where are the conversations happening?
- What is being discussed?
- Is talk growing or shrinking?
- What is being said about your competitors? Can you capitalize on any weaknesses? Defend against strengths?
On the other hand, sentiment analysis focuses on if people talk about your brand in a positive, negative, or neutral context. You can even go further and drill down in terms of product or channel, discovering preferred features to be emphasized going forward.
- How do people feel about your brand? Your product(s)?
- Who is spreading positivity?
- Who are people listening to?
The insights derived from these analytics can be applied to multiple departments, such as sales, customer service, and marketing. Consequently, social analytics projects should be treated as a cross-departmental project. One department will likely be driving it, but objectives should be established for each department, and then the actual project should be managed from a central hub, with results disseminated outward.
One of the most important things to keep in mind when planning these projects and choosing vendors is that the immaturity of the market means consolidation is on the horizon. That means a lot of vendors are going to be acquired, stalling, or going bankrupt in the near future, so you do not want to make any long-term commitments to a single vendor. Go into social analytics with short-term goals and an aim for quick results.
For more information on social analytics strategy, see Info-Tech’s Formulate a Social Analytics Strategy.
For more information on selecting and deploying an SMMP, see Info-Tech’s Vendor Landscape Plus: Social Media Management Platforms.
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