Social media enables you to match data created by social interactions with individual’s preferences and general interests. This gives marketers profiles with great insights on how to tailor future offers and products to their customer base.
1. Listening Data
The first rule of every social media plan is to listen. Monitoring news related to your industry helps give you a sense of what people are saying about you and your products or services. Social media enables you to expand this information and make it more relevant.
You can gather real time data about the reactions to your products and marketing campaigns by looking at interactions on Facebook, retweets, mentions on Twitter and comments on your blogs. Measuring the volume, emotion and relevance of these interactions, and tracking over time, will allow you to determine how new products, services and campaigns were received by your customers.
Using tools like Google Alerts and HootSuite allow you to monitor the basic volume of interactions. If you have a high volume and manual tracking is not possible, there are paid products such as Radian 6, Meltwater buzz and Scout Labs available.
Companies like Dell and Gatorade have set up company “listening” centers where employees constantly interact and listen within social media about their brand.
2. Strategic Forecasting Data
Companies like RapLeaf allow you to identify your customer base by revealing key insights and trends about which social networks your customers are using as well as which websites they are visiting, location trends and demographic trends.
Using this data will help you to hone your financial performance objections and also assist in product development. You can also use this information to tailor promotions for each social network and then track the revenue. Knowing this information about your customer base allows for more accurate targeting and the option of personalizing campaigns.
3. Real Time Tracking Data
Social media allows marketers to view relevant and real time trends, including how their campaigns are performing at any given time and how changes to these campaigns affect results.
Tracking this data allows businesses to see how a campaign is performing and allows them to identify positive or negative trends and make instant changes as needed along the way. This ability enables your business to curtail any wasteful spending or funding if the campaign isn’t going as planned.
4. Benchmarking Data
Social Media allows you to understand your performance relative to your competitor’s performance, because so much of it is accessible. Once you have gathered your data, compare it to your competitors to gain a better perspective on your performance.
When doing so, be sure to compare the size of your communities to that of your competitors, as well as the level of activity. Do your followers post more or less than your competitors? You can also see who is following you and your competitors and who has more relevant community members for your industry.
If you are receiving either more or fewer interactions than your competitor, but posting the same amount of content, look at the differences in your content and what is driving the results. Don’t forget to account for competitors in each social channel you are active on and if possible, benchmark yourself against competitors that are active across multiple channels.
5. Reflection and Insight
No matter how prepared a company is, there is always a level of uncertainty in social media. The advantage to tracking services is that you won’t find yourself guessing why something worked or didn’t work. Customer feedback is significant and more readily available for companies looking to reformulate their efforts.
By understanding the campaign through your consumer’s eyes and gaining the ability to gauge their evaluation process, social data can be an invaluable tool. How will you use this social data in 2011 to grow your business and eliminate the coming to a “dead end” scenario? Using metrics to “measure and adjust” provides a company the opportunity to evaluate and adjust the social media strategy as needed.
This allows your social media efforts to be measured (quantifiable) with the belief that your efforts are working (succeeding). With these components being measured, you can purposefully iterate to improve even more. This data is much better that being a “naïve optimist” with limited ability to measure your social media efforts (fuzzy) and believing that the efforts are working (succeeding).
Most businesses realize that social media is worth the effort, but are not quite sure how best to measure their efforts. I hope this information above helps you get started in your social media campaign and allows you to think strategically, while realizing that tactical measurements are also as important in whatever social media campaign strategy you have in place.
1. Listening Data
The first rule of every social media plan is to listen. Monitoring news related to your industry helps give you a sense of what people are saying about you and your products or services. Social media enables you to expand this information and make it more relevant.
You can gather real time data about the reactions to your products and marketing campaigns by looking at interactions on Facebook, retweets, mentions on Twitter and comments on your blogs. Measuring the volume, emotion and relevance of these interactions, and tracking over time, will allow you to determine how new products, services and campaigns were received by your customers.
Using tools like Google Alerts and HootSuite allow you to monitor the basic volume of interactions. If you have a high volume and manual tracking is not possible, there are paid products such as Radian 6, Meltwater buzz and Scout Labs available.
Companies like Dell and Gatorade have set up company “listening” centers where employees constantly interact and listen within social media about their brand.
2. Strategic Forecasting Data
Companies like RapLeaf allow you to identify your customer base by revealing key insights and trends about which social networks your customers are using as well as which websites they are visiting, location trends and demographic trends.
Using this data will help you to hone your financial performance objections and also assist in product development. You can also use this information to tailor promotions for each social network and then track the revenue. Knowing this information about your customer base allows for more accurate targeting and the option of personalizing campaigns.
3. Real Time Tracking Data
Social media allows marketers to view relevant and real time trends, including how their campaigns are performing at any given time and how changes to these campaigns affect results.
Tracking this data allows businesses to see how a campaign is performing and allows them to identify positive or negative trends and make instant changes as needed along the way. This ability enables your business to curtail any wasteful spending or funding if the campaign isn’t going as planned.
4. Benchmarking Data
Social Media allows you to understand your performance relative to your competitor’s performance, because so much of it is accessible. Once you have gathered your data, compare it to your competitors to gain a better perspective on your performance.
When doing so, be sure to compare the size of your communities to that of your competitors, as well as the level of activity. Do your followers post more or less than your competitors? You can also see who is following you and your competitors and who has more relevant community members for your industry.
If you are receiving either more or fewer interactions than your competitor, but posting the same amount of content, look at the differences in your content and what is driving the results. Don’t forget to account for competitors in each social channel you are active on and if possible, benchmark yourself against competitors that are active across multiple channels.
5. Reflection and Insight
No matter how prepared a company is, there is always a level of uncertainty in social media. The advantage to tracking services is that you won’t find yourself guessing why something worked or didn’t work. Customer feedback is significant and more readily available for companies looking to reformulate their efforts.
By understanding the campaign through your consumer’s eyes and gaining the ability to gauge their evaluation process, social data can be an invaluable tool. How will you use this social data in 2011 to grow your business and eliminate the coming to a “dead end” scenario? Using metrics to “measure and adjust” provides a company the opportunity to evaluate and adjust the social media strategy as needed.
This allows your social media efforts to be measured (quantifiable) with the belief that your efforts are working (succeeding). With these components being measured, you can purposefully iterate to improve even more. This data is much better that being a “naïve optimist” with limited ability to measure your social media efforts (fuzzy) and believing that the efforts are working (succeeding).
Most businesses realize that social media is worth the effort, but are not quite sure how best to measure their efforts. I hope this information above helps you get started in your social media campaign and allows you to think strategically, while realizing that tactical measurements are also as important in whatever social media campaign strategy you have in place.
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