How To Increase A Brand’s Share Of Voice?

Ever wondered how high or low is your brand’s Share of Voice on the social?
 

Share of Voice refers to the total amount of social mentions that a brand or product garners over that of its competitors. 

Here are some simple but very effective ways to increase a brand’s Share of Voice:

1. Measure and Monitor Your Share of Voice:

If you want to see an increase in your brand’s social mentions, then you must first monitor and measure your brand’s Share of Voice. You can do this successfully and most effectively by using a Social Media Analytics tool. 

To give you a very recent example, Using Shout Analytics, when we studied how the film Chennai Express was going to fare at the box office, we found that the film’s Share of Voice was this –

2. Get People Talking:

Getting people (your audience, fans and followers) to take notice of your brand is crucial to the brand’s Share of Voice. Hence, there is no better way to get people talking about your brand other than through awesome, engaging and shareable content. 

For Chennai Express, it was Deepika’s Tamil accented dialogue delivery and the film’s stereotypical South Indian look and feel that initially got people talking. On YouTube, there were videos of the film’s trailers, songs, scenes with popular dialogues and even behind-the-scenes snippets. These were interesting, engaging enough topics for the film’s fans to get talking on the social. Needless to say, the film’s Share of Voice simply catapulted to glory.

3. Now, Talk To Your Audience:

So, now that there is sufficient ‘talk’ about your brand on the social, the next step is engaging with your audience. Do they appreciate your social content – like it, share it, retweet or repin it? Then, go ahead, thank them. Tell them you appreciate their efforts. Similarly, are there dissatisfied or disgruntled customers complaining about poor service? Then, get in touch with those customers immediately, assure them that you’ll resolve the issue and keep your word. 

Good and effective customer service never goes unnoticed or unappreciated on the social.

Thus, the key to increasing a brand’s SoV lies in giving engaging content to your audience, then building an honest engagement with your audience and finally, to measure and monitor your SoV to identify the highs and lows of your social media engagement efforts.

What were your strategies for increasing your brand’s Share of Voice? Tell us in the comments below.

Social Media Analytics Tools: The Most Reliable Source For Amassing Social Intelligence

In my previous post on Social Intelligence, I discussed the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of the importance of Social Intelligence. In this post, I will delve into the ‘how’ of it.

I will begin by reiterating that organizations and brands cannot afford to merely collect data and not explore it for actionable insights. Social Intelligence or Social Media Intelligence is clearly the vital key to business success. Therefore, apart from monitoring, collecting and storing their social data, organizations must, using Social Media Analytics tools, also analyze it well. However, no organization can benefit from Social Intelligence if the amassed Intelligence does not support its business objectives and goals. 

This brings us to the question – HOW can organizations use Social Intelligence to their benefit?

The trick here is simple – once an organization gets its goals and business objectives in place, it must invest resources and time in collecting social data that is relevant to their business. Effective Social Media Analytics tools are the most reliable sources to separate signals from noise.

Angela Hausman, quoting one McKinsey report points out that unlike in traditional media where data analysts spend more than 80% of their time just collecting data, in social media, data collection is “ubiquitous and real-time”. Not just that, by providing instant but detailed reports, Social Media Analytics tools makes data analysis and interpretation quick and hassle free.

What’s more, when an organization’s social media efforts are analyzed and interpreted with precision by Social Media Analytics tools, heads of units and senior leadership can improve communication and engage in constructive discussions based entirely on quantified facts and figures.

The bottom line here is that Social Media Analytics tools are a great source for gleaning and amassing Social Intelligence. I firmly believe that Social Intelligence will be extremely crucial for the future success of businesses both big and small. Therefore, it is imperative for organizations to leverage the power of Social Media Analytics tools to the fullest in order to empower themselves with Social Intelligence.

Do you also believe that Social Media Analytics tools are the most reliable sources of Social Intelligence? Share your thoughts in the comments below. To know how Shout Analytics can equip you with Social Intelligence, write to us at info@shoutanalytics.com

Social Media and Entertainment: Truly Made for Each Other

What do Psy, Varun Agarwal and Dhanush have in common?

Psy’s Gangnam Style and Dhanush’s Kolaveri Di went viral on the social media and set the world tapping its foot to its rhythm.  Varun Agarwal’s blog and Facebook posts were compiled to make the book, How I Braved Anu Aunty and Co-founded a Million Dollar Company. These entertainers owe their success in the entertainment industry entirely to social media. It brought them unprecedented fame and success.

Social media in itself is considered as the biggest entertainer. But social media’s power to influence and drive the entertainment industry is even bigger. The relationship between entertainment and social media and also with individuals consuming the two is quite strong. In fact, statistics reveal that while watching TV, 83% of people surf the web, 79% visit Facebook and 41% tweet about the show that they are watching.

People go to watch movies based on the reviews in the social media, reality shows are the topic of discussion on Facebook, photos from a rock concert are shared and liked all over the social media and sporting events are the hottest  topics on Twitter.

Social Media and Entertainment in India:

Today, more and more individuals rely on social media for deciding whether or not to watch movies. Knowing this well, directors and production houses are now using social media to promote their movies and generate a positive buzz around it through exceptional engagement ideas and other marketing strategies.

In India, Bollywood and Cricket are two of the biggest entertainment forces. For a nation that simply swoons over its celebrities and yearns to get every little detail of their personal and professional life, the social media was a custom made solution. The celebrities too have made the best use of social media. Most of the leading actors and cricketers are active on Twitter and Facebook and they are among the most highly followed people on social media. It has brought the celebrities and fans closer to each other like never before. What is even more interesting is the active and engaging presence of distributing companies, directors, scriptwriters, lyricists etc on social media. Even TV stars are not far behind in sharing news and photos from their shows.

So, at a time when movie-goers are turning real-time critics by tweeting reviews, wannabe authors are writing their manuscripts as status updates and musicians and theater artists using Pinterest and YouTube to promote their works, we know for sure that social media and entertainment are truly made for each other.

Effective Customer Analysis Using Social Media Analysis Tools

We, as heads of businesses, acknowledge the fact that our consumers or customers are the real drivers of our success. A high rate of customer satisfaction is vital for the success of our brands/ products and services. And with increased use of the social media, consumers today have an online presence more than ever before and they use the social channels to make purchases, get feedback on a product, review services etc. In other words, a customer’s purchase decision – something that’s so important for our businesses – is now radically influenced by the social media.

In fact, an article by Karthik Sharma in CIO.in, summarizing a Gartner report, points out that social media is “the most compelling example of how consumerism drives enterprise IT practices.” Of course we realize this, don’t we? That’s why we specially invest in innovative social media strategies and devise social media campaigns. But, while there is no denying that social engagement will take us one step closer to our customers, we still lack in important information relating to the customer’s emotional, social and demographic state, the knowledge of which is so critical to making business decisions in the future.

I believe that organizations can do better business when they productively harness the social data surrounding their brands and products or services. Investing considerable time and effort to analyze and uncover insightful revelations about customers – both existing and potential – can prove extremely useful for your business success. The insightful data gathered from customer analysis can be used to propel superior product development plans, customer relationship management and marketing strategies.

Serving organizations in this end are efficient and highly competitive social media analytics tools which facilitate effective customer analysis using which marketing and customer relationship department heads can:

·         Understand trends in their customers’ purchase habits.

·         Know their customers’ sentiments and attitudes.

·         Identify their brand advocates and key influencers.

·         Monitor and measure their brand reputation and share of voice.

The above insights will assist organizations to:

·         Develop and design specific products that will meet customer requirements.

·         Design accurately targeted marketing campaigns.

·          Foresee negative reaction to products or promotional campaigns

·    Identify causes of customer dissatisfaction and chart strategies for resolving these issues.

Shout Analytics is one such high-end Social Media Analytics platform that enables organizations to perform an effective, efficient and insightful customer analysis for leveraging their business.

To know more about Shout Analytics, contact us at info@shoutanalytics.com

Why Financial Institutions Need Business Intelligence and Analytics Tools?

Financial Institutions especially banks, stock exchange houses and wealth management enterprises or institutions broadly referred to as Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) industries are slowly turning to social media analytics as the size of their unstructured social data grows by leaps and bounds every day.

Shout Analytics, a sophisticated big-data competent Social Media Analytics product is a viable solution for BFSI enterprises looking for a cutting edge Social Media Analytics.

Thanks to the ever increasing use and growing popularity of social media channels; that facilitate seamless sharing of information, today’s business enterprises have to deal with large streams of unstructured data. For BFSIs, this unstructured data involves both static and real-time data generated both within and outside the enterprise and primarily consists of data pouring in from the following:

• Trading rooms,
•  Call center logs,
•  Sales, research and marketing reports,
• Market pricing,
• Newscasts,
• Internet
•  Ubiquitous Social media platforms.

Now, analyzing and interpreting the above mentioned data streams are crucial to the BFSIs if they want to gain actionable insights from this rich-in-information data repository. As such, the need of the hour for BFSIs is an analytics solution that guarantees in-depth, accurate and optimal analysis of large unstructured data including social data.

Challenges for BFSIs

Advancement in technology has led to an increase in the people’s use of financial services as well as simplified the process of making financial transactions. In the wake of such advancements, I believe there are certain challenges still plaguing the BFSI enterprises. These include –

•  Detect fraud
•  Predict stock sentiment
•   Overhaul customer service
•   Customize product innovation

Can Social Media Analytics tools help BFSI enterprises to overcome these challenges?

The answer is yes. Business Intelligence and Analytics tools like Shout Analytics are equipped with advanced capabilities like text analysis, predictive analysis, and sentiment analysis among others that allows BFSI institutions to address the above mentioned challenges effectively.  Here is how social media analytics tools will help BFSIs –

• Easily detect improper or immoral practices in transactions, and find common trends in fraudulent activities using Predictive Analysis.
• Stock prices are bound to fluctuate depending on the vibe generated in the media. Breaking news  stories can adversely affect stock market performance. Using sentiment analysis BFSIs can detect the brewing consumer sentiments on the aftermath of such impactful news stories and also predict, using predict analysis the possible outcomes.
• Measure, monitor and manage their social reputation and to improve their customer engagement initiatives.
• Financial organizations can track the consumers’ online conversation and can find out their actual needs and requirements. Based on this insightful knowledge channel, innovation of new products and services which are completely in-line with the consumers’ needs and requirements can be made.

This is just a sneak peek into what business intelligence and analytics tools do to BFSIs. To know more, contact info@shoutanalytics.com and see how your organization can benefit from advanced social media analytics.

How to Measure Brand Building Initiatives?

 Author: Suraj Arukil 

 About the Author: CEO/Founder of Nuvento ( a technology firm that specializes in Business Intelligence and Software Architecture.)

 

In my previous two posts I pointed out that social media is the new tool for building successful brands. In this post, I try to understand why brands need to measure and track their social reputation.

Using social media, business organizations are successful in establishing a strong presence for their brands and reach out to a wider target segment. Successful brand building, through excellent social engagement methods, creates favorable reputation for brands. However, I believe that engagement is just one part of a successful social strategy. The bigger picture consists of monitoring your brand’s reputation and measuring the impact of your brand building initiatives.

Why Should Brands Measure Their Social Reputation?
Social engagement will undoubtedly get you closer to your customers. But if your brand building initiatives have to be exceptionally effective, then you should also make an effort to UNDERSTAND your customers. 

For this, organizations must LISTEN carefully to their customers and find out what they are talking about the brand, its products and services.

I’m sure you would agree that that this is no simple task. Organizations often find themselves in a fix when they have to filter and earmark relevant actionable information from thousands of random conversations. But organizations must find a feasible way of doing this because social conversations are the bedrock of social brand building success. These conversations provide precious actionable insights that aid in crucial decision-making.

As Brandinfection.com puts it, using Twitter search to source out pertinent conversations can be incredibly enlightening. Foraging through Facebook’s feeds for relevant posts can unearth innumerable treasures. Rummaging Reddit’s ramblings can expose intriguing conversations worth pursuing.

Image Source: webadvantage.net

How Can We Measure It? 
In my opinion, listening to and understanding social conversations is crucial for effectual brand management. But, identifying and responding to emerging consumer trends is even more important.

Therefore, we at Nuvento Systems Private Limited recognize the growing importance of modern business enterprises’ online initiatives. And to help these organizations to not only track but also measure the impacts of their brand building initiatives, we have developed Shout Analytics, a superior social media analytics platform that seamlessly gathers relevant, useful information from the organisation’s social channels of engagement and converts it into insightful reports that help enterprises make successful brand management decisions, which in turn generate new leads, boost sales and most important of all, increase ROI.
 

Shout Analytics’ Brand Intelligence module analyses and enables brand managers with vital knowledge on key trends in consumer conversation (surrounding the brand), consumer behavior and brand identity.
 

It also provides detailed analysis on demographics, brand expansion, target audience sentiments as well as share of voice and word of mouth analysis.
 

To know more about Shout Analytics, write to us at info@shoutanalytics.com

Business Benefits of Brand Building On Social Media

 Author: Suraj Arukil 

 About the Author: CEO/Founder of Nuvento ( a technology firm that specializes in Business Intelligence and Software Architecture.)

Image Resource: bellwetherfoodgroup.com

In the last blog I discussed about what is brand building, why its necessary and how it has evolved with time. Now we will discuss about what an organisation can expect out of brand building initiatives.

1.Constructs An Identity: Branding ones products and services creates a unique business identity. A distinctive brand name, tagline and jingle will separates you from your competitors and establish inimitable qualities, values and features that your organization stands for.

2.Guides Consumer Choice: Clear distinctions help your audience to single you out and choose over others to satisfy their needs. You become their preferred choice who they trust and rely on.

3.Garners Loyalty and Credibility: Once a consumer has picked you and is satisfied with your brand, he is likely to choose you the next time and most likely, every other time in future. And I think a credible brand – one that behaves and does what it claims to do – is always well appreciated and accepted quickly by quality-seeking customers.

4.Propels Organizational Growth and Equity: A well-recognized and successful brand accommodates easy market entry for your organization’s other related products/ services. And the best part according to me is that it increases your equity when you are considering a merger or acquisition.

I mentioned in the last post how organizations are exploring new avenues, especially social media for building their brands. The statistics say the same story as 50 percent of small business owners report that they gained their customers via social networks, the most popular ones being LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook1. Isn’t that amazing?

I truly believe that social networking sites are the new tools of brand building. Here are some of the advantages of using social media for branding –

1. Offers Multiple Engagement Windows: You can engage actively with audiences by generating and sharing quality content on different social pages as it creates a wider reach and strengthens the brand. This, I believe is one of the best way to increase ROI.

2. Promotes Loyalty: Effective branding on social sites builds a valuable customer base. Customer recommendations will not only promote brand loyalty but also influence purchase decisions.

3. Increases Traffic: Social networking pages are extremely helpful in driving traffic to your website and increase your ROI.

So you see, as Blair Entenmann, President of Marketing Help! puts it, social branding is an investment in your business that will continue to pay back on itself as your company grows and expands. However, organizations should note that brands can be successfully built on social networks only through exceptional customer service and effective customer engagement on a continual basis. Branding on social media should be crafted in the manner that it is aimed at serving the customers first and selling products later.

How To Build A Successful Brand?

 Author: Suraj Arukil 

 About the Author: CEO/Founder of Nuvento ( a technology firm that specializes in Business Intelligence and Software Architecture.)

Image Source: laurawilsononline.com

Every once in a while organisations go for a brand revamp where the focus is to inculcate the feel of something new which was not existing before. Brand building is vital for organizations with large-scale business operations because brands are valuable and more powerful than products.

Products and their popularity are restricted to their life cycle, but because brands convey quality and credibility and create a relationship with the users, they outlive products and continue to live on in the consumers’ minds and hearts.

Then and Now

Earlier, branding was the sole responsibility of the marketers and PR personnel who used like print, OOH, radio and TV advertising for promotions. Today, however, while they continue to exploit these traditional mediums, marketers are also discovering new interesting avenues like the Internet and social media to popularize brands.

I think this shift in medium is because organizations are realizing that customers-endorsement and customer loyalty plays an important part in strengthening their brand. And the best way to build customer loyalty for a brand is by effective customer engaging fuelled by direct interactions with them on various social media platforms.

Current Trends and Strategy

Innovative organizations are following the changing consumer behavior and their perceptions, and are adapting their branding strategies accordingly.  Successful modern branding strategies involve active customer engagement and stakeholder involvement. Keeping a brand alive in this uncertain and unstable economic situation is not easy; yet, business enterprises – either new or already established – can leverage their businesses if they indulge in careful and smart branding for their products.

Branding is a challenge, which requires a sophisticated strategy – something that I think should be a combination of creativity and business acumen. For me, the best branding so far has always been based on two things – a strong idea and effective execution of that idea. Organizations, which recognize this can, build smart brands.

And what is the best way to do it? My suggestion is to make generous and effective use of the modern digital technologies and social media and social networking sites in particular which create a virtual relationship between your brand and the consumers where you can catch hold of their nerve and get effective cues.

Explore and Extract Social Data For Brand Building

 Author: Suraj Arukil 
About the Author: CEO/Founder of Nuvento ( a technology firm that specializes in Business Intelligence and Software Architecture.)

Social media sites foster conversations. People visit these sites to interact; share their candid thoughts and opinions about their social experiences with their family and friends. 

Enterprises using social media in their brand development strategies have much to gain from these conversations because these conversations provide useful actionable insights on a plethora of business aspects – from market research to consumer/brand engagement, social recommenders, information filtering, or expertise location. 

For example, an individual who has applied for a home loan could share on the social channels, his experience with his service bank and several other banks. Subsequent data from these conversations could revolve around interest rates, processing fees, repayment options, loan transfer rules, EMI etc. 

Banks and other financial services looking to expand their target market or improving customer engagement initiatives can extract these specific social data for business benefits by using competent social media analysis tools. For a financial institution, the benefits include getting insights on customers’ needs and requirements in financial services including individual customer’s likes and preferences, identifying products and services that require improvements and developing new personalized products to suit customer needs. Moreover, institutions can also analyze their competitor’s strategies in similar area and make improvisations to their marketing plans.

Social conversations can provide enterprises across industries – from finance and insurance to retail and entertainment with critical business intelligence.  Understanding the value of these social data, extracting it and using it in better decision making will leverage business success.

As businesses and brands abandon passive listening for active and highly engaging interactions with their customers and fan base, today’s business enterprises need broader social media analytics tools that can optimize these interactions. Shout Analytics is one such new-age social media analysis product that uses advanced NLP algorithms and is based on the latest technology stack that can handle up to 7-8 terabytes of data. 

To learn how Shout Analytics can improve your business profitability, contact us at info@shoutanalytics.com