Taking you through two examples of how Social Media Analytics Drives Business Success

I have previously told you how social media has transformed the banking and entertainment industries.

Now, here are two Forbes reports proving my point that banks and the entertainment industry must explore social media analytics to tap greater business intelligence.

Report 1:

According to this report, the amount of stored digital data will be 48% more than the previous year. As such, banks, financial institutions and insurance companies are leaving no stones unturned to literally cash in on social media analytics in order to make sense of their mammoth Big Data.

The author, Mindy Powers, says that banks are monitoring and mining data from all kinds of digital content – from videos and news to social media data – and using analytics tools to gather insightful information about competitor strategies, market trends and most importantly understand customer behavior and traits to build detailed customer profiles. 

Using advanced social media analytics tools for creating a detailed customer profile is now an essential and inevitable part of every brand’s digital marketing blueprint. And banks cannot afford to be different.

Collecting granular details about individual customers and collating them to predict customer behavior in the future, identifying and preventing fraud and understanding customer sentiments are some of the many benefits of social medi analytics for banks. 

As Powers says, the time is just ripe (for banks around the world) for capitalizing the power of Big Data. 

Report 2:

Did you know that a music streaming service in the US is actually using social media analytics to “increase their competitiveness in a fast growing market”? 

Well, the company is Slacker and it uses analytic tools to publish what it calls their “engagement quotient” score – a weekly list of top songs (across genres) based on user-data gathered as they use and perform various tasks (number of times a track is started, a song is listened to from start to finish, a song is shared on social, song skips, channel changes or channel bans .etc) while using Slacker’s online service.

This to me is a case in point of how social media and social media analytics are going to revolutionize the entertainment industry  business in the future. 

If you think that social media analytics is the way forward for banks and entertainment industry, and want to know how we at Shout Analytics can help your business harness the power of Big Data, then write to us at info@shoutanalytics.com

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

B2B: Is Social Media Monitoring An Advantage?

In a business-to- business marketing, is social media monitoring an advantage? With the world booming with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, I strongly believe that social media plays a major role and has a great advantage in B2B marketing.

As I have discussed certain matters on social media in my previous blogs, I would like to add some more aspects, as to how really social media monitoring is beneficial to B2B marketing. What I feel is, there is a perception that social media is best suited for business-to-customer marketing rather than business-to-business marketing this is because the success stories given for B2C is more than B2B, but this does not mean that B2B marketing in social media has flopped. In B2B marketing, social media is very much used to generate awareness and also to strengthen your brand.

As a B2B marketer, one should minimize guessing and should concentrate on monitoring, what I mean by this is, by monitoring social media networks, you can better understand where conversations are taking place, you can understand your customers’ needs, wants, issues, frustrations and integrate these findings into your marketing strategies.. Moreover, a good B2B marketer is one who makes use of the social media monitoring tools that best helps you track the relevant discussions and conversations.

Elements to master social media monitoring for better B2B marketing

●     Understanding Customers: It is very important to understand the insights of your customer’s needs as well as their problems. For example, if your customer is finding difficult to trace the product information. It is important for you to enhance your website navigation, reorganize content or create additional content to make product literature more accessible. Similarly, it is important to know your customers online behavior also. 

Develop Content: As a B2B marketer it is highly essential to develop and share remarkable content in order to connect with your customer’s prospects and to drive them to the company’s website. However, target your content and communication based on the individual’s role and explain why your product is best and how it helps them increase their business?

●     Capital Exchange: Whether making a purchase decision for our self or for our company, we are still humans, It is a true intuition, that institutes invest heavily on these social media networks. In order to build a great business, a true and a successful marketing strategy that brings more benefits with less usage of its company’s resources is very much needed. Whatever it is, business buyers don’t stop being humans, when they step in for the day as managers, developers, or as owners.

Social media Analytic tools is beneficial for your business, as it monitors social conversations in different social media networks at different levels. For example, it gives a detailed report as to where and when? The conversation is taking place or had taken place. With the social media monitoring tool the organization can easily identify who is talking about their products and brands, either in a positive or in a negative way.

Shout Analytics is an exclusive social media monitoring and analysis component that helps your organization to use social media in understand, advise, supervise and guide your customers. Our self-service social media platform provides social media interaction across sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn and Blogs. It also develops and assists the organization to achieve successful business.

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

 

Looking For Insightful Business Knowledge Try Social Media Analysis Tools

Author: Suraj Arukil 

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

Earlier, business enterprises relied heavily on their marketing managers to formulate marketing strategies and create a buzz about their company’s products and services. Today, with people’s increased acceptance and usage of social media channels, that power has shifted to the customers.

Now, it’s the customer’s sentiments about brands that drive a brand’s market strategy.

Critical Business Insights and Information Overload
Statistics reveal that 25% of search results for the world’s top-20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.1 enterprises are gathering critical business insights using the vast reserves of online information ( Facebook posts, Tweets, Blogs, You Tube Videos etc) to understand what is being talked about their and their competitor’s brand and services.

For an entertainment channel, this critical business input would comprise of trending topics related to their and their competitor’s programming content, viewership and reach. However, too much information can be misleading and confusing, and lacking in business value.

Filters of Information
While finding information about your brand and services is not a problem, finding appropriate filters to separate that useful information from the rest is still an impending issue for modern businesses. The vastness and high rate of data demands that the information available must go under more online processing so that only intelligence is captured and summarized.

Social Media Analysis Tools
Social media analysis (SMA) tools are a useful solution in this direction. These tools scan through the vast online reserves of information and filter out that information which is valuable for the organization’s business benefits. It also analyzes the reaction of what others (competitors, customers, potential customers, competitor’s customers, etc) are saying about an organization or their brands.

Using SMA technologies, the entertainment channel in the example above, would know in accurate details how popular or not their shows are, how many percentage of their viewers like it and how many hate it. They would also know the exact demographics of their viewers, the content preferences of individual viewers and also know in real time the global spread of the viewers.

Based on these critical business information, the channel can take appropriate steps to meet customer (viewer) expectations, gain competitive advantage, introduce new products and services (conceptualize new programming content) and simply enhance its marketing efforts and market reach.

The statistics also show that High-end social media analysis tools are in demand. On August 20, 2012, SEOmoz’s annual industry survey on the state of SEO and internet marketing2 indicated that 60.2% of the marketers are looking for analysis options in their social media management tools.

Shout Analytics is one such new-age social media analysis product that enables organizations to use the power of social media to understand, monitor and engage with its customers. Shout Analytics uses advanced NLP algorithms and are based on the latest technology stack that can handle up to 7-8 terabytes of online data. To learn how Shout Analytics can improve your business profitability, contact us at info@shoutanalytics.com