Predictive Analytics for Startups: Opportunities Abound

While success doesn’t come easy for most start ups (unless of course you have played all the right cards); most startups see a dead end within a few months of starting. 

In many cases, the reasons for this early shut down are – ambiguity of goals and objectives, inability to implement the ideas effectively, creating the right market and finding the right customers, and of course lack of funds.

 How, then can start-up entrepreneurs avoid running into such a situation? 

Technology, in particular, “Predictive Analytics” is the answer says Martin Zwilling, founder and CEO of Startup Professionals. He says, “Predictive analytics uses data patterns to make forward-looking predictions that guide you to where you should go next. This is a whole new world for start-ups seeking enterprise application opportunities, as well as social media trend challenges”.

It is imperative for startups to be particularly be sure of their next several steps after inception; Predictive Analytics fits the bill perfectly here by keeping startups educated and informed about these business aspects – how their market is going to behave over the coming months, who would want their products and services the most and why, what are their competitors up to; what should they be prepared for.

       Zwilling lists the following “creative ways” in which startups can leverage Predictive Analytics: 

            Identify and target customers correctly:

Use Predictive Analytics to consolidate what Zwilling calls a single view of the customer; based on which you can improve your promotional and marketing strategies aiming the right product to the right customer with the right needs.

Manage your investment risks:

As a startup, you will be often skeptical and apprehensive while making new investments for your startup’s growth. Predictive Analytics minimizes those risks by giving you accurate details of how your choices are currently positioned now and how are likely to do in future, thereby helping you decide if your investment choices are worthy or not.

            Customer retention: 

I have spoken about this at length here. And Zwilling only strengthens my opinion that Predictive Analytics helps organizations, especially start ups to identify and resolve the causes for customer attrition. 

            Fraud detection: 

Startups in the BFSI sector can use Predictive Analytics to identify faulty transactions, fraudulent customers, improve underwriting, assess a customer’s financial profile, minimize false insurance claims and even bust false identities.

To know how Shout Analytics’ Predictive Analysis capabilities can benefit your business, either startup or established, write to us at info@shoutanalytics.com

 

3 Easy Steps to Build a Brand’s Online Reputation

In my previous post on online reputation, I mentioned why building and maintaining a healthy online reputation is crucial for BFSI and other organizations is in the age of social. Here, I’ll tell you how you can add credibility to your online reputation in three easy steps, and how social media analytics can help you boost your online reputation.

Step 1 – Develop and Post Great Content:

If you want your audience to say good things about your brand, then you must start a ‘good’ conversation. Say nice things (read interesting, useful and likeable social media content) and your audience will surely appreciate it and share it with their social network.

Step 2 – Engage Well With Your Audience:

Customer engagement is vital for your brand’s online reputation.  Therefore, ensure that the methods of brand engagement are ingenious too. Having posted creative, resourceful content, ask your audience to comment on it. Urge them to participate in contests, games, polls and quizzes and when they do, thank them generously for their interest and enthusiasm. Also, reward them with discount coupons and vouchers, special mentions and surprise gifts et al.

The bottom line is – go that extra mile to truly make customer engagement a pleasurable experience for both you and your audience. When your audience notices that you are making an honest effort to reach out to them, they will respect you, regard you highly, remember you and reciprocate the goodwill.

Step 3 – Take Bouquets and Brickbats Equally:

Let’s face it – in spite of your best efforts at building a good customer relationship, not all of them are going to be your loyalists or fans. For every satisfied and happy customer you would have an equal number or perhaps more unsatisfied customers. However, don’t sideline then. Instead, welcome and accept their criticism too.

When you see a complaint posted on the social media against your product/service/brand, acknowledge it and work to solve the issue at the earliest. If you are unable to resolve it, apologize.  Honesty and transparency on the social does wonders for your brand’s online reputation.

Having said that, a question still persists – how to effectively implement the above steps? The answer lies in social media analytics tools.

SMA tools like Shout Analytics effectively enhance your brand’s online reputation. Using these tools you can monitor, measure and analyze your customers’ conversations on the social and gather rich, actionable insights about your brand’s online reputation.

To learn how, write to us at info@shoutanalytics.com.

Social Listening – Are Your Consumers Liking It?

At a time when there is substantial noise being raised over an individual’s privacy, especially on social media, NetBase and J.D. Power and Associates conducted a survey on 1,062 consumers to find out if consumers know that companies are listening to them on the social media and how they feel about it.

The study reveals some interesting insights –

According to the Altimeter Group, 42% of companies have social listening as one of their top 3 priorities 

But consumers are apprehensive towards this popular business trend and increasingly expressing their angst over it. However, the nature of their response hasn’t been consistent either.

• 51% of the consumers want to talk about organizations and their products; but they do not want these organizations to listen to their conversations.  
• In fact, 43% of them believe that social listening is an intrusion into their privacy
• But, completely contrasting to the above two ideas, there are also 32% of consumers who are completely unaware of the fact that organizations are listening to their social conversations.  
• Another important aspect that this study revealed was that 48% of consumers wanted companies to listen to them on social media and use the conversations for product/service improvements.  
• But there was also another 58% of them who opined that companies must use social listening only to respond to and solve customer complaints. 

But the real surprise was here-

• 42% people want brands to respond without fail to their positive comments
• 64% of consumers insist that brands must respond to social comments only when spoken to

This is a challenge to social media chiefs because such expectations from your social audience means that you must somehow, know beforehand how each of them is going to react to your social engagement efforts.

Now, we acknowledge that listening to, engaging with and understanding their social audience (customers, influencers, fans, stakeholders and even the competitors) are the three basic and fundamental principles of social media engagement for any brand marketers and the organization’s leadership. 

But, given the recent reservation among the consumers towards being listened to by brands on the social channels, the onus is now on the social media marketers, brand managers, CXOs and even social media monitoring and analytics people like us to delve deep into this new development and find new, feasible ways to, as the study’s infographic says, “demonstrate how listening doesn’t intrude but instead builds relationships”.

6 Major Differences between Social Media Monitoring and Social Media Analytics

With everybody talking about social media analytics and social media monitoring, it is easy to get confused between the two. Did you know that the two are very different concepts yet very often (mis)used while referring to the other?

The fact is that social media monitoring and social media analytics, though different, often overlap and sometimes are even interwoven  whenever social analytics are applied. Most social media analytics softwares today, including Shout Analytics are incorporated with social media monitoring capabilities.

Yet, since the two technologies are often misunderstood, we decided to list out the factors that distinguish the two. I hope that this list will clear the ambiguity around social media monitoring and social media analytics, simplify separately their finer details and explain how the two are different from each other.

Social  Media Monitoring	Social Media Analytics
Qualitative in nature	Quantitative in nature.
Only tells what is being said about the brand or product.	Informs in detail how much is being said about      your brand or product.
Assists you best in defining a particular search term related to your brand and then monitor it.	Provides you with a detailed quantitative analysis   of the said term, complete with graphs and reports.
Gives you an account of the positive, negative and neutral sentiments surrounding your brand.	Enumerates how those different sentiments will affect your brand.
Limited to monitoring alone.	Social monitoring is a part and parcel of social media analytics.
Helps brand managers understand a brand’s social standing – explains on which social platform the brand is faring well and on which it is not.	Measures the social standing and even gives critical insights to help intelligent decision making – the quantified analysis provides enough input to direct the next course of action.

In a nut shell, while social media monitoring allows brand managers and leaders of organizations to get a clearer picture of their social media marketing efforts, social media analytics allow them to evaluate their social media efforts, correctly identify problem prone areas and most of all glean valuable insights from the analysis data. 

What do you think are the factors that differentiate social media monitoring from social media analytics? Share your thoughts in the comments below. To know how Shout Analytics can provide