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

How Big Data Analytics Will Determine Future of Marketing and Sales: A McKinsey Report

In this era of Big Data where competition is fueled by your ability to harness the power of data in order to make it work for your business growth, the need of the hour for every brand and business organization is Analytics. In fact, a McKinsey report in the Forbes says that Big Data Analytics will determine how sales and marketing are conducted in the future.

One of the most important facets that the report highlighted was that gathering customer insights and converting that into critical business intelligence is inevitable for modern businesses. The report says, “The explosion in data and digital technologies has opened up an unprecedented array of insights into customer needs and behaviors”.

Thus, while businesses understand the importance of Big Data and Analytics, they are also making the smart move towards adopting Social Media Analytics tools for helping them make sense of their Big Data. According to the report, “Those (businesses) that use Big Data and analytics effectively show productivity rates and profitability that are 5-6 percent higher than those of their peers.” 

In other words, the report by McKinsey defines the success of organizations using Big Data to their wisdom to use analytics effectively. It says that such organizations are successful because they use analytics for the following:

  

a)      Identifying and pinpointing specifically the immense business building opportunities existing in the micromarkets.

b)      Understanding consumer decision journey and finding out what factors lead the consumer from starting with merely showing interest in ending up buying the product. Analytics are also used to spot reasons for and solve customer attrition. 
c)       Using analytics to create detailed customer profiles that include their specific likes, needs, wants and affiliations and use it to aim customers with perfectly targeted and often personalized marketing campaigns plays a crucial role in business success (increase sales by 10% and marketing ROI by 5-10 times). 

With regard to how competent must modern analytic tools be to successfully tackle the challenges of expanding data streams, McKinsey noted that that natural language processing, predictive and sentiment analytics (to decipher customer behavior) and “algorithmic marketing” will be the key components to look for in advanced analytics solutions.

We at Shout Analytics, take pride in the fact that our social media analytics solution fits the McKinsey description totally

To know more about our analytics capabilities or to find out Shout Analytics can help you in your Big Data analysis needs, 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

Key Social Media Influencers: How They Can Help Your Brands

One of the key to successful social media marketing is finding your key social media influencers. Such influencers are those people in your product/service community who are widely followed and liked for their opinions. Others (read your audience) believe and trust the influencers. They are the person to rely on when it comes to useful information on issues and news related to your product or service. Since the influencers are considered as a sort of subject-matter-experts by their social community or communities, what they say and do often serves as a “guide” to others.

Importance of Influencers:

Digital marketers must take influencers seriously because of their sheer ability to influence others. As I mentioned earlier, these people have an innate quality or rather ability to get people to do things the way they do it. What they say and what they do influences their followers in such a way that they trust these influencers for getting appropriate, authentic information related to products and purchasing decisions.

Identifying influencers:

Use the common characteristics listed below, to identify the right influencers for your business

·         Influencers are involved actively in various movements and endorse a lot of public causes.

·         They nurture an extensive social network(s).

·         They are looked up to and impactful and have a large number of followers.

·         They are active members of several varied groups

·         They are Trendsetters: influencers tend to be early adopters (or leavers) in markets

How are they useful to your business?

·         They endorse you – others endorse you too.

·         They trust your product – others do the same

·         They recommend your product – others will buy it

·         They review/ vote your product – others will trust it, use it to choose your product over your competitors

·         They share your product news – others get to know about you.

To sum up, influencers are people who have the strength in their thoughts, ideas and opinions to influence others. Social media marketing is all about finding new audience and building an engaging and trustful relationship with them. As influencers have a wide reach and a strong say in their (or your) communities, social media marketers must take them seriously and must aim to harness the influencers power to influence others, in order to widen the market for your product and also give it more visibility.