Since the invention of the internet, the world of business has been rapidly changing. In 1996 Bill Gates famously quoted, “If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business.”
How right he was as we have seen the decline of brick and mortar businesses. Many have failed, not just to post their business online, but to use the technological advantages the internet offered such as online ordering and internet ads.
It has gone so far now that it is not just about being able to do business online, but to be able to predict, target, and improve business online with the use of social media analytics.
What Is Social Media Analytics?
Social media analytics is the practice of gathering data from social media and mining the opinions of specific demographics to make business decisions. For example, a younger demographic will be more concerned with aspects such as branding and logo. These items may give the desired feeling a prospective customer is looking for when searching for a company. Social media analytics can be used to determine if a business’s current logo and branding is giving the desired response, whether it is to be edgy, comforting, knowledgeable, etc.
This isn’t tied down to branding, however. The data that is mined can cover different demographics to see where and how a company needs to focus their efforts. It can also cover different areas of consumer experience to find out how people are responding to their shopping of the product, the purchasing, the receiving, the customer service, and the cultural outreach of a company.
Where Does a Business Start Data Mining?
Businesses can seek out providers such as Netbase for these services. The consumer, all the way from prospect on through can be mined for their opinion. Online products are used that mine social media to search for organic, relevant data. This can be in the form of finding small key phrases that mention the company’s name or certain aspects it is trying to champion. On certain platforms such as Facebook, the surveys can become much more targeted by items like age, gender, hobbies, etc. By being so specific and coming from an organic approach, the information is that much more usable.
How Can Social Media Analytics Help A Business?
What good is it to catch individuals talking about your company, though? A business can’t make decisions based off of random comments on the internet. It needs systematic data. That is where companies like Netbase can take it that much further by taking unstructured data and turning it into valuable information for a business to use to make decisions.
There are many benefits to this practice. By using a singular platform that has uniformed approaches to the consumer, the data that is retrieved is much more reliable than with the traditional methods of human surveying. It is also able to compile the data results much quicker. This way, a business is able to focus on it’s strengths and decrease its detractors much more efficiently. Also, with the ability to continually update results as more data is mined from social media, businesses are able to follow trends and respond much more quickly than with more traditional methods.
Stop Guessing
For the businesses that are truly wanting to grow, this is a great age to be in. Less than ever is left to chance as companies are able to let the consumer tell them exactly what they want. Through social media analytics, success can be the company’s decision to make.
