Social Media Analytics

Social Media Analytics is a term often heard – and often misunderstood. Let’s break down just what this crucial business tool is, and why you need to use it.

It should, perhaps, seem obvious. Social media offers a huge pool of consumers ripe for brand communication. But that attitude is dangerous in its brand-centric focus.

Social media isn’t about brands. It’s about people sharing their lives with others they know – or get to know – based on common interests.

Still, social is a wonderful place for consumers and brands to connect, as long as they remember one thing: Social media may provide your brand’s first and last impression, so both need to be good ones.

This is where Social Analytics comes into play.

WHAT IS SOCIAL ANALYTICS?

“Social Media Analytics (SMA) refers to the approach of collecting data from social media sites and blogs and evaluating that data to make business decisions. This process goes beyond the usual monitoring or a basic analysis of retweets or ‘likes’ to develop an in-depth idea of the social consumer.”

This is a pretty apt description, though we’d like to clarify that “social media sites” encompasses not just Facebook, Twitter, and the like, but forums and review sites as well as blogs and news outlets.

Just as buzzwords lose meaning over time, many brands lose sight of the value of Social Analytics because at first glance social data comes with a lot of noise. Nobody has time to sort through results that include spam, bots, and trolls to get to the good stuff.

When you have state of the art tools, however, Social Analytics becomes a treasure trove of consumer insights you can’t find anywhere else. Building on that, we’d extend the definition above to say Social Analytics is a collection of data unearthed via multiple techniques from multiple sources versus a single tool in and of itself.

To clarify, let’s run through some terms often confused with Social Media Analytics.

SO-CALLED SYNONYMS THAT AREN’T

If Social Analytics is a destination, what tools contribute to the journey? And what are their distinctions.

Social Media Intelligence is the closest term-cousin to Social Media Analytics. Social Intelligence represents the stack of technology solutions and methods used to monitor social media, including social conversations and emerging trends.

This intelligence is then analyzed and used to create meaningful content and make business decisions across many disciplines.

Social Media Listening is one of the terms most often confused with Social Media Analytics. But Social Listening applies to one specific aspect of Social Analytics: Learning about your audience.

The goal here is to uncover what they love, hate, and love to hate – as opposed to any assumptions you may have. It’s about getting to know them as people, not just prospects.

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