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Subject: Seminar in IT

Prepared by:

Rabia’a Naushad

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Assignment Topic:

Social Media Analytics

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What Is Social Media:

Social media is content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing

technologies. Simply put, social media refers to all the conversation and engagement that

happen on networks and sites like facbook, myspace, twitter, blogspehere, youtube, flicke,

messageboard, forums etc..

Since these conversations can have a big impact on your brand it becomes critical for a

marketer to understand what people are talking about their brand/products etc. so that they

can take appropriate actions and help in creating and fostering a positive chatter

(conversation) about their brand. Social Media analytics is about measuring and analyzing

Social media (content generated by people throughout the web).

Broadly, Social media measurements comes in two flavors

1.Measuring the conversation about your brand in social media

2.Measuring the impact your own social media efforts (e.g. the face book widget that you

spent tons of money on or links that you posted on twitter etc.)

Social Media Analytics (SMA)

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 considered the basic foundation for enabling an enterprises to:

Execute focused engagements like one-to-one and one-to-many

Enhance social collaboration over a variety of business functions, such as customer service, marketing, support, etc.

Maximize the customer experience

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Social media is a good medium to understand real-time consumer choices, intentions and

sentiments. The most prevalent application of social media analytics is to get to know the

customer base on a more emotional level to help better target customer service and

marketing.

Advantages and disadvantages of using social media:

Too many businesses enter into social media because it's 'the done thing' - they feel they should have a presence purely because their competitors do. There are a number of real benefits to getting involved with social media, provided it is properly planned and executed.

Business advantages of effective social media use include:

compelling and relevant content will grab the attention of potential customers and increase brand visibility

you can respond almost instantly to industry developments and become heard in your field it can be much cheaper than traditional advertising and promotional activities social content can indirectly boost links to website content by appearing in universal

search results, improving search traffic and online sales you can deliver improved customer service and respond effectively to feedback

customers can find you through new channels, generating more leads increased loyalty and advocacy from the customers you've connected with

Disadvantages include:

you will need to commit resources to managing your social media presence, responding to feedback and producing new content

it can be difficult to quantify the return on investment and the value of one channel over another

ineffective use - for example, using the network to push for sales without engaging with

customers, or failing to respond to negative feedback - may damage your reputation

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Social Media Analytics Tools:

Google Analytics.

Google Analytics has become a great resource for social media analytics on your website. Last year Google added social reports to analytics, which you can use to determine the conversion value of visitors from social sites as well as see how visitors from different social sites behave on your site. It also has an “Activity Stream” that shows in real time

how people are talking about your site on social networks. Buffer

Buffer started out as, well, a buffer. For those who tweet or share a lot, Buffer helped them space out their social media posts, and also optimize the time of their publishing to maximize engagement and response.

Now, the company offers plans for agencies, business, and enterprise, with detailed analytics about what is working and what isn’t, so you’ll have actual data to back up your sneaking suspicion that that posting to Twitter at midnight in the geography you’re targeting is a bad idea. Or that sharing to Facebook when everyone’s at work isn’t as effective as you might like. Buffer offers analytics on all the standard social media

channels — plus App.net, the renegade we’re-not-Facebook social network.

LocalResponse

Another helpful play for marketers, LocalResponse lets companies read the intent in social chatter with the goal of delivering highly targeted ads.

Topsy

Want a look at the wider social web? With its real-time search, Topsy has cemented itself

as a go-to solution for figuring out what’s happening right now across a wide swath of social media sites. Topsy also offers social analytics for just about any term (it’s not a bad way to figure out your competitors’ reach, for example).

Best of all, Topsy is perhaps the best way to figure out what was happening on Twitter at a particular moment. As a certified Twitter partner, Topsy has access to all of the tweets

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tweeted since Twitter’s founding in 2006. It’s the closest thing we have yet to a historical archive for Twitter.

The advantages of implementing social media tools :

Competitive Advantage: SMA tools allow the organizations to gain a competitive

edge over their competitors by facilitating a much better comprehension of their brands. This usually includes an understanding of how the customers make use of particular services or products, what issues are faced by the customers while using

these services or products, and getting to know how customers' views about a particular company or product.

Learn From the Customers: In many cases, customers may have effective solutions for some of the issues faced by an organization. For example, if a product is in the market without proper documentation, the chances of use errors increase. Some

users may solve these problems through trial-and-error, and then post their findings in forums, which can help the company determine whether better documentation is required, and what users really need to know.

Improve Products and Services: This is the key goal of SMA. There are countless

tweets, blogs, comments and complaints regarding products and services. This huge volume of information contains consumer sentiments that can be used to evaluate users' experience with a particular product or service. This information

Popular Social Networking Sites of the World

Face book Linked in

Twitter

My Space

Bebo

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Which Social Network has the Highest User Traffic?

It is no surprise that Facebook takes the lead. By far, Facebook has the most users and visitors to their site. However, looking at the average time spent per month, Pinterest ties

with Facebook. Maybe this is due to the fact that Pinterest is a more engaging interface based on visual content – maybe it has also something to do with the fact that it is still newsworthy.

Here is a clear indicator on how the different platforms are doing. Let us know if you have

any take on the future of the social networks .

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Challenge with Social Media Measurement

Social Media measurement is very different from measuring your own web site (this is

what most of the web analytics tool measure). You own your own website. You can

(should) measure interaction of your visitors with your website. Social Media happens

with our without your active participation. It mostly happens outside the realms of your

website such as conversation on twitter, blogs, forums, facebook etc. Since you don’t have

any web analytics tool installed on these places it is hard to find out what’s happening.

Even if you had a web analytics tool installed you won’t know what people are talking

about. Which is what you would like to know? This sort of information is not available

from traditional web analytics tools like Omniture Site Catalysts, WebTrends or Google

Analytics.

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References:

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1683971?hl=en

http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/20/top-10-social-media-analytics-tools-the-venturebeat-

index/

http://www.mindjumpers.com/blog/2012/06/user-activity-infographic/

http://www.techopedia.com/definition/13853/social-media-analytics-sma