Every blog post, Facebook like, retweet, and YouTube view is a new data point. There is more data readily available on more platforms than ever before, and marketers are looking for the best ways to capture that data to help drive strategy. Given the volume of information produced by social media channels, brands are faced with the challenge of filtering out the noise to gain meaningful insights.
Social media data may appear overwhelming at first, but it can be a highly powerful tool, helping reveal what types of content people find engaging, what kind of stories are resonating in the media, and what groups of people are influential in certain topics. Analysis of social media data aids in identification of potential customer service issues, and provides a platform for testing messages with a targeted group of brand advocates. Analyzing the data requires a set of tools to collect information and identify key content, but also the trained eyes of humans to make sense of the content.
As social media continues to evolve, brands must understand how customers discuss their brand over social media channels in order to effectively engage with their customers. Methods for deriving insights from social media conversations will be explained in the Social Insights Shoot-Out, as representatives from analytics firms will debate the best way to gather and analyze data on social media discussions.
Other Social Media Week sessions will dive into how current customer behavior can help brands predict future trends. The Future of Sharing will explore why Facebook users choose to share certain types of content with certain groups of people, and Jeremiah Owyang will deliver his keynote address on Social Data as a Crystal Ball.
Extracting value and ROI from social data is another key concern for brands. Sessions like Social ROI: Show Me the Money! and Measuring the Value of a Fan will show brands how this data can translate into dollars. There will also be sessions to help brands new to the game understand where to start with analytics, in sessions like Let the Compass Guide You: A Framework for Social Analytics and Social Measurement Best Practices Across Tech Brands. Social media week will also enlighten brands on who is influencing conversations, in Topical Influencers: Who Are They and How Do We Reach Them?.
As consumers’ online social behavior continues to change and evolve, it won’t be enough for brand to merely have a social media engagement strategy. Brands will need to leverage data to inform their strategy and better understand their customers.
