Why You Must Use Social Media Analytics
Social media analytics is very useful in a diverse number of ways. This article highlights its uses, features, and how to measure its value.
Uses of Social media analytics
We can use social media analytics to answer a very wide range of business and research questions.
Social media analytics provides insights to website optimization, brand growth, social media engagement, campaign strategy, choice of social platform, influencer acquisition & management, sentiment analysis, network analysis, reputation management, Location, etc.
Here are examples of questions social media analytics can answer:
- What social media platform should I focus on?
- What type of content does my audience like?
- What product gets the most mention on social media?
- What are people saying about my brand on social media?
- Who are my Top Fans on social media?
- How can I increase engagement on my social media platforms?
- What are my competitors doing to get so many likes, comments, etc?
- What time do I post to get more engagement?
- How well is my social media campaign performing?
- Which influencer should work on my upcoming campaign?
Value of social media data
“The value or impact of socialized data is determined by the extent to which it is shared with other social entities.”
The statement above implied that Virality determines value. Although in my opinion, this is not absolute.
Can we attribute value to all forms of virality?
In my personal opinion, I think the value is also dependent on the content.
If the content inspires social media users to take any form of action (especially pre-meditated) or intentionally provoke a certain emotion, then we can conclude the value is also great.
Features of Social media data
High Volume: The number of posts put out on the internet per second is very high. Social media is also regarded to as a source of Big Data.
You can check out a live count of social media posts per second here: https://www.webfx.com/internet-real-time/
High Velocity: The speed at which information travels on social media is very fast especially as it is real-time. Content can go viral within minutes after being posted.
Highly diverse: There are different forms of content put out on social media and they differ by platforms.
We have the following kinds:
- Images -Gifs -Emojis -Text -Videos -Location -Links -Live Videos -Stories
Twitter supports Texts, gifs, videos, links, and images
Instagram supports everything else like Twitter except hyperlinks in posts.
Structure — Semistructured and Unstructured.
Social media data is mostly qualitative information (text-based). It mostly comprises data that is also usually not easily searchable, including formats like audio, video, stories, etc.
Not analytical friendly: Due to the nature and structure of social media data, we tend to get unclean data. You have to spend more time cleaning the data before you begin to analyze it.
In our next article, we will be discussing the types of social media analytics.
We have 4 major types and I’ll be breaking them down.
Questions and feedback are welcome in the comment section.
