You may put your best brand experts and marketing moguls on the job when it comes to creating a social media strategy. You may also deliver the content to your target audience in a fabulously effective way.
What happens next?
- Can you rest assured that your message has been received correctly by the intended recipient?
- Has it helped propagate your brand image the way you want it?
- Has your audience sent you feedback on the message?
- Have you then engaged in a conversation with your audience?
The list of questions can be pretty long and exhaustive and they begin when you have posted your content because the cycle of communication is not only endless but also has a lot of emphasis on analysis.
Why is analysis important?
In today’s digital world, every brand worth its salt has to carve out a niche for itself in a crowded social media space. Social media analytics is important because it can:
- Help you craft the best possible strategy that works for your brand.
- Help in creating the right kind of content.
- Give a guideline for allied aspects – when should you release content, how you should optimize content for each social media site and so on.
- Monitor customer feedback.
- Course correct so you stay on message when it comes to brand promotion.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it improves the interaction between a customer and the brand. Social media analytics can boost business brand image for you in many different ways.
Get a better handle on the consumer
If you believe that the consumer is king (or queen!) then you know that your content has to speak in the language of royalty. In order to create such content, you should start with a firm understanding of what the consumer wants. Your brand may be able to deliver what the consumer wants but you should also work hard at getting the consumer to recognize this fact. Social media analysis can help you:
- Use the right language in your content.
- Generate and use the right kind of keywords.
- Get a handle on which social channel you should be on.
- Understand where you target audience can be found.
- Come up with new products to match your market’s needs too.
Gets you to listen
A new buzzword in this space is social listening and goes beyond the conventional mode of ‘reaction’. Typically, a brand reacts to:
- Negative reviews.
- Questions posed by people.
- Comments made about it in various forums.
- @mentions and so on.
But what about those conversations that do not include your brand by name, or your Twitter handle, your Facebook profile and so on? Social media analysis will give you the chance to listen in on conversations that are happening about you in every possible manner. This will give you more scope on engaging in conversations too.
Get to targeted traffic
A well-placed social media post or tactically brilliant link can drive people to your website – in droves. But the question here is ‘what is a well-placed social media post’ or where on earth should you put the ‘tactically brilliant’ link? Again, social media analysis can answer these questions.
For instance, if you can put a link on a relevant Reddit post or time the release of a Facebook post that talks about a weekend getaway just before the weekend starts than the chances are that more people will engage with your brand and buy what it has to sell.
Finally, many a business decision is taken with the competition in mind. Whether it is advertising campaigns or redefining your business goals – social media analysis can help keep an eye on the competition, too.
