5 use cases for Social Media Analytics Talkwalker

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Drive innovation

Social media analytics can be used to drive product/service innovation. People use social media to talk about products and services they dislike. Analytics can provide constructive information about what the customer needs, without spending huge amounts of money on market research.

For instance, if you launch a new product, you should review the customer response on social media. If most people point towards a certain missing feature or product improvement, it would be a good idea to consider including it in your next launch.

To drive innovation from social media analytics, you could look at the following:

1. Customer reaction to your products
2. Customer reaction to competitor’s products
3. Customer conversation on product category

Example: Gillette launched Gillette TREO – the first razor specifically designed to shave someone else, in response to comments shared by caregivers on social media. Through social media listening, Gillette realized that there was a need for such a product as many people shave another person daily.

Gillette launched Gillette TREO in response to customer feedback

Build & maintain customer relationships

Good customer relationships are essential to the success of any business. There are several advantages of establishing and maintaining strong relationships with customers including a loyal clientele, positive word of mouth, and increased revenue. You can use social media analytics to improve customer relations by:

1. Responding quickly to all direct customer concerns

   In the current landscape, customers want an immediate response. They turn to social media for addressing issues, instead of waiting on a call. According to a survey by The Social Habit, 32% of people who contact a brand, product, or company through social media expect a response within 30 minutes.

   It is a good idea to have a shorter response time for your online customer queries. This will not only improve your relationship, but transcend into revenue. Customers love speed and convenience and are happy to pay more for it.

2. Listening to untagged brand mentions

   Some customers might be talking about your brand without tagging you. To monitor such conversations, create social listening search queries with different versions of your brand name. Example: Krispy Kreme can be misspelled as crispy cream. Ensure that you cover all common misspelling of your brand/product name. I am sharing my blog on how to build search queries and monitor brand mentions, in case you need more details.

   How should you respond to untagged mentions?

   I categorize untagged mentions into two sub-categories – neutral mentions and negative complaints. Any comment that mentions your brand name without asking any question or raising any concern are neutral mentions. This can be a comment saying, “I went to Brand X today and they have a new collection.” Such conversations might or might not require brand intervention. It is a good idea to thank someone who has appreciated your product.

   Comments like, “I went to Brand X and I had the worst customer experience,” are negative complaints. Respond quickly to such posts. These are opportunities to engage with customers and build trust.

Measure brand health

Social media analytics can provide a good reflection of your brand health. You can measure brand awareness by calculating the total volume of your mentions. You can benchmark this with your competitors to get a holistic picture. You should also look at the sentiment around your brand mentions and how it fares against your competitors.

I used Talkwalker Free Social Search to measure brand awareness for Pepsi and compare it with Coca-Cola. Here is a snapshot of the dashboard. In this image, you can see the total mentions for both brands in the United States. You can also see the sentiment – while 18% of results for Pepsi had positive sentiment, Coca-Cola had 12.8%.

Online mentions of Pepsi and Coca-Cola in the United States from 8th Oct 2020 to 14th Oct 2020.

Talkwalker Free Social Search is a great tool if you are starting your analytics journey. It is free to use and allows you to compare your online performance with up to 5 brands.

Optimize marketing spends

Social media analytics will help you optimize your digital marketing spends. Analytics helps you measure campaign performance and allocate marketing budgets to platforms and activities that drive maximum ROI.

Before you identify what works best, you must determine ROI. How do you measure success on social media? Are you measuring engagement, conversions, or revenue? You can have multiple yardsticks for measuring performance. Once you determine the parameters, you can identify:

1. The platforms where your followers are most active
2. The type of content (blogs, infographics, contents) that drives maximum engagement
3. The themes/topics that bring most conversions
4. The best time for sharing a post or the right month for running a campaign

Identify influencers

Identifying and developing relationships with the right influencers is important to reach your target audience more effectively. While collaborations with celebrities can generate buzz, digital content creators are more valuable to brands. These content creators might have a smaller number of followers; however, they impact their decision-making as they are seen as experts in their niche.

Here are a few tips to identify the right influencers for your campaign:

1. Find experts that talk about your industry
2. Identify influencers who endorse your competitors
3. Determine influencers that have maximum engagement

I used Talkwalker Free Social Search to identify fashion bloggers in the United States on Twitter. As I want to reach out to influencers with maximum engagement, I have filtered them according to engagement per mention.

Fashion bloggers in the United States on Twitter, filtered by engagement per mention.

Social media analytics has become extremely important as it helps companies and brands connect with their customers like never before. It enables them to make data driven decisions that have a direct impact on business and revenue. Data ensures that you spend your time doing what matters most.

To begin with, you must be equipped with the right tools. If you want to get an overview of your online campaigns, try Talkwalker Free Social Search.