There are now over 2 billion active social media users around the world. Or about a third of world’s population.
And each day millions of people are providing opinions, insight and even complaints on social media that every brand can learn from. The question is, how do you turn this mass of “social big data” into something useful. The answer? Social media analytics.
Here at Talkwalker, we’ve seen social media analytics help all kinds of businesses – from global consumer brands to B2B specialists. The variety of ways that companies around the world are benefiting from social data analysis is truly staggering, and we’re always inspired by the new uses brands find for this data.
Here are five companies that made smart investments in social media analytics and reaped the benefits.
Nescafe Dolce Gusto
Industry: Food
What they needed: A way to understand their target audience and build a marketing strategy that spoke to them.
What they achieved: Nescafe Dolce Gusto totally overhauled their social content strategy based on the social listening insights they gathered about coffee lovers on social media. By understanding the particular tastes, needs and aesthetics that appealed to this vibrant social community, they were able to quadruple engagement on Facebook and Instagram and grow their Instagram audience by 500%. They moved from hard sell marketing to fan-centric, improving both results and wider brand perception.
In their words: “To say we are pleased is an understatement. The insights from social listening have allowed for a more thorough understanding of our customer - who they are, what they’re passionate about, and where key conversations are taking place - all of which have been integral in informing our social media strategy.” - Cyndi Chin, Senior Brand Manager of Nescafé
Read the full report to learn more
Deutsche Telekom
Industry: Telecommunications
What they needed: To create a comprehensive crisis response system for online and social media.
What they achieved: Deutsche Telekom built a sophisticated crisis management center powered by live social data analysis. This allowed them to track the usage of any sensitive keywords and phrases in relation to their brand and products and react immediately before minor issues could turn into a bigger crisis. Telekom were then able to spread these insights internally to ensure each department was receiving information relevant to them.
In their words: “Since the reports for different departments serve different purposes, it’s extremely important for us to be able to individualize them. For this purpose, we use different configurations of the reporting functionality. Depending on recipient, area or topic, an individual report is created.” - Robert Schwerdtner, former Crisis Manager at Deutsche Telekom AG.
Read the full report to learn more
Merck KGaA, Darmstadt
Industry: Chemicals and Performance Materials
What they needed: To create a comprehensive social media mining operation to find customer insights from social data.
What they achieved: Using consumer insights, the company created value internally for its R&D department, where products now have a shorter time to market and are based on direct customer feedback. Externally, the company uses social insights to create bespoke case studies that help their partners and the whole industry drive innovations.
In their words: “The LCD market is so dynamic that we can’t wait for customer feedback to trickle down the industry value chain - if one link delays or breaks, that information might not reach us in time. Effective and efficient product development requires the immediacy of real-time social media mining.” - Dr. Markus Czanta, Director of Global Technical Marketing at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany
Read the full report to learn more
Rail Europe
Industry: Travel and Hospitality
What they needed: To scale their social customer service operation from a national level to a global level.
What they achieved: Rail Europe managed to build a highly responsive social customer service system that allowed them to stay on top of any potential issues and react to customers immediately. Most importantly, they were able to do this across multiple regions, providing global customer support with a local feel. They even went beyond customer service and were able to identify the influencers and trending topics impacting their industry each day, helping them to build a more connected brand on social media.
In their words: “We wanted to have better insight into conversations about our brand and conversations about travel.” – Jackie DesForges, Global Social Media and Community Manager of Rail Europe
HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise)
Industry: IT
What they needed: A way to build stronger relationships with channel partners and create a collaborative social media strategy.
What they achieved: HPE were able to prove value of social media to channel partners by providing relevant social media analytics report to their partner networks. By building a global partner marketing campaign based on the power of “selfies” and sharing images, HPE also managed to foster an even deeper sense of collaboration within their partner network, creating new opportunities for all parties.
In their words: “When HPE conducted the partner’s community survey we quickly realized that although partners were on social media, they were struggling to work out how they should use it. It was especially important to be able to prove the value of social by providing performance metrics that partners could use to measure success.” - Stephane Bureau, HPE EMEA Cloud Channel Marketing Manager (@SBUCloud)
Read the full report to learn more
For global brands like the 5 highlighted here, social media analysis has moved from a “nice-to-have” innovation to a business imperative. To learn more about how social media analytics can improve your business, contact us today.
