Having a tool that is simple to dig into to prove what is at the heart of a given analysis is a key social media analytics tool differentiator. Social media analytics give brands and agencies the confidence to move quickly and stay ahead of the competition. And that confidence comes from knowing their consumer and market insight is accurate, which is only possible when the insight is transparent. We’ll share tips on how to spot your best tool options, as well as valuable social analytics intel your brand needs to inform its strategic decision-making.
Advanced social media analysis in action is pretty amazing, and belongs on the top of brands’ “must master” list. It uncovers the complete picture of your place in the social landscape, as well as the audiences you most want to target. And so much more . . .
We’re exploring consumer insight captured in real-time and how leading brands are evaluating their efforts to stay on track. It includes customer experience (CX) understanding combined with next generation artificial intelligence (AI) powering their efforts, and we’re going to show you how it looks in action!
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS STARTS HERE
Social insight enhances all aspects of brand operations, making your business leaner, smarter and more profitable – with better strategic decision-making and greater potential for long-term growth. An overview of the various moving parts helps, so we’ll explore that first!
Without an understanding of what’s on offer with social media analytics, it’s easy to lose your bearings, get lost, then overwhelmed – and the next thing you know, some other business unit has claimed your budget! Or, even worse, some competitor has claimed your customer base.
Let’s get that topography in your hands . . .
START WITH SOCIAL LISTENING
Perhaps the biggest change to marketing in the past decade is the shift to consumer centricity. Promoting the tenets of your brand’s quality used to be enough to sell products, but as technology has leveled the playing field of production, consumers have demanded more.
With the rise of social media, any marketing efforts not based in human connection informed by accurate social media analysis are simply relegated to background noise, an unwelcome intrusion. Social media is a consumer playground, so brands must abide by consumer rules. All interactions must be human, authentic, personal, invited.
But this is actually good news – because all the consumer information you could ever ask for is freely available online. You simply need the right tools, and a little know-how, to mine for gold.
Social Listening is the first step in understanding who your audience is and what they want. Surrender any notion of demographic breakdowns as the end-all, be-all. Market to a segment of women aged 25-34 assuming they all have the same interests, and you’re not only turning off every woman who doesn’t fit into that mold, you’re likely not even addressing a huge chunk of your true audience.
Instead, use demographics as a framework to start your research, and adjust your thinking as you discover outliers within the mainstream majority. You’ll want to explore interests, professions, ethnicity, bio terms – all ways these folks self-identify. But even that is just a starting point:
These outliers will become visible as you “listen” for psychographic information – and that’s what’s most important now.
GETTING PSYCHOGRAPHIC WITH YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS
Psychographics comprise the opinions, attitudes, and behaviors of consumers. This can be in relation to your brand, of course – but the best insights come from what consumers talk about beyond your brand. This is what really helps you identify and connect to them.
For example, if you owned a pizza restaurant, you might search on the term “pizza.” Among the various insights you’d learn the most popular post is this one:
Just from the engagement on this one post, you’d learn how many people care about being able to eat pizza while maintaining a fit physique. This user is also a potential influencer for your pizza brand – or gym. And this is before you’ve even looked at all the other data from your search.
What insights like this allow you to do is segment your audience so you can reach out with individualized messaging crafted just for people who love pizza and working out.
You might also have a segment of political activists who use pizza as a reward for their volunteers, or people who enjoy pizza during a particular TV show each week.
EXPLORING SOCIAL SEGMENTS
There’s no limit to the segments you can create – and you’ll notice there’s no talk of age or gender in the example above, just common interests. And that’s intentional. Because the goal is to hit your audience in “the feelz.”
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS IS A LOVE STORY
As you create audience segments, and in every other tactic we’re about to discuss, you need to dial in to consumer emotion. The idea is to understand and appeal to their deepest passions – whether positive or negative. And social media analysis is your guidepost.
We measure this in two ways:
- Net Sentiment, or whether consumers’ emotions are positive or negative
- Passion Intensity, or how strong those emotions are
Together, these values – ranked on a scale from -100 to +100 – determine Brand Passion, a critical metric in determining what actions you need to take next.
As we can see in this airline example, sentiment is pretty low right now, at 22%. And it appears a delay and emergency landing figure prominently in that result. But we can also see passengers impressed with the focus on safety – and that can provide an angle for airlines to capture and direct worried consumers toward:
You’ll also want to know what percentage of a conversation is trending positively and how much of it is negative, as this yogurt example illustrates:
Also, what is driving that sentiment:
Using this data, brands can drill down (to each item in a word cloud and analyze) and take advantage of unmet needs, or discover new product ideas that they may have missed otherwise.
To ensure sentiment analysis is accurate though, beyond offering the abilty to get extremely granular and transparent results, your tools must evaluate language and its varying idiosyncrasies – from global languages like English, French, Mandarin, etc., to slang, sarcasm, netspeak and more. This includes pop culture references, and “silent” languages like emojis and images.
Every way sentiment is expressed online must be captured by your sentiment analysis tools or your social analytics will be off.
UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL INSIGHT IDIOSYNCRASIES
A great example of this in action is 113 Industries’ work for Ocean Spray as they searched for their next $100 million beverage line. With the morning juice market in decline, they wanted to come from another angle. Using social analytics with sentiment analysis, they identified three consumer behaviors tied to cranberry juice:
- Love for cranberry juice, but embarrassment of the stigma that drinking it is tied to having a urinary tract infection
- Use beyond breakfast hours, like women drinking cranberry juice to rehydrate after Zumba class
- Women enjoying cranberry juice in a wine glass in the evening, finding the rich color and texture appealing as a non-alcoholic cocktail
These insights allowed Ocean Spray to create two new product lines to grab additional shelf real estate in stores, as well as break past the traditional breakfast juice market. The results of their campaign exceeded all previous new product expectations.
This wouldn’t have been possible without exploring consumer sentiment around cranberry juice. Simple metrics like number of mentions would only have told them how much cranberry juice and/or Ocean Spray as a brand were being talked about. You need social sentiment for context – at every level of your analytics.
And what other levels are we talking about? Here are additional areas you must analyze for complete social media analytics.
CHANNEL SURFING 101
Just as you can’t assume who your audience is, you can’t assume where they love to interact. You can’t reach them if you don’t know where they are
For example, a search on the terms “yogurt” and “#yogurt” in the US reveals the following domains:
If you’re a yogurt brand, it makes sense to focus on high-volume channels like Twitter and Instagram – which you might have come to anyway. But what about Reddit? Would you have thought to look there? Many brands don’t – and should:
There are also several smaller online community and blog sites, as well as travel sites. Brands shouldn’t ignore an opportunity to connect with a unique consumer segment on unexpected channels. These could turn out to be your most passionate and loyal customers in the end.
It’s never about jumping onto the newest or seemingly most popular channel – note the absence of Facebook from this list, for example. Would you expect that?
And just because it isn’t showing as a top location, doesn’t mean it’s not popular with a smaller, very specific niche of yogurt lovers that a brand may want to target.
GETTING SPECIFIC WITH SOCIAL ANALYTICS
To continue our yogurt example – what other niche audiences are out there anyway – and where?
You can’t go wrong looking to topic influencers to see what they’re saying as a solid basis to start your search:
The conversations they’re having reveal what is trending where – and with who. Are they capturing your target segments’ attention? You can segment influencers lots of ways to be sure:
It’s about being where your target audience is and where the influencers are. And when that matches up and you create a successful collaboration for your brand. – it’s about knowing what to have these influencers (popular authors) post where.
CONTENT IS NOT UNIVERSAL
The channel you choose must guide the kind of content you offer. This is of major importance in both catching consumers’ attention, and engaging with them
When on Snapchat, use of fun filters like animal ears and such add the whimsy of the young-at-heart to your posts. But that wouldn’t make sense on LinkedIn. Not even close!
On Facebook, extended live videos offer a chance to truly show your audience what you’re all about, while bringing them information or entertainment they crave. It also alerts followers to your “live” status and encourages interaction. Having lots of time set aside, understanding the right time of day to host these events – and being prepared for any questions that. participants may ask are all very important items to plan ahead for here.
And it’s all intel brands can sort out with the help of social analytics, like what people are saying:
.
What times are they most active online:
POWER OF THE PREVIEW
Having this capability (to preview potential audience questions/concerns) is also key when hosting Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMAs) events! Particularly as AMAs are crucial to understanding and (inevitably) hosting for brand success on that platform.
On Instagram, user generated content (UGC) is amazing. Encouraging followers to create short bursts of video and images in support of an event, promotion or product can become a story for the brand. And combining UCG later to create brand highlights offers brands exceptionally viral opportunities.
Enticing followers to view while they can.
But even on a single social channel there may be several ways to interact with your audience. Social analytics helps you discover which are their favorites and least favorites – so you’re always speaking their language.
SOCIAL ANALYTICS FOR EVERY BUSINESS GOAL
Once you understand the basics of social analytics, and the importance of using sentiment analysis, you can use specific tools to find further insights in focused areas of concern, including our other “how to” topics in this series:
- Evaluating Social Media Analytics
- Using Social Sentiment to Perform a Competitor Analysis
- Retaining Customers & Managing Community with Social Analytics
- Managing & Responding to Crises Using Social Analytics
- Using Social Sentiment to Anticipate Trends in Your Vertical
- Measuring Social Analytics ROI
- Training Smart Social Ambassadors for Your Business
We’ll explore each of these areas in upcoming posts. In the meantime, start where you are, and reach out to us if you need help!
Want a customized demo of how to use our industry-recognized Social Media Analytics Tools? Reach out!
