Social Data for Dummies: No Analyst, No Problem

Dig deep into what your customers are thinking, where they are talking and what they are feeling, because knowing these insights gets your social media game on point and effectively builds a strong community of fans and drives sales for your Brand. 

However, not every member of your team or the brand’s marketing team will have the skills of an analyst to work magic to monitor keywords, mentions and sentiments across channels to have a better understanding and vision of the needs of your customers’ interest. That’s pretty much where the lite version of social tools level out the playing field, and here are 7 reasons you should give it a go for yourself. 

1. No technical skills required This is by far a big plus. Yeap you read right, you do not need to be a data wizard to use social analytics tools. Unlike most options in the market with complicated settings, lite versions like Search allow anyone to find the insights they need simply by entering the keyword or phrase of interest. It’s literally as easy as Googling. 

2. Budget friendlier – won’t break the bank Affordable, fast and efficient. Whether you are a Brand marketer just launching a campaign or an agency about to go into a pitch you don’t need to spend a hefty amount to get the best of it. Introductory tools provide you with the base level of data for a fraction of the cost. When you have mastered the basics of social data, you can choose to upgrade yourself for the complete experience. 

3. Relevant sentiment trendline The best social tools are built on hyperlocal infrastructures with enhanced machine learning to more precisely capture sentiments, and this is especially important given our multicultural Malaysian language mix. Mass market tools that are not optimized for local sources and context will provide you a higher rate of inaccuracy which compromises the quality of your data, so it is important to find a localized source if accuracy is important to you. 

4. Trend tracking made easy Brands can observe trends, track hashtag movement, and measure performance based on interest of the social chatter, engagements and sentiments. Apart from hashtags, keywords are also trackable to measure the popularity of brands and products. Using social tools, you can identify the most active channels related to specific brands, products or topics of interest and craft marketing strategies that resonate. 

5. Identify your Brand’s advocates, influencers and micro-KOL Correctly identifying top users based on the channels is a nifty feature in some social listening tools. It is an undeniable fact that influencers will make use of their platforms to share thoughts and opinions. When an influencer mentions your brand, don’t gloss over the fact that they’ve mentioned your brand; instead, take some notes and study them. Collaborating with the right influencers or micro KOLs can greatly boost your brand image and reputation. 

6. Heat map Some tools also have heat maps which helps you to visualize which geographical area gets the most attention from users using channels with location tracking enabled (such as Twitter). It highlights the areas and locations to display contents relevant to your searched keywords or hashtags. Heat maps enable brands to expand the market by inferring analysis on audience based on geographic segmentation which helps to identify potential locations for new outlets. 

7. Know which 3rd party pages you can leverage to amplify your marketing Most social tools can assist in identifying top websites that have been promoted & advertised in relation to the topic of your query. Since audiences already engage with these 3rd party channels you may collaborate for beneficial growth and advertise to leverage them for more exposure. For this purpose, having the local sources where natives are active will improve your results even more. 

Example of engagement trendline 

The graph below illustrates the results of a popular entertainment brand in Malaysia generated by Search. Notice that the amount of messages aren’t very high except on 5th August where a campaign was launched. Knowing how high the message count is isn’t the only important aspect, the quality of the top messages from consumers are equally important too. Quality top messages can be identified from users that are generating traction on social media, which allows you to understand what topic or posts users are typically interested in. A quick click can instantly link to the actual post to understand the context of the public’s reactions from the comments. 

If you are in need of quick industry social data but do not have the expertise or analyst to assist in operating an advanced social listening tool, give these tools a go or fill up this form to see more of Search’s functions and a guide will be sent to you. 

Source of information: Wisesight