When it comes to businesses, social media has been playing a big role in leveling the playing in the field by offering smaller companies the chance to have a voice against large corporations.
Using the right social media analytics tool in order to measure social insight and make necessary changes has been a crucial in the social media game, as they allow businesses to gather data from their social channels and use it to help guide their decisions.
Purpose of Social Media Analytics
The main goal of gathering data from social channels is to provide actionable insights, thus helping guide business strategies. While things can get complex, there are three stages that are part of the foundation of social media analytics. The first one refers to identifying primary business goals, and is the stage where business owners have to decide whether they want to apply information in order to increase the downloads or traffic to their website, or to build a positive perception for their brand.
The second stage involve the addition of KPIs to the mix – key performance indicators. They are basically the metrics that will indicate success or failure, and they are going to vary, according to the goals that were set up. KPIs can refer to engagement, conversion, sentiment, or others that align with the business objectives.
The third and last stage is the stage where social data gets measured and analyzed. After business objectives were set up and metrics for success or failure have been chosen, it’s time to actually apply the tools at hand in order to understand what the state of the business is and start making changes based on the information received.
Picking the right tools
The “right” tools can refer to different things, as it all depends on the level of expertise in the field of social media analytics, and how big the business objectives are. Thankfully, the internet offers a lot of options. For those who don’t have a lot of experience, built-in social media analytics tools are a good way to learn how things go, providing a starting point when it comes to understanding the audience.
A lot of social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.) offer dashboards where owners can take a close look of how things are going and understand what every number means. On the other hand, built-in dashboards can be limited, and if business goals are more ambitious or the company is present on multiple social channels then more complex tools will be necessary.
There are a number of free options on the internet which offer deeper insights and can be very helpful – such as Boardreader, Followerwonk, Hootsuite, Likealyzer, etc. However, free tools can go so far when it comes to what they are able to do. And while they can be very useful, most of them have upgrade plans, meaning that there’s more information that can be uncovered, and even then, they might not offer some options that are needed.
About Netbase
In order to get the most out of social media, investing in a paid social media analytics tools can be a good choice. Netbase is an analytics platform that focuses on consumer sentiment and is an industry-recognized platform. They use Natural Language Processing to decipher various languages as well as emojis and slang. Netbase offers real-time monitoring, layered with VoC (Voice of the Customer) analytics and image analytics, and are able to alert brands when it comes to reputational threat, thus helping keep the health of the brand at a maximum. A demo can be scheduled in order to sample what the platform has to offer, and there are several price options designed to suit various needs and budgets.
