In this article, we will break down what social data is and how it can be used across business units within your brand. The benefits of using social data will also be exemplified through our company’s real-life experiences.
What is social data?
Social data is information that social media users choose to publicly share. This information includes matter data such as the user’s spoken language, shared links, user’s location, and biographical data. Social data is typically very valuable to marketers who are looking for customer insights to increase sales, create a better marketing strategy, widen their target market, or simply research upcoming trends. There are many types of social data including posts on Facebook, posts on Tumblr, check-ins on Foursquare, videos on TikToks, pins on Pinterest, as well as tweets on Twitter. Businesses have many tools at their disposal to leverage social data. Facebook for a business and Twitter ads, for example, are two programs that businesses can use to effectively use their social data to market to their target audience.
Marketing/socmed & social data
So let’s go over the most obvious connection: the connection between social data and marketing/social media. By using social data for one’s marketing or social media they are able to measure the performance of your digital initiatives including posts, stories, IG lives, reels, and TikToks, for example. By measuring the results given by your social details, you will be able to quantify the performance of your social media pages and the influencers you have connected with for your marketing campaigns. This would make it easier to see which initiatives and/or influencers are worth investing more into and which aren’t doing as well. By doing this you are more likely to understand your audience’s interests, wants, and needs better. Social data gives us a chance to hear our audience better than before. Therefore, resulting in more effective social media campaigns which directly speak to your audience better.
PR, branding, and corporate communications & social data
Another avenue one can use social data is branding, public relations, and corporate communication. This business unit can effectively use social data to understand the public and/or their target market’s perception towards their brand, leaders, employees, and ambassadors. By looking into what the public is saying about the brand, public relations is able to ensure whether or not the messages that the company is putting out are being received the way they are intended to. This helps us find possible disconnects in communication and confirms whether or not your audience understands your brand’s persona effectively.
R&S team and product owners & social data
Your business is a research and development team, as well as product owners, can also find a huge benefit by using social data. By using social data, one is able to more accurately learn the customer’s needs in order to create products that fill that gap for them. Via research, your research and development team will be able to find the customer’s perspective of the benefits and cons of your product, therefore, helping you improve it continuously to serve your customers. Through the genuine feedback, you will receive through this Avenue you will naturally be able to create better products. This feedback will also give you insight into products or services that customers would like to see from your business. By tapping into untapped or new market segments, your business will be able to increase sales exponentially.
Trends and strategy team & social data
Your trends and strategy team will also be able to use social data to their benefit in several ways. By depriving actionable insights from the raw data collected a business can use this information to conduct research or for strategy planning internally. By using the data available your business can be assured that they are staying on top of trends and online charters. Your company will also be able to use the information derived to map out and forecast trends for your customers or target audience in different periods of the year. This will help keep them on top of their game, with no room for surprises. By using this tool, they are also able to capture trends and effectively take action towards them, giving them the opportunity to possibly be one of the first to react to the said market trend.
What now?
To summarise every single aspect of your company and business can benefit from using social data. Anyone in your team from your PR strategist to your sales team can leverage the information found into meaningful business decisions for your company. iWISERS provide this service to the clients to help them keep on top of the latest online chatter and save that time while doing it by providing frequent in-depth reports to the client.
