Social Media Analytics: The Power for Companies in Social Media

Companies currently live in a world that understands the importance of appearing in public through social media. It is interesting to see now in 2016 how most companies have a social media department within their business line. This shows how businesses nowadays are evolving and shifting the way to reach to their consumers in order to increase sales. In my previous blogs, I have discussed the importance of social media to businesses and how companies would not survive without it. In addition, I have went through different industries, such as news media, ground transportation, and airlines to analyze how different businesses use social media successfully to reach to their target goals, and how they are benefiting from the online appearance through social media. For example, the marketing team at Mozio are benefiting from posting their service that led to public awareness and sales increase. The IT team at the Newspaper industry are taking advantage of the social media to make a traffic to their website in order to increase the number of viewers. Finally, the human resource team at American Airlines are successfully incorporating their customer service strategies through social media.

(To view my recent blogs please visit this link Social Media and Businesses by Talal Al Tubayyeb).

Therefore, what is the next level for companies in the use of social media? What strategies do companies need to implement in order to maintain their success in social media? We all understand the statement that “nothing stays the same”, and especially when dealing with an evolving digital platform. For these reasons, companies basically need to analyze their social media activities in order to take the most and best out of these activities. I mean by this is that companies must look after Social Media Analytics. Please note that the main idea of this blog is not to dig deep into big analytics, but instead, discussing the benefits of social media analytics for companies that would allow them to analyze their social media activities.

Social media analytics is the process of gathering data from social media and analyzing those data in order to make sufficient business decisions. The advantages that social media analytics provide to companies are numerous. It can track a company’s social media activities progress and point out a company’s strengths and weaknesses point from those activities. Therefore, it is the ideal way to make the right process at the right time in order to reach at the right decisions. As I mentioned in previous blogs, social media is not only about having as much “followers” or “likes”; it is also about analyzing and pointing out the aspects that led a company to succeed in social media. any social media director at any organization would ask his team questions such as what are the most successful activities and strategies that had been done in social media? What are the least? What do social media data tells us about our customers? Therefore, it is the way for a company to organize their online practices and focus more on the successful strategies based on those data. In addition, companies could benefit from social media analytics by analyzing and comparing with their competitors. The data from social media is proven to be a gold tool that companies should not disregard in order to continue their success.

Another way to show the importance of social media analytics is a small-sized company called Ncrease based in Washington DC. Ncrease is a company that analyze data gathered from social media analytics in order to predict an individual next purchase before that individual makes any decisions. The company then sells these analysis to companies in order for those companies to find the right customers.

At he end, appearing in a social media platform is the first step for your company. Social marketing and engagements with customers through your company’s social media account is the next step. The final and important step is to analyze your company’s activities in social media to identify and focus on the strengths and point out areas to focus more that will lead at the end to achieve your company’s goal in social media and assist in your diction making.

I would like to conclude with a video by IBM that shares their experience with social media analytics: Make Better Decisions with Social Media Analytics

Link of articles:

Why Tracking your Social Media Analytics is Important

American Airlines: The evolution of Customer Service through Social Media

What are the effects of social media in customer service? How social media has changed the customer experience? Why social media makes customer service better?

The evolution of social media has shifted the way companies manage their customer service strategies. It is starting to put an end of the long waiting time phone calls to answer either general or frequent questions. For the airline industry, most of the frequent questions that customer service deal are inquiries regarding flight delays, in addition to making a new reservation or confirming an existing reservation.

American Airlines is known to be one of the successful large companies, and within the airline industry, to incorporate their customer service with social media, precisely in Twitter. American Airlines has established a creative skilled team of customer service representatives to manage the company’s account on Twitter. The team is responsible of sharing the latest news about the company, and most importantly, engaging with customers by responding to their inquiries, comments, and complains. Today, American Airlines has about 1.3 million followers in Twitter that are able to interact with company from 6:00 am till midnight, which is the peak hours of flight schedules.

As Jonathan Pierce, American Airlines director of social media communications, commented: “Given the evolution and expectation shift in how our customers are engaging with us, we are moving from communication to conversation”  in reply to a question regarding the personality of the social media team. Therefore, one of the interesting aspects that distinguish American Airlines customer service in the social media is the way the team reply to their customers. The company is trying to make their response as a real world one-to-one conversation with more fun personality touch on it, instead of an automated reply communication.

Many companies lack the effective strategies for the use of social media in order to be successful and meet the social media goal. Companies might believe that social media is an effective tool to increase awareness and spread the word-of-mouth marketing. That is true, but the question nowadays thats going is how to keep your customers following you and how to get them engaged with the company? The example of American Airlines shows that companies can create a successful personalized platform to communicate with customers through social media.

In order to have a grasp of the success of American Airlines social media strategies and accomplishments, here is video that shows how the company is taking social media through its customer service team so seriously:

American Airlines Social Media Accomplishments

For more information regarding American Airlines social media strategies, here is an interesting video interview with Jonathan Pierce, American Airlines director of social media communications:

American Airlines on Social Media – Interview with Jonathan Pierce

 

Link of the article:

How American Airlines gets social media right?

How do Taxi Business Engage with the Social Media

Well all know how the social media have a huge impact on how do companies utilize their marketing strategies in order to increase sales. Today, most businesses, if not all, have an official account on several social media platforms.

But is that truly enough?

Successful businesses not only rely on being out there in the social media, but also implementing strategies on how to take advantage of the use of social media. Lets think of the ground transportation business since it is shown to be an interesting industry that uses the social media after several decades of “old school methods”, and the recent revolution of “Uber”.

Social media and digital applications have shaped how people use ground transportation nowadays. For the taxi business, it started implementing new and creative methods through the use of social media. For example, Mozio, a ground transportation search engine, started use a unique approach to attract clients through the use of social media. This approach can be described as Prompting Behavior. Through Twitter, Mozio is currently interacting with future clients that are in need of ground transportations based on the client’s tweets. The approach can be broken down into these simple techniques:

1. Listening
   • Finding clients who are tweeting about a need for ground transportation and listen to their concerns that the company can solve.
2. Acting
   • Providing confidence to users or prospective clients that the company can offer to solve their problem and needs.
3. Asking
   • Asking the prospective customer to make the booking by taking them to their website.

The interaction that Mozio is experiencing with their prospective customers through Twitter has shown that the company is engaging with the social media successfully that reflected in the increased number of sales. Mozio did not waited for user accounts or customers to find them online. Instead, the company is in the act of searching for prospective customers that are willing to use their service for ground transportation. Jeff Molander described this approach as simple as listening to future customers and solving their potential problems.

 

Thats one successful approach for taxi business. Another successful approach is the story of “Chicago Cabbie” .

Rashid Temuri, a Chicago taxi driver, took advantage to of the social media to introduce himself and his service to the Chicagoans. He has his official account on Twitter, and started to tweet his current locations, and what is going on in Chicago. Rashid rely on customer feedback and frequent loyal customers in order for his strategy to succeed. Tweet him and he is there! Thats it!

These stories show how taxi or ground transportation businesses can be utilize the social media successfully and generate even more sales. Company appearance in the social media is not enough nowadays to be successful as people now expects everyone to be out there online. It is now all about your creative strategies and customer engagement through the use of social media.

At the end, here is a short video of a taxi driver in Bogota, Colombia who shares his story after using the social media.

Twitter Taxi in Bogota

 

Links:

http://www.makesocialmediasell.com/social-media-limo-taxi-service/

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/01/old-services-meet-new-media-a-tweeting-cabbies-growing-business/

 

 

Social Media and the News Industry

Fifty years ago until the revolution of the social media, people were depending on newspapers as one of the main and strategic sources of news media in order to connect them to the world. After the revolution of the social media, the newspaper and magazine industry struggled to keep up their consumers using the traditional outlets. Therefore, the time has come for the newspaper business to be more digitalized and incorporate the social media as a method for reaching out to people. Hence, I would like to focus on this blog about how the social media affected the newspaper industry in terms of their strategy to reach out to people, and not about the financial affects of the newspaper industry.

According to a New York Times article written by Ravi Somaiya regarding the affects of the social media, especially Facebook, on the way that people consume journalism, Facebook represents up to 20% of users who viewed the news through the use of Facebook. It takes one click for a user to read what he/she want to read from an online news media. I believe this is an interesting fact since it gives the ability for people to have the option to choose what to read based on their interest. Most the newspapers companies, if not all, have an official account in the social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, that people can follow their accounts and be in touch with the latest news. In addition, one of the advantages that the newspaper industry gained from the social media is that it gives people the ability to share any news they liked to different ushered, which by the end will increase the number of viewers for online newspapers and news media. Not only that, it also gives people the ability to share their thoughts and increase the relationship between the journalist and users.

For these reasons, the revolution of the social media have changes the way people nowadays view the news. I would like to end my blog by an interesting video from Youtube that discussed more about Social Media and News.

 

Article: How Facebook Is Changing the Way Its Users Consume Journalism

How Do Businesses Survive Without Social Media?

As we all know, successful businesses, nowadays, are keenly focused on implementing the latest strategies that would enhance their business. A major strategy for businesses would be taking advantage of the explosion of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and many other social networks. I would like to share a blog written by Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite, that explained why businesses would not be able to survive without social media.

Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite

Holmes focused more on businesses that are still not on board on the social media, and how do many senior executives, CEOs, and decision makers do not understand yet the value that the social media will add to their business. According to the statistics, more than 2 billion of people around the world use the social media. In terms of Millennials, three quarters of young people also use the social media. Thats a huge number and a big market that is hard deny and not attract. One of the takeaways I found it to be interesting is when Holmes claimed that business that do not incorporate the social media into their strategies are the same that claimed the internet was just a fad twenty years ago!

Therefore, after reading Holmes article, the million dollar question that came into my mind is How do businesses survive in 2016 without a social media interaction with the public? How could a company gain a market share against their competitors who use the social media effectively? How long could those businesses last?

 

Cliford Stoll

Before ending my blog, I would like to share an article from Newsweek twenty years ago although Holmes also touched basis on it. Stoll claimed in 1995 that the internet was just a fad and would not be an efficient tool for business!!!!

Link: Califford Stoll

Whatever business you are in it would not last long nowadays without incorporating the social media as a strategic strategy that would ease up the interaction between businesses and their customers.

I would like to end my blog by sharing an interesting video that demonstrate the effects that social media has on businesses and how it shaped the world of business:

Social Media in Business

Link of Ryan Holmes Article:

http://fortune.com/2015/11/18/businesses-cant-survive-social-media/