Lots of great data. What are you going to do with it?

There are a number of sophisticated social media metrics tools on the market today. You can aggregate social media conversation to reveal sentiment, voice of customer, demographics, even the profile of the author. It’s all pretty powerful stuff. But in the end, you have to know what to do with the data. You or your company has to have a broader view of your goals and how social media analytics can integrate into your business metrics. Social media analysis is not an end in and of itself, but rather a rich, contextually relevant data point that can help give you a more complete picture of your customer.

So, before you begin filtering and sifting through your customer’s conversations, here are some suggestions to make the most of your analysis:

1. Know What to Look for. Define the purpose of your analysis. Are you tracking a campaign, your brand, or a new product release? Having a clear and narrow focus for your analysis will help filter through the enormous volume of data.
2. Define Success. What are the goals associated with your brand, product or campaign? Are there significant milestones that have to be achieved for overall success? Having clearly defined goals can help focus your analysis to ensure you are on track or if you are missing a critical step.
3. Create a Complete Picture of Your Customer. Social media analytics provides valuable insight but it is a single data point. Think about how you might incorporate real-world feedback, web analytics, and customer service data to give you a more complete and accurate picture.
4. Have an Engagement Plan. So, you are sifting through your social media analysis and there are more than a few negative comments. How are you going to respond? How many critics are acceptable? After all, you can’t please everyone. How will you respond if an overwhelming number of your customers are unhappy? How will you support customers, who love your product or service and are loyal?
5. Establish a Reporting Schedule. Decide how often you are going to report-out and how far back you need to go to detect trends. 3 months of analysis generally provides enough data and detail to establish a robust baseline. Establishing a time frame for your analysis is important for a couple of reasons:

• Too short – peaks and dips in activity and sentiment can appear to be more significant than they are when looked at over time. You may not include significant trending details.

• Too long – significant details can be swamped by too many data points. Will you be able to discern important details about a new campaign if you are including a year’s worth of social media conversations?

There are times when short time-frame analysis can be extremely helpful to provide quick insight into a new product release. And there are occasions when you want to study the long-term health of your company’s brand.

Knowing the purpose of your analysis is critical for:

• Establishing the time frame of your research
• Defining success
• Planning your strategy for customer engagement
• Making sure other metrics points are included in your reporting