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So your brand has acquired 10,000 new followers on Facebook this month… now what?
Wednesday, January 18, 2012 by Beth Barling
Today we launched a new online, on-demand event focused on social analytics. As MWD’s Communications Director with responsibility for our online marketing and social media activities, this is a topic close to my heart. So it was with much interest that I listened to what my colleagues Angela Ashenden and Helena Schwenk had to say…
There are four webcasts to listen to, and we’ve purposefully made them short and sweet – long enough to give you some useful information and food for thought, but not so long to put you off even getting started. Time is money, right? Watch them at your leisure, skip about through the presentations using the interactive console and come back anytime you’ve got a few minutes to spare – they’ll be available to watch for a year. I’m confident though that what Angela and Helena have got to share will keep you there once you’ve started listening – it’s interesting stuff. By the way, the webcasts are free to watch, and you don’t need to register.
Click here to visit the event site to start each webcast. For now, here’s an introduction to each one:
1. Do you need social analytics? Here Angela provides an overview of the emerging trend of social analytics, comparing it with similar trends such as social media monitoring, and examining how it can help organisations derive value from its different social channels.
2. Enabling an integrated marketing strategy. In this presentation, Helena examines why marketing has become the focal point for many social analytic efforts and outlines the opportunities and challenges that may arise from its integration across marketing.
3. Alternative scenarios for social analytics. Angela outlines a variety of different contexts in which social analytics may be applied, contrasting public social media scenarios with those of more targeted internal or external social software implementations, and illustrating the role social analytics can play in delivering value from both investment areas.
4. Preparing your social analytics strategy. Helena outlines some vital next steps for any organisation looking to capitalise on its social media investment using social analytics, identifying potential pitfalls to be avoided and challenges which need to be overcome.
I was particularly taken with what Helena talks about in this slide:
I won’t spoil it for you and do a full recap here – you can listen to Helena here – but suffice it to say that this model certainly resonated with me. There’s certainly no shortage of tools available to help me count the impact of what we’re doing as a company… What’s fascinating me at the moment is how to take this to the next level and really make connections between social media and our other marketing activities as a springboard to better understanding our community and striking relationships and engagements with individuals. Sometimes that’s seemed a pretty big chasm to cross, and so far we’ve made some headway using a mix of advanced tools and some good old-fashioned, shirt-sleeves-rolled-up manpower to find our way forward (and for us, compelling content and advice is key of course – no tools can make up for a poor business proposition). But will there ever be a “silver bullet” social analytics engagement tool that will do the job of connecting all the dots at the press of a button? I’m not so sure. But I’ll leave it to Angela and Helena to let me know… If you’re a vendor of such technology, I’m sure you’ll be wanting to let them know.
To finish, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that this event is brought to you free of charge thanks to the generous support of our sponsor*: SAS. After you’ve listened to the webcasts, why not check out the SAS ‘exhibitor booth’ page in our virtual exhibition hall? There you’ll find an overview of their social analytics offerings, as well as a wealth of other free resources, including a video and some report downloads.
So get started now and check out the event site. As always, let us know what you think. Use the feedback link on the event site and you’ll receive 10% off a selection of premium advisory reports.
* A note about sponsoring a MWD Advisors event: We’re grateful to our sponsors for their support. But just so you know, we designed and created the event content ourselves – it’s a completely independent and unbiased piece of work. We hope you find it useful. Do let us know.
Posted in Analytics, Information Management, Collaboration, General, MWD