Social Media Analytics For Business Growth and opportunities

The following is the abstract from my recent whitepaper on social media analytics for business growth and opportunities:

"The past few years have witnessed an increase in the usage of social media amongst organizations. Social media analytics plays an important role in analyzing the large amount of data generated on social media websites, company blogs and other such forums for helping organizations frame and fine tune business strategies.

Social media is generally used by organizations to connect with their key stakeholders like the consumers of the company’s products and services, its employees, and its investors. 

Organizations connect with their consumers on social media to understand and analyze their opinion and feedback related to the company products and services and the various aspects of their pre-purchase and post-purchase buying experiences. Connecting with the consumers actively on social media is a very useful mechanism for understanding the consumer needs and pain points and also for understanding what the company is doing well. It also helps in addressing the gaps in organizational strategy by following and acting upon consumer feedback. Company discussion forums on social media websites and company blogs are very useful indicators of what is driving consumer loyalty and are useful tools for analyzing consumer needs. Social media analytics plays a crucial role in terms of tracking such consumer loyalty drivers. For example, key bloggers with specialized knowledge about a particular industry or company provide either a positive, neutral or a negative view of a particular company on their personal blogs or social networking sites or on company websites. An organization can track the views of these key “influencers” - who play a major role in encouraging consumers to purchase a particular product(s) or services or in dissuading them from doing so. These views – when tracked and analyzed– provide an important tool for helping organizations frame appropriate strategies to help improve the overall consumer experience and increase the business benefits as a result of an effective usage of social media analytics.

Organizations can also tap the various social media tools to streamline the “organizational chatter” from a company’s growth perspective. Having dedicated company blogs or discussion forums on the Internet or the company Intranet can help in this social media connect with the employees. The senior management can share the future vision and growth strategies of the organization for the benefit of the employees and also create a vast and meaningful knowledge repository which the various business units can tap into while formulating their respective strategies. This can be further synchronized with other business units of an organization and can lead to greater cohesion in implementing the organization wide business strategy. This is particularly useful for an organization which has offices spread across the globe. 

Furthermore, an organization can, at an external level connect with its investors by communicating its key policies and growth strategies using the various social media tools.

This research also aims to examine, using case studies as to how social media has been adopted by the “Big Four” companies and leading consulting firms and how the social media strategy of an organization is tied to its overall management strategy for its business growth."