Using Social Media and Big Data for Your Business

Whether you are a new company or an established large corporation, Big data and social media can have big impacts on the engagements with your customers. Many benefits can be found by using the data found in your companies digit footprint. This footprint includes everything from day-to-day transactions to a mobile social media presence.

Analyzing big data allows marketing departments strategic advantages when publishing print and online materials. This provides business with the ability to better make informed decisions to the needs and expectations of consumers.^[1]  Other advantages include amplifying the businesses brand message and delivering that message to a targeted audience. This has allowed smaller business to compete with larger organizations that was once controlled by the amount of money throw at advertising. This has resulted in reduced marketing cost when the net doesn’t have to be throw as broadly as before.

When companies have better customer engagement this leads to an improved customer experience. This also leads to customer retention. These customers are also providing positive feedback through places like Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp as testimonals.

There are, however, challenges to big data. Subject matter experts in the data domain are few and far between. Since most of the data is from multiple sources of structured and unstructured data, integration need to be built and determination is required that the analysis is accurate. This doesn’t come with a small price tag.  Data quality from various resources also require Data scientist to ensure that the analytic are actionable.^[2]

Analytic experts suggest measuring the right things to drive conversations into actionable insights. A recent survey of 49  Analytics experts compiled the following results: ^[3]

• Measure the right things
• Ask the right questions to stakeholders
• Use segmentation to drive action
• Use clear visualizations to convey your message
• Discover the context of your data set
• Build a solid optimization plan (using Six Sigma)
• Construct a great hypothesis
• Integrate data sources
• Break down organizational silos
• Don’t forget to hire smart people 

Knowing this information has taught me why it is so important when using social media in a responsible way. I understand that posting things online are permanent, but never realized that it creates a better experience with the companies I like and follow. I can also utilized social media to develop my professional career and reputation responsibly. 

1. https://insidebigdata.com/2018/10/06/4-major-ways-big-data-impacting-social-media-marketing/
2. https://www.datamation.com/big-data/big-data-pros-and-cons.html
3. https://www.smartinsights.com/goal-setting-evaluation/web-analytics-strategy/top-10-strategies-turn-data-actionable-analytics/