Social Media Analytics

Peter Zotto

February 3, 2010

There seems to a rush to catch this train…At least from a brand’s perspective. With social networks, blogs, video content sharing and general social based influence marketing taking over traditional advertising, it seems only fitting that brands and their management teams should be paying attention to all that is being said about them.

I can’t vouch for the exact validity of all the following numbers but I did get them through a trusted source at http://goso.com/company/overview.html

  • Time spent on social networks is growing at three times the overall Internet rate.
  • More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day and more than 1.5 million pieces of content are shared on Facebook daily.
  • 68% of Internet users have used social networks, while only 65.1% have used email. 
  • If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria.

Breaking this all down just means that if you are a brand looking for leads, business growth strategies, or just curious as to what your customers are saying about you…then you should probably have a software analyzing this data. But what software should you choose? There are a plethora of options out there. From business intelligence for social media to buzz monitoring to reputation management, the list goes on. Most of these companies are gaining significant traction with large enterprise clients but the market and the brands are still trying to figure out how to deal with the data these software platforms are providing to them. The biggest issue I can see is that up until now a lot of the data being fed back to the brand is mostly noise. These software companies need to break through the aforementioned noise and provide relevant, feature rich data that clearly highlights what is going right, what is going wrong how to get in on the conversation.

Check out this link on social analytical Business Apps and the future of ERP/BI systems.

http://www.cio.com/article/509887/2010_s_New_Software_Star_Socialytic_Business_Apps

GM

Peter Zotto is the GM at <a href="http://www.priceintelligently.com">Price Intelligently</a>. Previously he was an analyst at OpenView where he helped to identify qualified investment opportunities.