Never Too Old To Play On A Playground…

Don’t overthink the future of social media.  Analyzing your social media will become easier and it will enrich the lives of your consumers.  As Chris Taylor explains in his recent article on CNN.com, How Social Media are Amplifying Customer Outrage, there are real-life examples of companies being controlled by the customers’ ability to disrupt the industry.

Chris took a look at the recent changes in Netflix plans to highlight this. When the changes hit, there were 79,000+ responses on the Facebook page alone. Filtering and categorizing those responses can help you to find out exactly what people are feeling, but only if you can make sense of the data. 79,000 responses – a large number of potential customers, were unhappy.  1 or 2 unhappy customers don’t need an analytics graph – but 79,000 do! The challenge to any size company is to successfully navigate and sort the enormous amount of data, conversations, communities, and analytics.

Personally, I think few social media monitoring dashboards will be able to compete with Peoplebrowsr’s new engagement tool, Playground. Most can boast at search features that detail community, location, RT’s and influencers, but Playground’s capabilities are more than amazing.

I’ve joked with my team that that after it sorts by gender, sentiment and champions 100 days prior, I can drill to find out more important facts like which brand of cowboy boots? diet or regular Mt. Dew? favorite pattern of Adrian Jules suit?? Unbelievable! The experience is a little like shopping at my local hunting store.  I find so many things that I didn’t know I needed until I see them!

Advantages of access to this data will be proven by the relationships built within the community of the business. If you know exactly what your customers are thinking, as well as who they are, what they like, why and how they buy, and who influences these decisions, then your ability to market to these analytically segmented groups significantly increases its effect. Organizing this vast amount of social media data will help to shape your marketing decisions and put control of the brand back into the rightful hands of your company.