For marketers who love data, the growing conversation about Big Data and integrating it more into every day operations is no doubt exciting. Data collected through social media factors into this discussion in a number of ways, from uncovering areas for improvement in brick and mortar stores to pulling insights from sentiment about everything from products to ad campaigns.
But only about one-third of U.S. marketers are capturing social data. For companies that have adopted Social CRM tools that maintain a database of profile information for customers, this is valuable data about the social customers who are interacting with your social accounts.
One of the benefits of large amounts of data is that it can be sliced and diced – and how it’s sliced leads to different insights.
In terms of social customer data, three categories of filtering lead to different ways to extract actionable points:
High-Level Data: This is a broad way of looking at your database. These data points will uncover who is actually interacting with you in social. Learning the high-level facts about the social connections across multiple presences (hundreds if you manage a global brand) offers insight for categories like gender, country, state, city, and so on.
Mid-Level Data: When broad, high-level filters get paired with hand-selected filters, this is when it starts to get even more interesting. Dig deeper into the data to reveal aggregate insights about your social community members. Tools like Shoutlet Social Profiles let you create combinations of segmentation options to unveil truths about your Social CRM data. How many married women subscribe to your YouTube channels? How many users under 30 in California Like your Facebook Page and follow you on Twitter? For B2B companies, this mid-level data could tell you how many Facebook fans you have that work at specific companies.
While these filter combinations will each teach you, compare your social customer findings with other marketing data sets to see how they match up. Are the target segments you’re shooting for as a brand reflect who is actually connected to you in social media? Just as social listening can illuminate new demographics that are attracted to your brand, pulling this insight from your database of connections is possible, too. Plus, knowing more about your social audience will inform your content calendars, social ad strategies, and long-term goals.
Individual-Level Data: Take a microscope to your data and you’ll find each of your social connections – the customers who your brand is aiming to reach one by one to develop relationships and strengthen their connection to your brand through social. Capturing profile information and interaction history for each of your social connections creates a go-to resource for getting to know your customers. Over time, each interaction is recorded and each piece of the personal data they share with you is updated (e.g. data they’ve shared as part of a contest or sign-up form, info you’ve imported from another list, etc.).
For your community management team, individual-level data is invaluable when interacting with people one-on-one in social media. Knowing about each customer makes subsequent interactions richer and helps identify brand advocates. It helps everyone on your social response team view each customer for who each person is personally – making interactions more authentic and personalized.
Dive in deeper to your mid-level segments to learn more about how your team is interacting with members of that group. For instance, if you are a snack brand, view individual profiles of this segment: mothers living in NYC who Like you on Facebook and have indicated they like a particular flavor over another, which you’ve included as a field in a newsletter sign-up form. Spot subtle trends early and stay ahead of the game.
Marketing teams are just beginning to harness the immense amounts of data available. By viewing your data through these three lenses, brands can uncover more than ever about the people who have raised their hands to interact with them in social spaces.