(Week 7) Social Media Analytics

1. Why is social media analytic important for your company or organization?

Social media has become a huge part of advertising and marketing for businesses of all sizes.  Analyzing and measuring the results of a company's social media efforts are new to most businesses. Not to mention, many organization do not know how or where to start with the process of social media analytics. 

Social media analytics, also known as social media listening or online listening, is the process of measuring, analyzing, and interpreting interactions and associations between people, topics and ideas in the cyber space. In essence, it usually starts with gathering data from social media websites and is followed by the mining of that data to improve business decisions and customer experience (Assareh, 2015). Organizations should be consistently conducting social media analytics among the organizations Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Website. It is important for organization to measure its social media mediums to discover what works for the organization, track progression and manage time effectively. Why are these 3 keys important:

Know what works and what doesn’t – One of the most important functions of social media analytics is that they show you what you are doing right. Content is important and so is your engagement. Stats and data show you what content is generating what kind of engagement. It’s all there in the numbers and it helps you to verify and quantify your efforts (Rupp,2015).

Track your progress – When you use social media analytics, it also gives you the opportunity to track your progress more in-depth. In addition to knowing what works and what doesn’t, it gives you the opportunity to see how your engagement, impressions, and other stats are changing over time. This allows you to formulate an ROI of your efforts in different areas. How are your ads working for you? How does your content stack up for engagement? Are your conversions increasing(Rupp,2015)?

Manage your time more effectively – As business owners and operators, you have many important things to do. You need to run your business, not worry about micromanaging the social media. This is why using data from analytics, you can manage your time effectively working on the things that give you results and cutting out the things that are not worth the time. Social media marketing does not have to be hit-and-miss. You will waste a lot of valuable time just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. Instead, go into it with a plan, track your results and tweak accordingly (Rupp,2015).

If done properly and accurately, social media analytics has the ability to enhance the brand, increase sales, cut marketing cost and to determine how to appeal to consumers demand. When companies indulge in social media analytics, companies can do the following:

• Optimize advertisements
• Find potential business
• Build relationships with new people 
• examine social platform stats and interaction performance level
• Assess why other pages perform stronger than others
• Review competitors' pages to get additional ideas 
• Drive more visibility to consumers
• See what content is shared most related to the company and more (Cherry, 2015).

2. Do you feel that it is important to track your competitor's social media activity? Why or why not?

Companies should track their competitor's social media activity for a number of reasons.  

Tracking an organizations competitors social media activity aides the company on what type of content they should be producing based on popularity, authors/topics on blogs who get the most shared content. Organizations can use Social Crawlytics to identify competitors most shared content. It is a free tool that analyzes how popular or unpopular content is on a website (Cherry, 2015). Keeping a close eye on the competition helps to improve the content delivered to the target audience.

3. Explain how each of the above mentioned characteristics can be measured and utilized to make business decisions and ultimately build a strong social media presence for your company or organization.

According to "An In-Depth Guide on Calculating the ROI of a Social Media Campaign", The following three characteristics mentioned above can be determined for almost every network and can help identify area in need of improvement. By tracking Page Views Generated via Google Analytics companies can see an individual breakdown of regions, cities/states and other items to better identify site visitors. Once this information has been identified it can be used to determine which areas to target or even which pages of the company's website is most popular among visitors. Tools such as TweetLevel and Twitalyzer, calculates one's influence - number of followers, unique mentions, retweets and frequency of tweets and retweets. With this information companies are able to select brand ambassadors depending on the type of organization it is or estimate how far a desired message can travel. Lastly, google alerts, social mention and google analytics can be used to measure social media sentiment. In doing so, companies can identify what trends are in the market among their target audience to drive or develop a marketing campaign.

 

References:

Assareh, A. (2015). Social Media Analytics: The New Most Important Player in Business Intelligence. Retrieved from http://www.collaborative.com/blog/social-media-analytics-new-important-player-business-intelligence/  

Cherry, I. (2013). 3 Analytic Tools to Improve Your Social Media Performance. Retrieved from 

Rupp. C. (2015) Why Social Media Analytics Are Important To Your Business. Retrieved from http://blog.redsharkdigital.com/why-social-media-analytics-are-important-to-your-business

Week 6 Discussion Forum

1. Have you ever been disciplined for a work related social media post or do you know someone who has? Do you think it is justifiable for an employer to take action against an employee for a "rant."

Personally, I have never been disciplined for work related social media post. Yet, I read an article on Accounting Web which reported how an employee of a American Medical Response of Connecticut had called her supervisor an insulting/obscene name on her Facebook page after having a request for a union representative denied. Her remarks sparked conversation from other AMR employees, resulting in AMR terminating their employee. Shortly after, NLRB filed a complaint in defense of the employee, stating the Facebook posts were protected under the federal labor laws (Alaniz, 2012). Prohibiting this behavior in a social media policy does not violate the Act as long as it does not chill protected speech. Employers may encourage employees to refrain from making insulting remarks or engaging in hateful speech in social media. However, employers may not impose wholesale restrictions (Halpern, 2015). AMR ended up settling and revising the organizations Internet policy (Alaniz, 2012). 

Thereby, I do think it is justifiable for an employer to take action against an employee for a "rant" depending upon the circumstances in which the action is being taken if it is not supported by protected concert activity. Many times employees are the face of an organization and it is important that at all times they represent the organization they are employed by well at all times - inside and outside of the work place. On the contrary, I also believe organization's should revise there social media policies to protect the organization, as well as, still allow employee's their right to freedom of speech on matter's of the work place within reason.

2. In 2015 is it reasonable to expect that employees are on social media during the work day? Is this the new norm? If so, does this have a positive or negative effect on the work place? If not, how can an employer ever truly restrict this use?

In 2015, it is unreasonable to expect employees are not using social media during the work day. Social media has evolved human relations, even in the workplace. Organizations are hiring for social media driven positions, attracting consumers and/or investors and making collaborations with other business entities. 

With social media in the workforce being a new norm, it can exemplify a positive effect or a negative effect on the work place. Allowing employees to access social media profiles online during work hours can be a distraction. Employees may lose valuable work time playing games, talking to friends and updating their own personal profiles. Although social media in the workplace can be a benefit also. It can be utilized as a public relations tool for companies. It allows a measure of transparency to the company through posts, blogs and pictures and makes the company easier to relate to for the average consumer. Companies can use social media to gather mailing lists, distribute sale and special offer information, showcase product pictures and post positive media reviews. Use of social media for work is a very inexpensive, often free, way to promote the business to a wide audience (Swain).

Since, it is very convenient to interact on social media from one's phone. One way employers can truly restrict the use of social media is by not allowing cellular devices into the work area. Some government agencies in Washington, DC exercises this with employees. In addition too, setting website blockers on computer technology used in the office that prevents employees form accessing social media sites.

3. Do you think that social media helps or hurts a young persons ability to have a professional job? On one hand, it allows people to better network and you can create a brand for yourself. On the other hand, I got a Facebook page in high school and feel blessed that I did not have the opportunity to document my thoughts as a Middle Schooler for all to see.

In my opinion, social media can help or hurt a young person's ability to have a professional job depending on how they use social media. A lot of people, not just young people do not understand social media etiquette. Sites like LinkedIn, helps people to connect with others who share the same work expertise as you, locate information for the Hiring Manager or Director of HR for a department and see available jobs. Yet, on the other hand, pictures and status updates on social media has been the reason behind individuals being turned down from a potential job opportunity or being disciplined for inappropriate behavior as it makes the organization question having you as an employee.  

4. Of the nine points listed by NLRB which one did you think was the most important and which one did you feel was the least important?

Of the nine points listed by NLRB, "Saving clauses are recommended, but may not win the day" were least important. It states "nothing in this policy should be construed or applied to prohibit employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act" because it is unreasonable to expect employees to understand the Act well enough to know what provisions of a policy may not apply. (Harpen, 2015). However, it coincides with one of the most important points, "Confidentiality clauses should be narrowly tailored", it is reasonable for an employer to restrict employees from disclosing company trade secrets in social media. However, employers cannot completely restrict employees’ rights to discuss wages, workplace conditions, and employee or company performance (Harpen, 2015). 

References:

Halpern, S. (2015). When is Your Company's Social Media Policy an Unfair Labor Practice? Recent NLRB Decisions Offer Long-Awaited Guidance for Employers. Retrieved from http://www.natlawreview.com/article/when-your-company-s-social-media-policy-unfair-labor-practice-recent-nlrb-decisions-

Alaniz, R. (2012). When Employees Rant Online - The NLRB Weighs in on Workers' Rights. Retrieved from

http://www.accountingweb.com/aa/standards/when-employees-rant-online-the-nlrb-weighs-in-on-workers-rights

Swain, K. The Impact of Social Media in the Workplace Pros and Cons. Retrieved from http://work.chron.com/impact-social-media-workplace-pros-cons-22611.html

Week Three Discussion

In this week's reading, Kerpen  identifies communication  as 50% listening and 50% talking. Social media is the first communications channel that allows for such listening in large scale. Due to the evolution of social media,  platforms such as Yelp, Facebook, Twitter and Discussion Boards have afforded companies the capability of listening more to conversations of existing customers, prospect customers, vendor partners and competitors' customers (Kerpen, 2011, p.14).

Social media listening allows companies advantages which include, avoiding pricey campaigns that they think people will love about their product or service, a better understanding of how customers use products (or don't use them), changes to offerings and how to communicate with customers (Kerpen, 2011, p.15).

When companies engaging in social network practices they are not only strengthening the customer experience and building a relationship with customers. They are also creating numerous opportunities toward building their brand through marketing, public relations and advertising (Kerpen, 2011, p.167).

Based upon this week's reading:  Discuss a scenario in which social listening and engagement helped a company build their brand through marketing communications.

References:

Kerpen, D. (2011). Likeable social media: How to delight your customers, create an irresistible brand, and be generally amazing on facebook (& other social networks). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.