Before Facebook, there was MySpace. Before MySpace, there was Friendster. All of these social networks, and also many others has brought people together from all parts of the world. Careers were made when members harnessed the power of the network and used it to their advantage. As networks grow, so does the interest in how they are used, and who is using them.
Because of this trend, there has been a large increase in the number of companies, both large and small, that are developing systems for tracking social networking usage. These services are more than just seeing volume; they track who people interact with, how long they stay on a page, what they search and just about every other social networking activity imaginable.
Social Networking Analytics (SNA) is a product of a long standing practice called Social Network Analysis. Social scientists trained in the latter study how people are connected to each other, and how groups are connected to other groups. Taking this concept and practice to the internet was a natural progression after the introduction of social networks started happening.
The rise of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter has caused companies to come up with unique strategies of reaching customers through those media. The information produced from SNA is helpful to a number of different fields, and for organizations looking to use it for customer relationship management (CRM) reasons, services like these are especially useful. Many of these services, add-ons and applications for CRM cloud-based services offer ways to track customers’ conversations on sites like Twitter and Facebook. This tracking allows someone from an organization to be alerted to the start of conversations, in hopes that they may jump into them as soon as they begin.
In doing this, companies can become alerted to potential problems, answer questions and streamline customer service in real time. Being proactive like this does not go unnoticed by customers; when their problems are recognized and fixed in a timely manner, they are more likely to continue using the product or service. In addition to studying customer retention, other benefits of SNA are the abilities to better segment customers and estimate customer life cycles. Companies will also be able to better see the key influence who are leading the conversations. From there, an untapped pool of potential customers can be found - and reached. Most of the services available now are offered at reasonably low costs. When leveraged by the right people and in the right way, businesses have the potential to grow and expand in a way that wasn’t thought possible just a few years ago.
Understanding how people interact, what they are talking about, and knowing what they want will not only help those in sales, but in marketing as well. From a CRM perspective, being able to interact with customers on a personal level, in an authentic voice and in ways that are comfortable for them will help to strengthen those customer relationships and make them last.
The power of these services right now is only the tip of the iceberg. As networks continue to increase in numbers and technology becomes more advanced, even more tools for social networking analytics will come on the market, each diving deeper into the system and offering more and more insight. Social networking and analytics should not be used to replace a customer service or CRM program; they are just helpful additions to the overall system. If used correctly, analytics may be a key tool in helping to not only find the markets and audiences, but also connecting with them. Then enables the user an opportunity to build and manage relationships on a personal level.