soc ial me d i a
In this interconnected world,
where a small social media
ripple can have the impact
of a tsunami on the eventual
sales bottom line, it becomes
imperative for analysts to
know quick-fix analyses and
easy-to-extract metrics.
The metric of interest here would be the simple overlap (correlation) between the sales at a
point in time and the number of posts “around”
the same point of time. It need not be strictly sales
alone. It could be any metric that captures the essence of all the four points above; it could be new
customers, overall customers, new mentions or
increased engagement. An overlap of a specific
success metric on a time-on-time basis with a
post’s timings should help you figure out if your
social media karma is beneficial or otherwise.
An eventual insight from this exercise can
help you better decide on the promotional budget for each type of post and the length of the
promotion. One thing to remember, just like human karma, the efforts should not be estimated
on an absolute immediate-time basis but with a
practical lag (0-2 days) from the time of posting.
In this interconnected world, where a small
social media ripple can have the impact of a tsunami on the eventual sales bottom line, it becomes imperative for analysts to know quick-fix
analyses and easy-to-extract metrics from the
vast unstructured world of social media. It would
be wiser for organizations to analyze data within the security of their own firewalls and derive
some of the key metrics that are more useful for
their purposes – at no extra cost at all. ❙
Kshira Saagar, a manager with Mu Sigma (www.mu-sigma.
com), has considerable experience in analytics consulting
with multiple Fortune 500 clients. His experience spans
across technology, pharmaceutical and retail industries
where he works closely with client teams and business
executives in creating, operationalizing and driving
consumption of analytics.
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