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June 10, 2014

BI-for-Social-Media-and-Internet-Marketing

The popularity of social media is a topic that is often discussed around conference room tables in small, medium and large businesses. Every manager and business executive understands that they have to leverage social media to market to prospects, and to keep customers engaged, yet these same managers and executives find it difficult to objectively measure the success of these programs.As with any business program or project, if one cannot illustrate the need for, and success of, a proposed program, it is unlikely that the management team will approve that program. Is your business willing to spend time and resources on social media based solely on the fact that your competitors use this tool? If not, it is critical to find a way to measure the success of an internet marketing campaign and determine whether the social media marketing, pay-per-click and search engine optimization efforts are providing the success your business requires to justify these efforts. Moreover, if these programs are not achieving the results your business needs, you must correct or change your approach in order to achieve the ROI your business needs.

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Today’s news and media outlets are rife with proclamations that these business efforts are useless and that there is no real way to measure the success of these programs or even to provide anecdotal information that might sway a manager to continue with the business program. However, there is one factor that these proclamations do not consider and that is the opportunity to leverage a Business Intelligence Tool and Corporate Performance Management Solution to gather, compile, configure and analyze data provided by these programs, and the social networking sites by exporting and using the statistics, analytics and API provided by the network.

That data can be married with the BI solution and displayed in the dashboard software and KPI management modules and tools to reveal patterns and trends, and to determine the success of a program, and/or identify problems or issues and make appropriate changes. It can also be used to forecast and predict the future programs and initiatives needed to succeed in this environment.

There is another way in which social media data and information can be used to analyze trends. Even if we do not consider the internet marketing initiatives of the business, the enterprise can still use the information from social networking to analyze customer buying behavior and make decisions about new products and competitive initiatives. With an ever increasing user base and various networking platforms focused on numerous personal, consumer, community and business aspects, media networks provide a medium to freely express views, and opinions and business intelligence tools can therefore offer a platform for meaningful analytics of these conversations, connections and posts and identify subtle trends to help the business develop successful strategies.