What is Social Media Analytics

Analytics as defined by Thomas H. Davenport is, “The extensive use of data, statistical and quantitative analysis, explanatory and predictive models, and fact based management [used] to drive decisions and actions.” This is a subset of Business Intelligence which refers to a set of skills, knowledge, technologies, applications, and practices combined to acquire understanding of the market behavior and business context.

Analytics involves several steps.

1. The collection of data
2. The integration of data
3. The analysis of data
4. The interpretation of data
5. The presentation of business information

Through the use if business intelligence you will be able to answer the following critical questions:

* What happened?
* How many, how often, where?
* Where exactly is the problem?
* What actions are needed?
* Why is this happening?
* What if these trends continue?
* What will happen next?
* What’s the best that can happen?
When it comes to social media here are some questions that need to be addressed from an analytics perspective:

• Standard Reports                 What conversations are occurring?
• Ad hoc reports                     When & Where are the conversation occurring?
• Query/drill down                  What are the sentiment of the conversations?
• Alerts                                   What actions are needed?
• Statistical Analysis                Why are these conversation occurring?
• Forecasting/Extrapolation    What if these conversations continue?
• Predictive Modeling              What conversations are next?
• Optimization                        How can we lead these conversations?

Where is your organization when it comes to Social Media Analytics?

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