5 Ways How to Use Big Data in Social Media

By definition, social media data is generated by comments, posts, images, and, to a significant extent, social media videos. According to eMarketer report, the number of people in the world regularly watching video content on their smartphones will increase to 2.72 billion by 2023. This is because of the growing 4G and 5G cellular networks prevalence. While trends in social networks and the way they are used tend to change rapidly and unpredictably, their role as a stable generator of digital data remains unchanged.

Social big data helps group users by interests and personalize ads for them. People are ranked by age, gender, interests, and location. Those who live in the same region, visit the same accounts, watch videos and read articles on similar topics are more likely to be interested in the same products. 

That said, there are regular scandals related to the use of big data in marketing. In 2018, for example, streaming platform Netflix was accused of racism because it showed users different movie and series posters based on their gender and ethnicity. 

At the same time, with the help of Big Data analytics, media measures audiences. In this case, Big Data can even influence editorial policy. For example, the Huffington Post uses a system that shows real-time statistics on visits, comments, and other user actions, and also prepares analytical reports.

The system at the Huffington Post evaluates how effectively headlines grab the reader's attention and develops methods of delivering content to specific categories of users. For example, it found that parents are more likely to read articles from their smartphones and late at night on weekdays after they've put their kids to bed, and on weekends they're usually busy. As a result, content for parents is published on the website at a time convenient to them.

So, how to use Big Data in social media?

Create new experiences, services, and products

Relevant data is really important for companies to be able to plan a launch for their services and products. Big Data from social media is a great way to figure out growing demand and other information, such as customer expectations. This helps businesses launch product production at the right time.

Both traditional firms and multimillion-dollar startups have the same access to data that allows them to gather the information they need to identify services or products that are successful. Businesses can then target their resources to obtain the best terms to bring a new product to market.

According to Forbes, 53% of companies are turning to this technology. With big data from social media, descriptive and predictive statistics, any business can conduct research and development to know what services are in demand and what verticals are better to work on. Using big data from social media and business intelligence is vital to business development and brand success.

Analyze and predict consumer behavior

Predicting consumer behavior is the responsibility of every marketer. Social media research can help you examine intent as well as predict the preferences of potential customers. 

With sophisticated predictive social media analytics tools, your business will gain useful data. Big data analytics can be used to analyze all consumer characteristics, such as buying habits, frequency of purchases, and even factors that influence purchasing decisions. Social media research provides businesses with an opportunity to better understand their consumers and target audience.

Improve the customer experience

Companies can use the vast amount of data that users of social media generate to shape a useful customer experience. This big data can be social media comments, history of searches, activities in social media, or even purchases. This kind of data across the channel can come in handy for creating the personalized offers a customer would like to see.

Make advanced decisions

With big data analytics, marketers can identify social media trends that they can use to effectively make decisions. For example, they can determine which ad campaign or email newsletter to launch next or when to launch their discount schemes and many others.

Big data can share valuable information about what products consumers want to buy and when they want to buy them. In addition, by collecting product reviews and personal user feedback, brands can launch a new product line or better tailor existing products to their customers' needs.

Increase sales or influence consumer behavior

Marketing today has changed completely. To drive sales, marketers favor modern methods over traditional solutions. Looking at the current situation, companies are targeting customer preferences, purchase history, online reviews, social media activity, and a variety of digital tracks. This is done to help form the most personalized attitude possible, inclining people to purchase the company`s products or services.

The use of big data and business intelligence allows companies to shape optimal pricing structures, improve messaging or notifications, visualize information to monitor metrics, and envision many aspects that will increase business revenue.

Conclusion

Big data from social media has enormous potential for analyzing and predicting consumer behavior. Based on the social media data collected, it is possible to pinpoint the nature of the needs and effectively provide the ideal solution. In this way, it is possible to create a rather large competitive advantage in the market. But to get the maximum benefit out of this data, it is necessary to choose a database that in the best way suits the needs of the company.

Society has some reservations about big data. This is especially due to the fear of the invasion of privacy and deliberate misrepresentation in order to sell something. This is a very delicate boundary, and it is up to companies to determine how far they will go with their plans.

Big data is a tool that helps organizations better understand their target audience and offer the perfect product to the consumer. Social media big data even can be integrated into data warehouses to break up data silos and create more effective analyses. So, businesses will be sure to take advantage of the opportunities it presents.

Anything new is always a cause for apprehension. Even more apprehensive will be the tools which imply the systematization of information and knowledge about people's behavior and preferences. Anyway, big data from social media will develop, be it in banking, marketing or sales.