7 case studies show social media analytics pay off

 

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – Peter Drucker

1. 87% of marketers want to know how to measure their return on investment for social media activities (source: Social Media Examiner)
2. 85% use social networks in some way; only 14% tie financial metrics to it. (source: AdAge)
3. Only 8% of companies say they can determine Return on Investment (ROI) from their social media spending (source: Econsultancy)

Social media analytics is the practice of gathering data from blogs and social media websites and analyzing that data to make business decisions.
Do social media analytics help determine ROI from social media activities? Here are 7 case studies where social media analytics pay off.

1. BARCLAY’S: Launched a mobile banking application called PingIt. In the days following the launch, Barclays made significant changes to the app as a result of real-time social media analysis. The sentiment analysis showed although  the app was very well received, a small proportion of mentions were negative. It was quickly apparent that many users were unhappy that the app didn’t work for under 18’s. It wasn’t only teenagers that were unhappy, but also parents that couldn’t transfer money to them. This could easily create a PR disaster, but the data allowed Barclays to act quickly. Within the week, 16 and 17 year-olds were given access to the app, showing that Barclays were responsive to customer feedback.
2. KEEN: An outdoor shoe manufacturing company based in Portland, Oregon with a well-respected brand and a strong and loyal following, built a social analytics framework to help understand social media campaigns, The framework included metrics such as Aurthorship, Reach, Engagement, Sentiment, Influence and Effect. Keen established Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that traced back to business objectives. Page Likes increased by 92%, Post Reach increased by 342% and Post Engagement increased by 137%.
3. LIPSY LONDON: a British women’s fashion brand, used social media analytics to look for linguistic pattern on how potential customer behave online to focus on engaging the right customers at the right time in their purchase journey. This was used to shape the paid and natural search strategies as well as a display campaign. This generated a 350% increase in revenue, 1,500 new unique users and over 8,000 visits to date.
4. ROXY THEATER: A music theater in West Hollywood, California where Bob Marley, The Clash and Bruce Springstein, among others, had played. They used TweetReach to measure the number of people their Tweets reach, as well as the number and quality of Retweets. They also used Klout, which helped them compare their efforts to similar businesses.  They used the numbers in a TweetReach report to demonstrate to a talent buyer that they could reach a larger potential audience through Twitter so they could stop advertising in certain local publications. AOL City’s Best just named The Roxy as the best live music venue in Los Angeles. They just passed 100,000 Facebook followers and have nearly 50,000 Twitter followers.
5. SAMSUNG: Had no scalable business model for integrating social media with customer support, plus no way to track building PR crises. They identified relevant keywords and major influencers, advocacy and community involvement. They established benchmarks for content volume around keywords and sentiment levels. Within 2 months, they had 325,000+ targeted product conversations tracked to establish benchmarks and 1 PR crisis alerted, processed and managed.
6. TOMS SHOES: On April 10th thousands of people around the world ditched their footwear for TOMS Shoes annual “One Day Without Shoes;” a campaign aimed at showing the impact a pair of shoes can have on a child’s life. It is heavily rooted in social media – supporters share experiences by Tweeting the #withoutshoes hashtag. When they broke down the data hour by hour on 4/10, they saw the support building throughout the day and then sustaining with a large spike in to the evening. Drilling down, Toms saw how the campaign drew in major celebrities, media, and influencers along with international support during this period.
7. YALE: Started a Tumblr blog to create, preserve and disseminate knowledge through infographics, online Q&A’s and educational content. They used social analytics to improve content strategy, determine the best time to post and identify influencers who are sharing their Tumblr posts. The Tumblr campaign increased followers by +142% and achieved more than 1,200 notes with two posts.

Do these case studies prove the value of social media analytics to you? Does your company need help understanding and establishing a framework for social media analytics?