Social Media Marketing with Big Data
Social media is the vehicle for customers to use to deliver their opinions to be heard which then creates big data. With multiple social networks, social is a huge mine of information for marketers as it’s filled with user locations, discussions, and opinions.
How do marketers use this information? First, let’s explain big data in terms of the 3 V's: Volume, Velocity, Variety. Then look at the details of how a social media marketing manager might use big data to increase the effectiveness of the company’s social strategy, using Phuc Long – a famous coffee store chain in Vietnam.
What I’m trying to describe here is quantities of data that reach almost inconceivable quantities. Within the Social Media spectrum only, the volume will be referred to the amount of data collected through websites, portals, and online applications. Especially for huge social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram, these platforms record billions of images, posts, videos every minute and every hour. After all, they are just a place for consumers to give thoughts, ask for references, or give honest critiques about the somethings. Hence the more involved in the social space, the more understating about the customer feedback.
For example, the customer might criticize Phuc Long unprofessional service at a chain store in district 1, and the business isn’t continuously examining Facebook’s comment sections, it might miss mentions about the brand’s services and hurt the brand reputation, customers in tan Binh district might not come to the store even though the service in Tan Binh is great. Big data solves this issue, it allows Phuc Long to collect all of those mentions to view and evaluate later.
Variety refers to all the structured (data kept in databases and spreadsheets) and unstructured (written emails, voicemails, recordings of audio, images, videos hand-written text, social media, blogs, etc.) data. By looking at some specific types of information like audience location, likes, check-in locations allow your content to be tailored to the audience preferences, increase the chance of keeping the audience interested, engaging, and building a long-term relationship with them.
For example, I can post on Facebook how much I crave milk tea by using the hashtag #Phuclong. From that moment, Phuc Long can engage by up-selling black milk tea. Then, observe whether I check-in a Starbucks store via Google map. Finally, the store can view the photo I posted to my Instagram with my drink order.
This is all relevant information about this user, delivered in a variety of ways. 85% of today data is unstructured, and consequently 95% of companies claiming one of the problems in managing data is identifying the patterns.
Read more: Processing Unstructured Data in 5 Easy Ways
Velocity is the rate of speed of data is coming in. In 2018, 900 million photos are posted on Facebook, 24 million hours of videos are uploaded on YouTube and around 3.5 billion searches are performed in Google daily. This is like a tsunami of data! And big data helps the company to hold this outbreak by ingesting the incoming flow of data and then process it fast (if not it will create bottlenecks) file it, and maybe later, recover them.
By identifying the number of relevant search terms in a short period of time, Google Trends allows Phuc Long marketers to gain a better understanding of what audiences are interested in and curious about, in real-time. Phuc Long can check their competitors, seasonality, know the hottest trends to prepare content. Google Trends is free but not all other tools. More than 60% of marketers said they have increased their expenditure in this section. In today world, approximately 20% of all marketing paid is for data-driven campaigns.
Read more: Top 7 Tools for Customer Insights
As social media becomes an increasingly important aspect of any business strategy, big data will play a bigger role in how a brand manage its social media strategy. Taking the advantages of having data recorded and searchable, it supports the growth of brands, products, or services. Several social networks provide a variety of services for interacting with your audience at any time and from anywhere on the Earth. Data grows exponentially as people can communicate with companies at any time and from anywhere via social media, the gap between firm and consumer will surely shrink.
Hi Chau,
ReplyDeleteFirstly, thank for your post. It is practical when you applying the 3V's into the real case of Phuc Long. That is even more useful and easy to approach for audience who have non-marketing background, but want to begin with it. However, there are some key points I think you could improve to enhance the quality of your blog. First, you can add some intext citation or reliable resources to make your blog become more authority. Second, you can discuss more on how Phuc Long utilize its collected data from customer to deepen your writing. By the way, i love your visual, it is really adorable.
Hi friend 😙,
DeleteThank you for coming, I'm glad that you enjoy reading my blog. For your first recommendations, yes, I did add the hyperlink to the website I took the idea, I'm not sure whether is it correct. Should I use RMIT Havard instead 🤔?
For the second question, I think Phuc Long can collect customer location data, then the company can evaluate and optimize a store’s location (customer service increase since customers can easily find Phuc Long in their area -> convenient) or adjust merchandising displays.
I hope this can answer your question. Have a great weekend nhaa.
Hi Chau,
ReplyDeleteI like your blog structure which is divided into three factors of Big Data. I love how you give example for each part and analyze it by your knowledge and insight. However, I believe the example you gave for Volume is not quite correct. I believe Big Data contains a larger datasets, which can only be analyzed by specific tools. The example of critics you gave is more likely to be Social Listening, which is not big enough to be identified as Big Data.
On the other, I find the other two factors are interesting. It is well described and analyzed. I learnt a lot from them. Thank you with your blog.
Hi friend, thank you for questioning.
DeleteHmmmm...🤔I believe it’s nearly impossible for a marketing manager to engage with every single mention all the time because the Internet produces a massive amount of mentions (specically in this case is Facebook). Social media management tools (big data) can filter through the noise and focus in on the important social mentions. Then Phuc Long marketing staff can examine through the large amounts of mentions to locate the ones worth noting.
I would say that this is an informative blog about Big Data and how this technology is applied to marketing sector, especially in the case of Phuc Long. I do love the way your structure your blog with 3 major sections following the 3-V of Big Data.
ReplyDeleteFrom my perspective, the linkage between the Big Data and Phuc Long's application, however, is quite weak. For example in terms of volume and variety, if Phuc Long wants to collect the data from social media platforms, what tool do they use, how can they optimize these data, how do they generate the insights from these data, especially how do they manage these data when the data is unstructured? I'm currently working in the E-commerce industry and my position also revolves around data analytics a lot, so these are the questions immediately pop up to my mind when reading your blog. Unfortunately, I cannot find the answers. Some suggestion that you can take a look at is BigQuery (Google Cloud Analytics) and PowerBI.
The velocity part, furthermore, has a lot of spaces for improvements, I would say. According to my understanding, velocity refers to 'the speed of big data processing'. And this element is highly crucial to ensure business can update the situation in a real-time manner. For example, Netflix can instantly give out a wide range of movie suggestion for you when you log in to the application. How about Phuc Long, it is my question.
All in all, I enjoy reading your blog so much. It is a well-structured and well-organized blog. I hope my comment is helpful for you. Please stay safe and healthy :D
Hi friend,
DeleteYou're correct, I'm not very comfortable with this week topic, I'd read several blogs about Big Data 3Vs, then tried to link it with Phuc Long. For me, Big Data seems to be something "macro', it is super difficult to write. Glad that I've received comments from you who are working in the E-commerce industry, it seems that I'm 'múa rìu qua mẳt thợ' 🤣(translating: never offer to teach a fish to swim).
For the Velocity example, I think perhaps Phuc Long can suggest the customer based on selling real-time statistics. I mean the brand can promote its seasonal drinks by publishing the selling stats of that drink instantly on the digital menu. Customers can find it interesting, and are willing to purchase that new drink since they can see that drink is on trend, it might be delicous 😝.
And thank you for correcting and giving advice nhaa. Hope you and your family staying safe throughout this unusual time.
Thank you for your words, it make me understanding more about this topic though week 7 is our independent learning week. Firstly I would like to ask you that would you thing it could be a disadvantages or could be a harm for all of us to live in the world of Big Data as it could detect our action and behaviors to make as data for firms. As you said Phuc Long could now how much I reach the relevant word of milk tea, our privacy could be violated. Secondly, I think you should give more specific example how Phuc Long utilize this Big Data in its strategy as well as how I could manage scandals or the bad comment above specifically. Anyways, I always love your blogs' organization and decoration ^^
ReplyDeleteHi Han,
DeleteThank you for coming. In my opinion, since the goals of big data and privacy are fundamentally opposed to each other so Big data is only a privacy risk if it's managed poorly. If an organization stops using data because of the fear that it'll lead to security breaches, it’ll be making a big mistake. Hence you should consider carefully before posting things online since you'd agreed to let the content goes public. Nothing is private.
I hope this answers your concern.