Social media is already not a curiosity in the 20th century. Various social media platforms today become a necessity for many people in life, including in Indonesia. More than 80 million internet users in Indonesia, are now quite familiar with the various social media platforms. Its function is also quite diverse, not only to interact, this time social media has become a part of the functions of business, politics, even for religious symbols.
The evidence suggests that the use of social media has become a trend in the middle of the millenial generation. From the latest data, more than 72 million people in Indonesia are active users of social media. The data shows that social media has its own place in Indonesian society. It also makes a lot of brands or companies to make social media as a tool to promote their wares.
Potential behind social media in order to gain the sympathy of users it is common knowledge in Indonesia. However, many marketers give up halfway when using social media as part of a marketing communication strategy.
What exactly makes a lot of lackluster brand in social media?
Just as the theory SOSTAC (Situation – where are we now ?, Objectives – where do we want to be ?, Strategy – how do we get there ?, Tactics – how exactly do we get there ?, Action – what is our plan ?, Control – did we get there?) are applied in conventional marketing communication strategy. In order to gain the sympathy of the public through social media, SOSTAC can also be applied by brand and marketing practitioners.
Mostly, the brand is currently still see social media from a narrow angle, which is how much the digital assets owned, without knowing the condition of the field in their own ‘battlefield’. It makes most lackluster brand in social media. Lackluster in terms of the communication strategy of marketing through social media is done, it had no significant impact for the company.
Then, how to maximized brand in running their social media asset?
Still referring to the element of “S” in SOSTAC. Knowing the situation on the ground in implementing a strategy is essential before plunging directly. In this case, a variety of analysis tools of social media is a powerful weapon. With the assistance of various social media analysis tools, marketing communicators can understand the situation and field conditions.
Social Media Analytic tools is a system to know the results of marketing communications in social media used by the brand as a marketing medium. In addition, by using a variety of analytical platforms, the brand also can ‘eavesdrop’ various strategies undertaken by competitors in the social media. Furthermore, the brand could be more to know, what was actually discussed by the target audience in social media. Did not understand is the starting point to gain sympathy?
Basically, the function of social media analysis tools at the present time is more diverse, compared with the current social media still has not become a trend in the marketing communication five years ago. At least, there are two main functions, namely the function of internal and external functions.
Internal functions, typically used to determine insights from social media assets owned by the brand itself. Various performance, such as the rate of increase of followers, interactions that exist in media assets, as well as the content of what is preferred by the target audience can be known through a variety of internal analysis tools. The device’s internal analysis is usually provided by various popular social media platforms like facebook, twitter, youtube and even that can be integrated with google analytics.
Meanwhile, external functions are basically used to determine the various discussions related to the brand, competitors and keywords associated with the brand. In this case, the brand can map out exactly what are the positive and negative sentiment, so the brand is able to analyze more deeply what is desired by the target audience with the brand’s social media assets.
Actually, the device to analyze in terms of internal and external itself now widely provided by various developers tools that are providing such services, both paid and free. This of course is an opportunity for the brand to simplify them in order to be able to ‘eavesdrop’ more about the brand and the target audience itself in social media.
How the data obtained from social media analytics platform tools?
The data generated by various social media analytics tools are mostly quantitative data in the form of figures obtained from the activity of various social media platforms. This quantitative data is used to measure the level of success of existing brand campaign on social media.
Besides useful to measure the level of success of the campaign a specific brand using quantitative data, social media analytics can also be used to make strategic use of the platform for the benefit of the brand, predict the best time to deliver content campaign in accordance with the needs of the brand, see the target consumers of the brand, and others.
Why only quantitative? Yes, it is the uniqueness of the various social media analysis tools that exist today. And this is also a challenge for the various actors who cultivate communication in social media marketing to be able to read more observant, how the impact of quantitative data analysis of social media, including to direct it into the qualitative analysis.
In the end, the ability of brand and performance would be greatly assisted if it is able to be observant to read the field by using a variety of analytical tools of social media. In this case, the social media specialist will be challenged to read more observant, how to brand they manage is able to steal the attention of millions of users of social media is the target audience.
