“Big data” in Social Media

The term ‘big data’ is being thrown around a lot at the moment, and rightly so. We are at an exciting juncture where there is more public data being generated than ever before. Every time we sign up to a site, write a blog post, send a tweet or Like something on Facebook, we are creating data.

Data about ourselves, our interests, our own habits as well as contributing to big data sets on large groups of people. There are a number of projects, which aim to actually use the data being generated, for good. But what does this mean for your business? How can you ‘get’ and ‘use’ data?

The most important thing is to ensure that you have a data capture strategy. Where much of your online marketing may be focused on social media, it’s important that you try to gain control of it. So think about how you’re capturing information such as email and phone numbers as well as demographic data. Then you should be using the data that these services give you.

So, for example, use Facebook’s new Graph Search to uncover interests your fans may have. You can obtain this by signing up at https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch Once you have it, try a search for ‘pages liked by fans of ‘insert brand’ ‘ and see what comes up.

The fact that this kind of data is out there, for free, for your business, is great. But it will only be useful if there is a clear strategy for how this will impact your current business or marketing strategy.

Whether it’s how it will affect your content plan for your Page, how you target ads or when you send out communications, make sure you analyse the information that’s there. Most importantly, sift through the huge raft of data to find, that which will provide a real business benefit to you.

Have you got some interesting facts on Social Media you you’d like to share?