Using quantitative tools with social media
Deploying quantitative tools to analyse the effectiveness of your social media marketing campaign is essential in order to fully understand how consumers are engaging with your product or brand. Unlike qualitative data, which deals with, widely, how consumers ‘feel’ about your business, quantitative research concerns solid numbers and statistics, collected from a range of elements within your social media presence. We explore below what these factors are, and how they can help you in your marketing efforts.
Forms Of Quantitative Data
Quantitative data is measurable in numbers, and includes likes and shares, comments and mention volume, reach, ratings, followers and subscribers.
All of these elements pertain to social media interactions, and can provide vital insight into your business performance. By comparing and collating this data, patterns and trends can be spotted and, concurrently, any weak spots in your social media presence identified.
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Types of Quantitative Tools
There are a multitude of companies and research agencies that offer social media monitoring, as well as dedicated reputation management companies that can help in this field. These companies can analyse consumer interaction with your social sites, and help you to understand your audience, their motivations and behaviour, and key words or phrases that could get you results in your subsequent posts.
‘You can use your own tools to monitor your social media presence and identify any emerging consumer behavioural patterns or market trends,’ says Nick Pearce, business blogger at Origin Writings and Brit Student, ‘perhaps by using forums, or using in-built platform tools, such as Facebook Analytics.’
Benefits Of Deploying Quantitative Tools
Analysing quantitative data from your social media presence is an extremely powerful way of spotting emerging market trends, and learning how best to maintain engagement with your consumers. Monitoring, for example, post likes or shares, can provide key information on what resonates with your target market – and what doesn’t. Gathering information on key word use, too, can be vital in targeting new audiences and launching new products or services.
Neil Crocker, a marketing writer at Write my X and 1 Day 2 write suggests, ‘in terms of powering-up your marketing strategy, quantitative research can give you the data you need to ensure precision audience targeting, and help you plan the best way to engage a new audience. It also allows you to identify influencers within your consumer base, opening up further possibilities for expanding the reach of your brand message.
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Lastly, quantitative research tools can also be used to analyse the social media presence of your competition, and then perhaps to incorporate the strengths of their social media sites into your own.
How To Get Started
Before putting in place a system to use quantitative tools in relation to your social media presence, it is important to first think about your goals and the purpose, going forward, of this analysis. For example, do you want to research how consumers view your customer service provision, or a specific product, or are you trying to profile your audience? Pinpointing exactly what you are wanting to analyse, and for what purpose, is invaluable in order to ensure that the tools you deploy are used effectively, and provide you with the most pertinent information.
As an example, if you are a small business selling health food, and want to find out what drives consumers to your site, you could look at quantitative data around the most frequently used key word terms that consumers use as part of their journey to your virtual door. This in turn could lead you think about how and where certain products are placed on your site.
In terms of audience profiling, quantitative analysis could reveal, perhaps, that consumers who consistently share your business’ posts are, for example, within a certain age range, or income band. This is vital information in terms of building your brand and tailoring your social media presence to be as consumer friendly as possible.
Next Steps
Now that you’ve collected the quantitative data from your social media sites, you are perfectly placed to identify what is working for your business, and what needs improvement. Crucially, this information doesn’t just identify weaknesses, but can also provide the clues as to how to fix them. Comparing reviews across ranges of similar products, can reveal both customer preference and, correlated with feedback data, the reasons behind this trend.
Quantitative analysis, whether undertaken manually or with the help of a dedicated research tool or platform, can provide a unique insight into your consumers’ behaviour, and as a result of this, give you the key to unlocking powerful marketing potential.
Regina Wheeler writes for Coursework writer and is an elearning consultant at Research paper writing services and PhD Kingdom. She writes extensively on marketing, management and finance. Regina has been involved in numerous business and online marketing projects around the country.
