The B2B Guide to Social Media

Introducing our November guest editor – Charlotte Ward

At the end of social media analytics month at the B2B Guide to Social Media, we bid farewell to Adam Kettere, October’s guest editor.

Social Media Analytics (SMA), as a concept, has exploded over the last couple of years with major platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn introducing their own insights tools. The massive growth of both free and paid-for tools offering increasingly effective analytics has forced businesses to sit up and take note or risk being left behind by their competitors in the social media realm.

This infographic from SecondSync shows audience interaction over Twitter during Celebrity Juice on Thursday 18th October. It was the top performing show of the evening, seeing almost 77,000 viewer tweets.

In the UK 27,000 hours of domestic TV content are produced annually at a cost of £2.6 billion (Ofcom). Spot advertising and programme sponsorship on UK commercial TV channels generated revenues of £4.36bn in 2011 (ThinkBox). Both the commissioning and scheduling of this content and the pricing of the spot ads and programme sponsorship hinges on one thing: the way the TV audience is measured. Success is measured on how many people are watching.

This week’s infographic of the week displays great self-awareness as it asks, ‘Just how successful are infographics?’ It comes courtesy of Bit Rebels and Now Sourcing.

The academic community has much to thank the marketing and advertising (both B2B and B2C) industries for. Quick and agile, in the face of a keenly felt opportunity, it was this industry who first understood that there was an unprecedented opportunity to listen and learn about people and society through understanding the explosion of digital social spaces.

As part of this month’s focus on social media analytics at the B2B Social Media Guide, here’s our infographic of the week.

Many businesses make the mistake of thinking that social media activity can’t be measured but it can. And, this is excellent news, given that a recent McKinsey Global Institute report found that, while 72 per cent of companies are using social technologies in some way, very few are anywhere near to achieving the full potential benefits.

The topic I’ve chosen to cover in my month as guest editor is social media analytics. What’s that, you ask, counting Tweets and Facebook likes? Well, yes. But there’s a bit more to it than that. If you’re interested in learning more (as I am) then keep an eye on the blog throughout October as we update with posts from lots of lovely, knowledgeable contributors.