Our activities among social networks generate huge amounts of information, and are an integral part of our lives. The posts and pictures we upload, the questions we ask in forums, our tweets etc., are all accumulated and saved in technology giants’ data bases. Facebook alone serves 1.2 billion users daily, and the numbers are growing by 17% each year. Facebook users spend twenty minutes every day online, and like in average four times. This means five billion likes a day!
So how can we get business insight from this information?
Over the last few years companies and entrepreneurs have developed sophisticated systems and tools that can monitor and manage the information accumulated across the web. Until recently and because of technological challenges and costs only governments, institutions, and large-scale companies could afford these systems and tools. Now, this technology is accessible to any business regardless its size.
One of the most prominent systems available in this field is Microsoft’s Social Engagement. This tool also interfaces with its CRM system, and with Office 365 products.
Listed below are 10 benefits gained through using Microsoft Social Engagement:
Centralized management of social media accounts - manage your Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts in one place.
Identify business opportunities - using auto tags and key words you receive signals and alerts about potential clients.
Social customer care and service - real time complaint monitoring, response, and resolution.
Brand and product listening and sentiment - find out what people think about your product, service, and company.
Identify, locate, and track top online influencers - related to a certain topic.
Social insight and analytics - track by location, network, key words, author, sentiment (positive, negative), etc.
Auto tags and adaptive learning - the system includes a learning module that learns from manual tagging. Overtime the system will start auto tagging different types of posts.
Buzzwords analytics
Business Intelligence (BI) - follow and track your competitors online.
Interface with Dynamics CRM - for management of sales and customer service processes.
Presence in social media as well as managing customer relations online has become an inherent part of any organization’s CRM system or framework. This concept drove Microsoft’s decision to acquire LinkedIn, and is expected to integrate it into its social tools.