This article was first published in GARP, Risk
Intelligence on August 30, 2019. Co-author: Sanjay Fuloria; https://www.garp.org/#!/risk-intelligence/technology/data/a1Z1W000003mAbvUAE
Business schools can teach the power of the
technology and stress its ethical application
There is a surfeit of social media data
available for anyone who cares to generate insights and use it for legitimate
(or illegitimate) purposes. However, to capture the data in the best possible
manner and to get the desired outcome, one must know what to look for and
where.
Space, time, content and network are the four
key dimensions of data collected or information disseminated through social
media. But how does one capture and analyze these? Are the management graduates
and post-graduates of today equipped to make the most of this data? The point
we will try to make is that social media analytics can be used for making
positive impact on business outcomes and hence must be introduced in B-schools
as an elective.
Calculating the impact of company marketing
campaigns is one such use. In order to do this, questions about the brand could
be asked on any of the social media platforms such as Twitter. These questions
could generate a lot of discussion about the brand. Then, the company that has
launched the product can measure sentiments through the discussions. Twitter
metrics like engagement rate, potential impressions, geographical locations, tweet
frequency, hashtag usage, top tweets, and followers' activities can be
measured. All this would give a fair idea about the success or failure of the
marketing campaign.
Social media analytics can help organizations
learn from their competitors. By analyzing the social media activity of
competitors, organizations can understand what new product launches are
happening, how the customers are reacting, what are the good/bad product
features, the kinds of complaints customers have, etc. This analysis could lead
to prevention of similar mistakes by the company that is analyzing the data.
The use of social media in trading and
investing is well documented. In financial markets, information and the speed
of information is the key. Short-run movements in the Dow Jones average can be
quite accurately predicted through the sentiments expressed in tweets, thereby
giving an edge to traders able to make such predictions.
Soft and Hard Skills
On the jobs front, analysis of social media
sites like LinkedIn could help users comprehend the types of jobs that are
aplenty. They could also help indicate supply and demand for various skills in
the jobs market. This kind of social media analytics could be most useful to
MBA students who are about to get into a full-time career.
A quick search on the internet for most
sought-after soft skills that companies are looking for in 2019 are creativity,
persuasion, collaboration, adaptability, and time management. The most
in-demand hard skills are cloud computing, artificial intelligence, analytical
reasoning, and user interface design.
Another important aspect of business that
could be strengthened by the right use of social media analytics is problem
resolution. If a customer complains about a product or service on social media,
the company should try to resolve the issue in a timely manner, in real time if
practically possible. If the social media analytics reveals a sizeable number
of complaints about the same service or the same feature, then the company can
take stronger action to rectify the problem: changing/correcting the feature,
replacing the person handling the issue, or maybe even re-launching the
product/service with improved performance.
Management Initiative
In all this, the management professionals in
any organization would play a key role, as they are the decision-makers. If
they understand how to use social media analytics, then the job for any
organization would become easier.
Any analytics starts with defining objectives
clearly, asking the right questions, collecting the right data, analyzing the
data and, finally, gathering insights from the analysis. The two most important
links in the analytics value chain are clear objectives and asking the right
questions. If these two aspects can be somehow hard-wired into the brains of
management professionals, right from their MBA days, the outcomes would be
better.
MBA curriculums have many analytical subjects
these days. Introducing social media analytics into the curriculum would be an
added advantage. The topics to be covered should include open-source
programming languages like R or Python.
However, it needs to be realized that there
are two sides to every coin. Social media analytics can also be used to
influence outcomes illegitimately. Cambridge Analytica, a London-based election
consulting firm, was in the news for analyzing data from an estimated 50
million Facebook profiles for insights that were used to influence election
results in the U.S. and other countries. Online materials favoring candidates
were delivered to individuals based on their psychographic profiles. This was a
wrong and sinister use of social media analytics that compromised personal
information and wrongly influenced election outcomes. Hence, the study of
social media analytics must have an ethics component as well.
