Big Data and social media: A match made in heaven?

For a very long time now, social media has been more than just a buzz word in the marketing arena. Every business organization has a social media and digital marketing strategy integrated in its business plan. And Big Data, a phenomenon that has become the most talked about in the world of IT, seems like it will potentially have an impact on how brands and companies can make the most of social media.

Social media means more power to people. From YouTube to Twitter to Quora, users are sharing trillion pieces of information every hour. And understanding them and predicting their behaviour as consumers of products, services, and brands has become extremely important.

Big Data can be a valuable asset to social media; but only if we figure out a way to get meaningful insights from it. Technologies centered around Big Data involve increasing and enhancing data processing capabilities. Leveraging Big Data technology effectively, to analyze the zillion social media transactions happening every day, can provide the following useful insights:

1. Identifying Trends: People love sharing thoughts, memories, pictures, and videos on social media channels. They interact and respond to situations, people, and places that affect them. By identifying the platforms their target audience members frequent and analyzing the content they like to share and interact with; brands can get insights into the steps they should take to gain better customer loyalty. And to get these, brands can analyze data from internal social networks in addition to external social networking sites.
2. Pinpointing Problems: Continuously analyzing social media interactions is like getting responses to a brand survey in real time! Those interactions are an indicator of the brand’s health. Negative feedback or comments can help to provide vital insights into where the problem actually lies. And these responses can be analyzed using Big Data. 
3. Predicting Behavior: Determining conversations that are relevant can help to better understand the future behavior of the customers. Every bit of social activity can be a predictor of future behavior. Only Big Data technologies have the capacity to deal with vast amount of unstructured data in real-time.

With the world moving to digital platforms, more and more data is being generated every second, and therein lays its competitive advantage. Big Data is a specialized niche, at least for now. Everything from tweets to LinkedIn updates has the potential to help acquire customers. Every post has the potential to tell you something you don’t know about your business and customers. Every interaction can play a role in helping you plan a more sound digital marketing strategy. And Big Data can be the knight in shining armour that helps you make sense of the chaos!

I think Big Data and social media a match made in heaven! Do you agree?

Share your thoughts in the comments!