Social Media Analytics: Techniques and Insights for Extracting Business Value Out of Social Media

There's real competitive advantage buried in today's deluge of social media data. If you know how to analyze that data, you can increase your relevance to customers, establishing yourself as a trusted supplier in a cutthroat environment where consumers rely more than ever on "public opinion" about your products, services, and experiences. Social Media Analytics is the complete insider's guide for all executives and marketing analysts who want to answer mission-critical questions and maximize the business value of social media data at every step of the process.

Two leaders of IBM's cutting-edge Social Media Analysis Initiative offer thorough and practical coverage of all three phases: data identification, analysis, and knowledge interpretation. Their expert guidance, practical tools, and detailed case studies will help you:

• Discover what questions can now be realistically answered by social media data (and which still can't)
• Clarify the What, Who, When, and Where issues that need to be resolved before you begin your analyses
• Create data models that accurately represent your data and help you answer questions more successfully
• Learn how to validate your hypotheses so you don't waste time in unpromising areas
• Drive value on-the-fly from real-time/near-real-time analysis and ad hoc analysis
• Go deeper into your data than you ever have before
• Analyze text, a.k.a. "data at rest"
• Use relationship matrices to understand subtle interrelationships that impact business performance
• Improve the accuracy of your sentiment analyses
• Distinguish talkers from influencers
• Use social media analytics to optimize decisions about marketing and advertising spend
• Avoid pitfalls that can quickly lead you to expensively wrong conclusions

• Focus on the questions that social media data can realistically answer
• Determine which information is actually useful to you--and which isn't
• Cleanse data to find and remove inaccuracies
• Create data models that accurately represent your data and lead to more useful answers
• Use historical data to validate hypotheses faster, so you don't waste time
• Identify trends and use them to improve predictions
• Drive value "on-the-fly" from real-time/ near-real-time and ad hoc analyses
• Analyze text, a.k.a. "data at rest"
• Recognize subtle interrelationships that impact business performance
• Improve the accuracy of your sentiment analyses
• Determine eminence, and distinguish "talkers" from true influencers
• Optimize decisions about marketing and advertising spend

Section 1. Data Identification

1. Introduction to Data Identification

2. What?

3. Who?

4. When?

5. Where?

Section 2. Data Analysis

6. Introduction to Data Analysis

7. Validating Your Hypothesis

8. Real Time Analysis

9. Ad Hoc Exploration

10. Deep Analysis

11. Social Media and Text Analysis (Data at Rest)

Section 3. Information Interpretation

12. Introduction

13. State of the Art in "Insights"

14. Sentiment Accuracy

Appendices

A. Case Study 1

B. Case Study 2

C. Case Study 3