Many SA companies are aware of how imperative it is to link their social media strategy to their overall business strategy. Yet few of them seem to be achieving any measurable, sustained success in using their social media initiatives to drive revenue.
So says Kaveer Beharee, founder and principal analyst at Ubiquity Consulting. Baharee will focus on transparency and auditability of social media analysis during his presentation at the upcoming ITWeb Social Business Summit 2015. This annual event will be held in Johannesburg in October.
Among the main reasons companies are failing to get sustainable value from social media is that they often do not understand which stage of social maturity they are at, or have the resources, skills or technologies to move to the next level, says Beharee.
"Businesses first need to understand what goals must be achieved. A clear goal in mind is the first step towards creating a roadmap. Globally, there's a well-known social media maturity model that successful companies around the world have used to become sophisticated in this area.
Most companies start with qualitative analysis of social media and then move on to quantitative analysis, he says. "Many savvy businesses in SA are at this stage. Social media activity is well budgeted for and processes and reporting is operationalised."
The next step is integrating social media data for business decision-making and predicative analytics, says Beharee. Companies around the world are using social media to predict business outcomes and planning, he adds.
According to Beharee there are examples of call centre companies using social media data to predict call levels and resources and also prepare scripts in advance.
Finally social data can be integrated with all internal and external data to create a new ecosystem, he notes.
"For example, consider a bank that can proactively make a client an offer for financing his red Mustang, by integrating social data, with internal banking data and external credit data. These kinds of processes are already being automated in other countries, with social media at the heart."
Baharee will join other social business thought leaders, including international keynote speaker and social business guru, Neal Schaffer, at the summit next month. Click here to register for the social business event of the year.