Where Do I Find the Right Social Media Marketing Data?

What is social media marketing?

As a marketer, you probably know that social media marketing is part art, part science.

It’s about using data to identify which posts customers are engaging with and then creating content inspired by that to create brand awareness.

It is about identifying new trends, and hashtags to enrich company pages and paid ads.

It is about identifying influencers in your space with a massive following and authority so that you can work together with them as your brand’s ambassador.

Who uses data for social media marketing?

Well, everyone! Or at least they should, data for social media marketing is used by a wide variety of professionals including:

• Independent freelance marketers.

• Marketing agencies.

• In-house marketing departments.

• MarTech technologies and applications such as audience discovery tools, real-time ad optimization, and influencer discovery software.

It used to be the case that only well-funded marketing departments at huge firms could gain access to structured web Data-on-Demand.

But today with the advent of new data collections tools there is no reason why any marketers both in-house and agencies would choose not to use publicly available we data.

72% of executives use social media data

According to a survey conducted by Sprout Social, 72% of executives use social media data in order to inform their day-to-day business decision-making process.

How is social media data used?

Great question! Here are a few of the more popular, and effective ways that social media data is used for marketing:

Social Media Groups

By collecting data from specific groups on social media, businesses can better understand what kind of content their target audiences are most interested in.

It can be used to follow certain hashtags, for example, and to easily find trends and popular topics.

Identify Collective Issues

Imagine being able to easily identify common issues in a specific area. For example, collecting data from the /r/SEO subreddit will show that the most discussed topic discussed today a trending thread on ‘Do I need to submit all my Sitemaps?’.

As an SEO agency or business, this would be a great opportunity to chime in with your solution or to share your content.

Influencer marketing

Identifying influencers that can collaborate on promoting your brand. With data collection tools for social media, a search process that takes hours can be done in seconds allowing you, the marketer to focus on developing your relationships and closing new partnership deals.

Common Issues With Social Media Data Collection

I’m sure you’ve run into at least one of these issues trying to collect data from the most popular social channels. Don’t worry, with our data collection toolset for social media these issues can be a thing of the past:

• Geolocation –  Many companies are located in one specific country, say England. Yet they have customers around the globe. So they may want to collect social media data from accounts based in Japan or Argentina. The issue is that you will not see the same content as a user in a different country.

• Real-time – When collecting data manually, buy the time you’ve created a perfect spreadsheet with all the information for a campaign your topic is no longer trending… With real-time data collectors, you can stay ahead or that trend and collect the data for your campaigns in seconds.

• Volume/scalability – One marketer can collect a fair amount of data in a day, that’s nice. Now imagine scaling that by thousands, even millions. Instead of spending time collecting the data you would receive the information you need package in a CSV ready to be used. This way marketers can spend their time on building the campaigns that generate revenue while being fed the social media data that they need.

Social Media Data Collection Solutions

Here’s how automated data collection solutions like Bright Data’s Data Collector help to solve issues similar to the ones presented in the section above as follows:

Leveraging a Global Network of Local Peers

Bright Data enables companies to collect data using a network of people from around the globe who have opted into its data collection network.

This means that when companies are looking to collect social media data pertaining to target audiences in Japan and Argentina, for example, they can tap into local desktops or mobile devices and be served accurate trend data as it is being displayed to real end-users.

Understanding Consumer Journeys in Real-Time

Bright Data has cutting-edge technology alongside a team of data collection professionals coupled with the infrastructure that enables companies to gain access to target data within minutes.

This includes accessing review posts, group pages, engagement data, influencer information, and competitor social campaigns in real-time. This is crucial to being able to anticipate product popularity as well as shifting marketing efforts and messaging based on what is happening in the moment.

Data Collection Flexibility

Data Collector gives businesses increased control in terms of data collection volume. Team leaders can gain access to as much or as little data on an ‘as-needed-basis’.

This means that during the algorithm training phase, large quantities of data can be pooled into data lakes. Then data collection can be turned off for a few weeks. And as new clients from new industries are on-boarded, relevant data can then be collected, meaning budgets can fluctuate based on what’s happening on the ground.

Is social media data right for your business?

Each individual business needs to analyze this for themselves. It can be safely said, however, that the vast majority of companies competing in the modern world could benefit from access to social media data in one capacity or another. Ask yourselves:

• How much will social media data help us grow our business?

• Is it worth our while to keep data collection in-house or can we benefit from the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of outsourcing?

• Do our target audiences spend considerable amounts of time searching for solutions or engaging with content on social media?

• Are there ‘lookalike audiences’ which I do not currently have access to but could discover vis-a-vis social media data points?

If you answer in the affirmative to one or more of the above questions, then social media data for marketing may be able to provide your business with major value-add.