We are visual creatures. We process visual information incredibly quickly, retain it better and understand it more deeply. Anyone who's spent any time on social media knows that sharing visual content always results in higher levels of engagement. What the social media pros know (and it's the pros I'm speaking to here), is that understanding the impact of social engagement, and then turning that understanding into ROI, is a key element to social media success. Here are some types of social media engagement, which can be visualized:
- key influencers within a topic space
- key engagers within a topic space
- key engagement activity (plus one's/likes/favorites/shares/comments etc.)
- top posts
- best days and times to share for a specific topic on a specific network
- most used hashtags and keywords associated with the topic
How can you visualize social media data?
You could be collecting data in spreadsheets, organizing everything and then exporting that data into graphing software, but that's very time consuming. Social media tools (the good ones anyway) tend to focus on visualizing the data being collected and are an indispensable resource for social media professionals. There are a lot of tools available for the many social media networks out there, but again, those that focus on visualizing data tend to provide better results.
In the above example taken from the NOD3x dashboard, you can quickly see the social data surrounding the topics of "leadership" and "coaching", across social media networks. Having this kind of top down view, across the major social networks, can help you understand where best to spend your time with a particular topic.
Another way of visually displaying social data, is by using a graph to display engagement. Here, we're looking at an engagement graph, which is automatically weighting the conversations based on engagement metrics. What you'll begin to see are those most important people and conversations surrounding the topic. By displaying this data visually, you can quickly get a picture of the actual engagement within your chosen topic space. Taking this further, you can now interject your voice (or the voice of your brand) into these highly targeted conversations, all enabled by data visualization.
Now it's your turn to connect the dots
Whatever social media tool you're using to collect, and visually display that collected information, you'll need to be taking action. Now that data visualization has surfaced your top engagers and influencers (think about calling these "potential customers" to your clients), it's time to engage and further that relationship. To the social media professional, the, "what do we do from here?" question should be an easy one to answer. Just in case though, here's what you should be doing to further your relationships with the potential customers (again we're thinking influencers and engagers as social media pros, but clients think differently) that the data visualization is bringing to your attention:
- +1, like, favorite, comment and reshare their content
- stay connected with your audience
- be responsive
- have a consistent "voice"
- be an authority, but don't be a know it all
- create the kind of content people would pay for, and share it for free
- be kind, courteous and helpful
Take it away - I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, so leave me some comments and let's see what you pros out there have to say.