A social media program must positively help the organization in a way or the other. It should cater to the needs of the organization. Following are the top 5 business functions to which social media program will help organization:

1. Sales : Ultimate need of any organization is to sell. Make Money. Social Media helps in selling – directly and indirectly. But the point to be considered is, if you focus on selling by being social (in social media), it is going to be very tough. You cannot sell easily being social. But, Social Media can help in driving sales. People can recommend and influence their network to decide on buying your product. Reach, engagement and influence – the three factors to make social media help the organizations sale. Dell is a very early adapter to this strategy and has been very successful till now.

2. Customer Support : People talking about a brand is public in social media. Nowadays, the brand’s customer support team can very easily monitor and keep track of all its mentions on various social media platform. This also provides an opportunity for them to join the conversation if necessary. Consider a situation where a dissatisfied customer makes a negative mention about the brand. Here, if customer support immediately pitches in and addressed the complaint/grievance – It ends up with the customer being satisfied and happy about the quick turn around response of the brand. 🙂 Following are the advantages of adopting social media customer support:

• Constant real-time feedback from customers and general public.
• Quick response to mentions.
• Faster resolution time – Cost reduction compared to other regular modes of customer support
• Proactive way to keep customers happy

3. Human Resources : When recruiting, one can go through piles of applications or hire through trusted network of peers and colleagues. LinkedIn is the best example which can be quoted here. It has evolved a lot. Recruiters can easily search for people of certain skill set. People can upload their resume, connect to blog, get recommended, join groups, follow companies and many more. from the organizations end, it becomes much easier to find and evaluate a profile for certain position.

4. Public Relations : PR is another area where social media can help an organization significantly. With the ability to keep track of all mentions of the organization, any negative mention taking a hit on reputation can be immediately looked into and responded. Similarly, deliberate attacks or false rumors can also be sighted and addressed quickly! This is called Online/Digital Reputation Management. Crisis Management can also be very well handled in the same way.

5. Business Intelligence : Again, with the power to monitor all the conversations happening online in social media, it enables the organization to identify new trends, customer expectations around a product or domain and make decisions based on that. Also, competitors can be easily monitored and compared to make certain decisions too.

The above mentioned are the business functions for which social media analytics is most commonly used.