Social media analytics (SMA) refers to the process of collecting data from social media sites and blogs as well as forums and then figuring out meaning in data gathered from these social channels to provide some supports when making business decisions. And social media analytics also includes evaluating the performance of actions based on those decisions through social media.
And it should be pointed out that Social media analytics is not only the usual monitoring or a basic analysis of retweets, ‘likes’, follows or something like that, it’s a much more complicated and comprehensive process which is in order to figure out some in-depth ideas of social consumers. It is essentially an interdisciplinary area involving both humanities and technologies which is far more than only data mining and statistical analysis. As written on Wikipedia: Social media analytics is also defined as, “the art and science of extracting valuable hidden insights from vast amounts of semi-structured and unstructured social media data to enable informed and insightful decision making.”[1] I think it’s a pretty apt description, social media analytics helps marketers and some related people mine the sentiments of consumers behind all kinds of social media data to make some business decisions.
And there are roughly three steps in social media analytics:
- Data identification: data identification refers to the process of extracting relevant data from the collected data which contains irrelevant data and noisy data so that the analysts are able to interpret the data more efficiently in the next stages.
- Data analysis: data analysis refers to a set of activities that transforms the raw data into some valuable and meaningful information which can offer some help for the analysts to make business decisions.
- Information interpretation: information interpretation is to visualize the data obtained in the second stage as graphic charts so that non-technical people can understand the meaning of the data and use it for business decisions.
Reference
Zhao Yunxiang 
Your article said that SMA is an interdisciplinary area involving both humanities and technologies, and divided accurately SMA into three parts, data identification, data analysis and information interpretation. You listed the statistics of CocaCola, Sony and BMW on two big social media applications, Facebook and Twitter, statistics ain’t lie. BTW, I also like your blog layout!!!
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Thanks for your comment. And as you say, I do think it’s very a very important point that SMA is not only about humanities or technologies, but it’s an interdisciplinary field which combine these two things together. SMA is a more complicated area compared to humanity area or technology area because it is the process of combining the two areas makes SMA more complicated. However, SMA’s complexity means that people can mine a lot of meaningful information from it, which makes SMA very valuable and significant.
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I have a strong resonance with “the social media analytics helps marketers and some related people mine the sentiments of consumers behind all kinds of social media data to make some business decisions” you mentioned in your article! In today’s networked era, many business analyses and decisions cannot be made without the support of social media analysis.
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Thank you for the comment. Nowadays, SMA does play a more and more important role in the business world because the rapid development of all kinds of social media applications. But I think that SMA can do far more things than mining sentiments of customers or figuring out people’s attitudes to current events or something like that. It ’s like a rich land, with a lot of valuable treasure waiting for people to discover. By the way, your blog layout is cute.
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The post is very clear! You divided the process in social media analytics into three steps and detailed each step following your own understandings. Besides, the figure shown in your blog is a very good example to show the visualized results of social media analytics.
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Thank you for your comment! Though I divided the process into three parts, I think the statement of each part is not detailed enough. Anyhow, thank you for your recognition and encouragement to my blog.
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Your article is concise but clear. You have highly summarized the steps of social media analysis, including Data identification，Data analysis and Information interpretation. The graph you post is also very simple and easy to understand, which shows the content and results of social media analysis well. Obviously, I can learn from your article that social media analysis has a great help to our life.
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Hey, Thanks for your recognition to my blog. I do think SMA can help people a lot, especially for those business people, it can help them make some important business decisions. And I think for now, people have not fully inspired its potential. for me, I’m more interested in how to develop those SMA tools than how to use them.
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The blog is short, but the pictures are interesting, and the article shows your own thought on social media analytics. I agree with the idea that social media analytics is far more than data mining and statistical analysis, it is also closely related to business and market application. You gave your own understanding towards the steps of SMA, different from the slides. It is abstract but still clear.
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Thanks for the comment, bro! I think my blog is too short and not detailed enough from the comments you guys left, I will improve this in my second blog. And I’m very glad to hear that you agree with the point that SMA is a interdisciplinary area.
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