The Facts On Social Media Analytics
Social media analytics can be a bit awkward, but needs to be reviewed frequently by people who understand what they are doing and the data they deal with. It is useful, but needs to be handled with care. Like all things, reading social media analytics doesn’t have steps and must be reviewed and acted upon differently all the time.
The great thing about analytics, is that the truth is always right in front of you, it just depends whether or not you can handle it. Social media analytics comes in the model of Big Data. Due to the large amount of data available, data management is essential. Quality is a huge element that needs to be focused on here, as there are always issues with caching such as the difficulty of tracking and measuring activity. This isn’t the only data issue, but it’s one to note.
For example, somewhere where data could be wrong is when there is an age consent to enter a website. The data will say that everyone who entered it was over the age limit but whose to know how many of those people lied about their age. Self reported data can never be truly trustworthy as you never know the person writing it yourself.
On the other hand, some data can be checked, such as names on social media sites. Identity is proved by connections with others such as friends and family, and if there is any kind of issue then you can approach the social media company to investigate further. Again age can be an issue as some people do not say what age they are, or have a fake date of birth – sometimes obvious, sometimes not so obvious.
Is there any way of keeping up with this bad data? Keeping your eye out for bad data and keeping these bad datas in mind for the future is a good idea. It’d good to keep on top of any of these issues.
The main thing to remember is that your data can’t tell you whether or not someone is really what age they say they are or whether they are a man or woman, but you do know that they do use online social media. Luckily, users of social media can tell you other things you may need to know as they are signed in to social media when they are online. This helps to compile the cleanest data online.
As important as gender, age and other factors are, web use is the most important data you can get from this source. Those things are a bonus on top of the other information you get about what sites you use etc. So remember, next time you are monitoring your online analytics, the most important thing is web usage and the other factors come in after.
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