Predictive Analytics for Social Media at SMMW15

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One of my complaints about marketing conferences is that the content tends to be the same old thing, over and over again. That’s understandable and even necessary, thanks to the churn rate of people coming into marketing. There’s an evergreen need for 101 content, for how-to, for the basics. Of all of the books I’ve written, the one for beginners, Marketing White Belt, consistently tops the sales charts.

But for those folks who have been around for a little while, conferences can get a bit stale. That’s why I’ll be trying something different at Michael Stelzner’s Social Media Marketing World this month. My session will be about social media analytics. Nothing new there on the surface, right? But instead of things you’ve already heard and done, we’re going to try something different together: advanced social media analytics.

What constitutes advanced analytics? First, we’ll examine a newer social media funnel that lets you characterize different metrics in a logical flow. That alone will help some marketers present more impactful reporting.

Second, we’re going to spend a lot of time on predictive analytics. There are three statistical patterns we’ll learn together: breakouts, trends, and anomalies:

Breakouts are changes in averages. When something breaks out, it experiences a significant and potentially lasting change. You had an average of 24 URL clicks per day on your tweets for the last 6 months. Suddenly, your daily average goes up to 36 clicks per day and stays there for a little while. That’s a breakout.
Anomalies are statistically significant aberrations. Your median number of engagements per day is 40. One day, you have 80. Is that significant? What about 180? We’ll look at how to tell the difference.
Trends are patterns in your data. Every day, you have one more person sharing your social updates than the previous day. Is that a trend? If so, where’s it going? We’ll study that.

With tools you already have or can afford (and by afford I mean as much as $30/month), we’ll see how these three kinds of analysis can help you predict the future. Once you know how to predict the future, you’ll know whether you want to keep it or change it.

Finally, we’ll walk through 3 recipes for predictive analytics together that you can take home and start using. The theory is great, but the take-home utility is even better.

If this sounds intriguing, then please do join me at Social Media Marketing World. Tickets are still available, both for the in-person event and for the sessions streamed virtually.

Disclosure: Registering through those links earns me a small but nonzero monetary gain through an affiliate program.

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