"Analytics-driven content strategy helps connect with social first customers"

Kesavan Kanchi Kandadai is the CEO of Tangerine Digital, the content arm of TO THE NEW, specialising in content creation, content management, content aggregation and content crowdsourcing services. Besides leading Tangerine, Kandadai is actively involved with new products within the group and has developed a flair of executing them from scratch. In his current avatar, he is focused on capitalising the Social CRM and Crowd Sourcing Space.

In the following article, Kandadai writes on analytics-driven content strategy to connect with social and mobile first customers.

For the past decade, businesses have been spending millions on digital marketing and advertising their products and services. With the sole objective of eyeballs, traditional digital marketing strategies have focused primarily on the message and its aesthetics. However, social media today provides a platform for two-way communication between the consumer and brand. Hence, traditional strategies fall short where customer engagement, and most importantly, measuring ROI is concerned.

Analytics-driven content strategy is designed to address these two challenges. This addresses some basic questions like:
• Who are the consumers? (Demographics, Geography, etc.)
• What are they talking about? (Sentiment, Topics, Brands, etc.)
• Where are they? (Platforms, Time, etc.)
• How are they engaging? (Complaints, Feedback, Likes, etc.)

Thanks to increased presence of tools integrated deeply into consumer conversations, it is now possible to have a full-fledged communication model for user engagement and then analyse every interaction with the user.

A successful firm in apparel space had been using traditional content strategy to promote its products on various digital platforms. Despite investing huge sums, it never translated into desired revenues.

Below are the five steps that the e-commerce company adopted to transform its digital campaign powered by analytics-driven content strategy.

1. Listen to your consumer
After a series of failed attempts, the company finally decided to switch to analytics-driven content strategy. It started listening to consumers across all their channels and also competitor channels to understand the emerging needs and changing trends. 

2. Choosing the right platform
After a careful analysis of Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and its website users’ response, the company found that the FB users were most engaged to its posts, whereas Twitter was used as a platform to log complaints. Also, the posts with appealing graphics, trivia and attractive deals were comparatively more engaging. It also found that its customers were primarily females between 18-25 age group. The company also got exposed to the many deliveryrelated complaints on its Twitter page.

3. Creating a content plan
The firm now understood the key areas to focus on in its content strategy. Based on the information deciphered through analytics, it decided to focus more on denims, shorts and funky accessories because that is what the females of age group 18-25 like the most. The content strategy clearly outlined the number of posts in a day and the ideal time for that, apart from what graphics will go best along with the message line. On Twitter, the firm also set half-an-hour response time in case of a genuine user complaint. Moreover, the content was created to proactively help users resolve their queries.

4. Measuring effectiveness
Now, it decided to measure the average likes on the company’s Facebook posts, average comments on the posts, and engagement in general. The company found a definite increase in all of these. The firm also decided to use analytics to understand the sentiment of its users on Facebook and found that the positive sentiment was on the rise and their brand was now looking more favorable to the consumer. Besides, there was at-least 30 per cent reduction in customer support costs attributed to quick resolution offered on Twitter. Due to the public nature of customer query resolution, the impact created was beyond a single user.

5. Predicting trends
The company successfully studied and analysed the trends of its competitors and also found short kurtis of particular shades to be in huge demand. The company read the market trends and successfully shaped its strategies. The company further engaged a pool of bloggers (around 50) to write about short kurtis, trends, style tips and accessories that go with them to promote this segment. As a result, there was a considerable difference in the balance sheet. For more trends, the company was all ears to its users – the first step.

The author is Chief Executive Officer of Tangerine Digital | TO THE NEW.