Facebook offer page admins insight into their social audiences and engagement measures. Facebook Page insights provide an overview of the most important metrics, detailed information is available regarding Page likes, reach, visits, posts, videos and people. By analysing this data, marketing managers are able to understand their audience and based on the data provided, consumers can be specifically targeted with careful manipulation of content.

Facebook is where consumers go to find brands. They are looking for customer service via Facebook whilst also wanting brands to engage with them. “The two biggest values you can offer on Facebook are: entertainment and support” (KissMetrics, 2016). With that in mind, brands should be aiming to adapt their social media content through careful consideration of their online audience. This careful consideration is realistically only made viable through analytical datasets and detailed audience insights like those offered by Facebook, as well as information provided by other key social media sites.

Twitter also offer analytical data for account managers, while their information isn’t as detailed as Facebook, the information provided is still insightful and useful to marketing managers. Twitter offer information regarding tweets (amount of posts), tweet impressions (visibility), profile visits, mentions, followers and other related tweets. This analytical data allows account managers to nurture their existing audience, whilst also allowing them to increase engagement, visibility and new consumer acquisition.

Unlike most other major social media networks, Instagram doesn’t yet offer its own analytics programme. That being said brands should still try to gain analytical insight into their Insta-audience. There are a number of free online analytical tools (Simply Measured, LocoWise & Squarelovin) that offer useful information in order for marketers to truly understand their pictorial audience.

Metrics and analytical data is available directly through other popular social media sites such as Pinterest, and YouTube, whilst other platforms such as SnapChat are supported by third party analysts. There is so much data available to businesses and brands, and as long as they utilise the correct tools and techniques, return on investment is literally a few clicks away.

Social media has become much more than a marketing buzzword. It has provided a number of uniquely insightful platforms for marketers to manipulate. The more a brand focuses on the analytical details of their audience, the more they will be able to engage directly with their audiences. Social media has become a resource that is widely desirable, brands that manage their social platforms effectively can gain a digital competitive advantage.

Online consumer-brand relationships are extremely important. Marketers should be actively searching for opportunities to build upon these relationships, they must take advantage of the social platforms that are perfectly positioned to assist in building online communities, especially positive consumer generated content.

Through the utilisation of the correct analytical data, metrics and social media management tools, these consumer-brand relationships will evolve to produce higher levels of sales. By building upon these relationships brands will be able to increase consumer retention levels as well as being able to acquire new customers.

References;

Emarketer.com. (2016). How Marketers Are Measuring Customer Engagement – eMarketer. [online] Available at: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/How-Marketers-Measuring-Customer-Engagement/1013525#sthash.gQ5GKoiQ.dpuf [Accessed 10 May 2016].

Kissmetrics. (2016). How to Master Social Customer Acquisition. [online] Available at: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/master-social-customer-acquisition/ [Accessed 10 May 2016].

Peters, K., Chen, Y., Kaplan, A.M., Ognibeni, B. and Pauwels, K., 2013. Social media metrics—A framework and guidelines for managing social media. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 27(4), pp.281-298.

Virtual Reality (VR) and other forms of immersive multimedia are currently having widespread impact on the digital stratosphere. It is estimated that the number of active VR users will reach 171 million by 2018 (Statista, 2016). “Increasingly, the web is the world – everything and everyone in the casts an information shadow, an aura of data which, when captured and processed intelligently, offers extraordinary opportunity and mind-bending implications.” (O’Reilly & Battelle, 2009).

Now is the time for marketers to invest, test and produce new forms of immersive multimedia, current market leaders Oculus, Samsung Gear and Google Cardboard are paving the way for some truly unique advertising platforms. Post smart-phones, users are now bracing themselves for the next big global technological advancement.

Following the birth of the internet of things (IoT), web 2.0/3.0 users are willing to adapt their lifestyles according to how new technologies are developed and then implemented. “IoT is opening tremendous opportunities for a large number of novel applications that promise to improve the quality of our lives” (Xia et al, 2012). It is increasingly important for digital content to be groundbreaking, anyone who is seen to be pushing the limits of technology will arguably be regarded by web users as innovators.

The Guardian newspaper alongside the immersive digital agency The Mill recently produced a novel project ‘6×9 – a virtual reality experience of solitary confinement‘ arguably the first politically motivated, journalistic VR experience to be presented online. The Guardian’s first VR experience places users in an US solitary confinement prison cell, telling the story of the psychological damage that can develop due to the complete isolation of prisoners (The Guardian, 2016). It is projects like this, pushing the boundaries of immersive experiences, that enable other market leaders to further explore the outstanding opportunities presented by VR.

The military have recently adopted various VR technologies, all three services (army, navy and air force) are utilising VR to peform a number of training initiatives, such as flight simulation, battlefield simulation and virtual boot camp (VRS, 2016). As well as utilising VR during training, the British Army alongside digital agency Visualise, recently created the world’s first VR recruitment experience, they were challenged to exhibit the thrill and exhilaration of serving in the armed forces from a first person POV perspective, the aim was to increase Army applications (Visualise, 2015). The results certainly prove this innovative recruitment method was somewhat fruitful, Army Reserve application were up by 65% in February 2016 and 41% in March 2016, in comparison to the same months last year.

Companies who already utilise the internet to distribute their content are busy behind the scenes, creating fresh content to populate new VR platforms (Creative Review, 2016). As the global use of VR technologies increases, the cost will automatically be driven down, users and brands alike will be able to utilise these new technologies to further enhance their digital experiences. The future of VR looks extremely bright and now it has been identified as the next big thing, who knows what may become of it, but what comes next?

References;

Creative Review. (2016). What VR means for modern brands – Creative Review. [online] Available at: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2016/may/what-vr-means-for-modern-brands/ [Accessed 9 May 2016].

O’Reilly, T. and Battelle, J., 2009. Web squared: Web 2.0 five years on. ” O’Reilly Media, Inc.”.

Statista. (2016). Topic: Virtual Reality (VR). [online] www.statista.com. Available at: http://www.statista.com/topics/2532/virtual-reality-vr/ [Accessed 9 May 2016].

The Guardian. (2016). Welcome to your virtual cell: could you survive solitary confinement?. [online] the Guardian. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/27/6×9-could-you-survive-solitary-confinement-vr [Accessed 9 May 2016].

Visualise. (2015). British Army VR Recruitment Experience – Visualise. [online] Available at: http://visualise.com/case-study/british-army-vr-recruitment-experience [Accessed 9 May 2016].

VRS. (2015). Virtual Reality in the Military – Virtual Reality. [online] Available at: http://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality-military/ [Accessed 9 May 2016].

Xia, F., Yang, L.T., Wang, L. and Vinel, A., 2012. Internet of things.International Journal of Communication Systems, 25(9), p.1101.