How youth can scan social media for business glory

Social media has turned existence upside down, transformed communication, changed organisations, and become etched into the very fabric of their daily life. Today, 4.39 billion people have internet connection compared to less than one percent in 1995. At this rate, there is a possibility to have entire world access internet by 2030.

Data generation in advertisement clicks, likes on social media, shares, rides, streaming content and transactions per minute has been amazing especially this year.

Every minute we have 41.6 million WhatsApp messages shared, 1.3 million video/voice calls, 147,000 Facebook photos uploaded, 347,000 Instagram posts and 138 business profile ads, 404,000 Netflix streaming, 69,000 LinkedIn users applying for jobs and 319 Twitter new users.

With such huge data, young people in business should take advantage to create new relationships and connections between data, people and procedures. Clearly, this requires a comprehensive strategy that takes into account all channels in the funnel, in real time, so as to determine the best path to success.

Information technologies have wrought fundamental changes throughout societal culture, driving it forward from the industrial age to the networked era. This has freed people from geographic fetters and brings them together in communities that are not tied down to any specific place, creating a better networked and globalised society coupled with extraordinary opportunities.

To leverage huge online and free data, they should understand it does not happen overnight. It takes investment in quality infrastructure to provide access to relevant information, right mindset and implementation of best practices.

This should be meticulously planned and executed to ensure all elements converge and present ease of use necessary to achieve business objectives while empowering employees and customers to embrace self-service.

Well-designed social metrics strategy has the potential to produce leading marketing initiatives, extraordinary internal and external customer experiences and high sales growth.

As young people in business embrace social metrics to make decisions on global supply chain management, online marketing and sales, mapping of customer behaviour and preferences patterns, pricing models, global and local distribution channels and continuous definition of unique business features, there is a need to consider the place of convergence between data and data analytics.

This will help them to accelerate the development and deployment of capabilities as well as understand necessary tradeoffs of using an all-in-one solution versus multiple best-of-breed solutions.

Social metrics as a business tool can pose challenges especially in making strategic decisions, hence the need to continuously challenge assumptions, reflect upon unconscious beliefs and perceptions.

This way, the metrics can effectively support decisions on capabilities, best platforms and their adoption.

The writer is a senior lecturer at Karatina University