Social Media Analytics and Tools 101

Jan. 16, 2013 - PRLog -- Few industries rely as heavily on reputation as the financial sector. Since the economic downturn of recent years, consumer sentiment regarding financial services providers' dependability, reliability, and trustworthiness has become even more important. Social media can quickly establish and reinforce a company's attributes of dependability, reliability, and trustworthiness.  

Mercator Advisory Group's latest report presents examples of successful social media strategies by financial services companies to build brand visibility, reputation, and trust. It describes various metrics for analyzing the efficacy of such strategies and winning buy-in from organization management to invest in social media marketing.  The research also assesses the analytic approaches and tools used by a variety of financial institutions.

“Since social media connects so many groups of people instantly and without geographic limitations, it can be seen as an extension of word-of-mouth communication with speed and reach that are unmatched. This direct connection between businesses and consumers is a powerful and diverse tool. With a sound social media strategy, it can be extraordinarily effective," comments Ken Paterson, VP for Research Operations at Mercator Advisory Group and the primary author of the report.

Highlights of the report include:

- Discussion of the areas in which financial services firms are focusing media measurements: online brand visibility, engagement, customer care, and conversion

- Description of standardized measurement approaches gaining widespread use

- The key metrics major financial service organizations are using to manage the channel in social media campaigns and strategies

- Identification of a variety of free and paid analytic tools tailored to various social media outlets that are available to communications managers

This report contains 46 pages and 26 exhibits.

Companies mentioned in this report include: American Express, Citibank, Facebook, Google, HootSuite, ING, Salesforce Radian6, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Social Mention, Spredfast Social Media Management, Sprout Social, Sysomos, Twitter, Oracle Vitrue, and Wells Fargo.

Members of Mercator Advisory Group’s Fraud, Risk, and Analytics Advisory Service have access to this report as well as the upcoming research for the year ahead, presentations, analyst access, and other membership benefits.

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About Mercator Advisory Group
Mercator Advisory Group is the leading, independent research and advisory services firm exclusively focused on the payments and banking industries. We deliver pragmatic and timely research and advice designed to help our clients uncover the most lucrative opportunities to maximize revenue growth and contain costs. Our clients range from the world's largest payment issuers, acquirers, processors, merchants and associations to leading technology providers and investors. Mercator Advisory Group is also the publisher of the online payments and banking news and information portal PaymentsJournal.com.