Social media analytics and data privacy

Social media analytics is a process of gathering and analyzing of the collected data from social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. this analysis would thus provide insights by tracking online conversation about the product or service.

Over the last few years, there has been a shoot up in the social media data analytics in marketing along with improvement and advancement in the models of AI and ML as they play an important role in the predicament of customer/consumer behaviour and trends in buying. Data acquired from the social media platforms can be analyzed and processed through the AI models and with the help of machine learning.

Many companies out there have started using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn to increase their marketing ROI efficiency by targeting users/potential customers through tracking their behaviour concerning demographics.

But with all its perks there is an admonition!!! It poses problems regarding user privacy-related issues.

Privacy infringement:

Since the analytical scandal of Cambridge Analytica where the user’s data were mined by a third party for political campaign profiling in Facebook violating the privacy of the users, companies are thinking twice before engaging in social media advertisements/marketing without knowing the regulations, pros, and cons well.

So, companies of the world are learning to be more compliant with the regulations these platforms are posing such as Facebook, as it has made it more transparent to users about what data they are collecting and which are shared with the third parties for advertising.

The challenge of social media analytics lies in collecting the kind of social media data that are required. Data scientists could use the personally identifiable info and some of the other information for analyzing and to thus bring in more potential customers eventually increasing sales but through the compliance of the regulations only or it would lead to a lawsuit.

Privacy compliance:

Social media analytics are now done precautious adhering to all the regulations. Here the non-sensitive social media data could b used for boosting up sales or generating marketing insights with CRM (customer relationship marketing), and the sensitive personal data mining to track the users could be a violation in certain geographical areas so making sure that the user’s privacy is not violated is very important. So, data analytics professionals should take of it.

Google Analytics is the most sought-after analytic tool but large companies like IBM, Salesforce have their social media analytics. Though social media analytics plays a prominent role in the marketing industry but so does the threat posed to the user’s privacy making risk management and fraud detection prominent too.