Top 3 Features of Microsoft Social Engagement Every Marketer Needs to Know

Every marketer knows that in order to successfully sell a product or service it is vital to understand your customers’ behavior first. With the rise of the Internet and social media, we are now connected to seven continents, 196 countries, and billions of people in the world. While this accessibility and reach is presumably most marketer’s dream, it is nearly impossible to gather and evaluate feedback from the vast human population with one marketing team. So what good is it to push out ads and continuously post on social media when you don’t know what catches your customers’ attention, what they want to see or what channels they are most active on?

But fear not fellow marketers! Microsoft has introduced a tool that collects feedback and data from your customers and prospects all over the world and displays it in real time right in front of your eyes. Microsoft Social Engagement has simplified the process of market segmentation. It collects and analyzes data from across all social media platforms, whether it be Twitter or Facebook, and shows it in an easy to read user interface.

1. Turn that Frown Upside Down

According to Newell-Leger’s “Understanding Customers,” it takes 12 positive experiences to make up for 1 unresolved negative experience. As consumers, we should not be surprised by this statistic but, as marketers, the big challenge is to monitor our customers’ sentiments from all over the globe in order to turn negative experiences into positive ones.

Social Engagement offers a feature that calculates a sentiment score for your company. That is, each positive and negative comment on social media is given a score and the average of all these scores determines the overall sentiments customers have for your company. Social Engagement also allows you to minimize unresolved negative comments. By displaying a panel of comments about your company that people are making from all platforms right on your dashboard , and allowing you to respond to each individual comment ensures that every negative comment is resolved. This feature lets you see what is trending and gives you direct communication with each customer.

2. Where's The Buzz?

If your company had a very popular product in Tokyo, it does not mean that the same product will perform well in Canada. Microsoft Social Engagement has a feature that simplifies market segmentation. The sentiment maps allow you to search certain keywords, campaigns, or products and automatically display a map of where these words are used in real time conversations. This feature also shows which areas on the globe your product is getting the most positive or negative feedback in. If there are comments or posts that require your immediate attention you can respond directly from your dashboard, or assign someone else from your company to respond to that comment at a later time. On top of that, there is a buzz map feature that provides you with insights such as popular phrases that are being used along with your product in specific regions.

3. Channeling Your Engagement

You may have more followers on Twitter but more engagement on Facebook and vice versa. So how would you go about determining which channel to use or prioritize?

Microsoft Social Engagement now offers an author source analytics tool which displays the overall number of people talking about your company on social media, and it breaks down that overall number to show which platform those authors are posting on. And if you want even more specific data, the Social Engagement tool lists out the names and profile pictures of the authors posting on all social platforms and ranks them by the number of posts they’ve made about your company. This is a great tool to have when determining how much time to allocate to a specific platform, and to see who your most engaged social butterfly is.

Microsoft Social Engagement has essentially created a one-stop shop for all things social media marketing. Whether you have an audience of ten or seven billion, this tool ensures that every one of your customers and prospects is heard.

For more information or assistance with Microsoft Social Engagement please contact FMT Consultants.