Instruction:
Describe how social media can help companies make better business decisions. What social media data can be collected to aid in business decisions? List four pieces of social media data (e.g., Twitter mentions and the number of retweets would be counted as two pieces).

Response:
With 60% of the world’s population on social media, it presents an excellent opportunity for brands to reach and influence their consumers. The brands are already exploiting and interacting with consumers by leveraging social media as a channel. 
  
Social media is a treasure trove of information for brands. Brands can leverage social media to collect the data below to help them improve their business and overall operations. 

Customer feedback and complaints 

Brands can monitor social media to connect with customers and watch customer feedback and complaints. See the below example of how Target engages with its customer via Twitter. 

Find influential users to promote the brand 

 Brands can find influential users in a specific segment, understand the industry pulse, and partner with significant users to promote their brand—an example of influential Instagram users per industry segment. 

Consumer trends 

The information on social media is diverse and includes most of the markets and audience segments. This presents an excellent opportunity for the brands to mine the data and detect and predict consumer trends for product development. 

Gauge sentiment around the brand 

Brands can leverage the product/brand mentions in social media via the social media API and sentiment analysis services like Google NLP to detect sentiment for PR activities.