How Can Social Media Analytics Benefit Cannabis Marketers?

Marketers are increasingly turning to big data analytics to increase their competitive edge. Social media data can be interrogated to uncover various trends in consumer behavior. Through in-depth analysis of massive amounts of publicly available social media data, we can provide insights into the following questions:

When to market
- when in the week do people buy? when in the week do people consume?
- when in the day do people buy? when in the day do people consume?
Where do consumers prefer to buy? (Store or online?)
Popular strains
What type of product do consumers prefer?
Geo-location/age/gender of consumers? Has this changed since legalization?
What do consumers think about cannabis marketing?
Medical versus social use?

KI Design’s social media data analytics can support marketers through:

MEASURING ENGAGEMENT
AUDIENCE ANALYSIS
COMPETITION ANALYSIS
INDUSTRY AND PRODUCT TREND DISCOVERY
CAMPAIGN PLANNING AND MEASUREMENT

1) MEASURING ENGAGEMENT

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) allow for increasingly sophisticated analysis of public opinion.

LEVELS OF CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

Level 1: Basic	Users who are already interested in cannabis may be searching for information. Others may be alerted to a brand post if a connection shares a relevant item.
Level 2 Following	A user follows your brand, or a relevant topic. The user may set alerts for when new posts appear.
Level 3: Engaging	Active involvement – responding to comments or completing surveys.
Level 4: Influencing	Promoting your content, contributing to discussions on your social media pages, or creating sub-topics.

Big data analytics allows marketers to follow engagement patterns at macro-and micro-levels, using this to inform future strategy.

2) AUDIENCE ANALYSIS

KI Design’s AI-based tools allow tracking and granular analysis of social media posts, including:

Geo-location (Our geographic mapping capability has been designed by a geo specialist, and meets security agency requirements)
Language (KI Social allows users to select language as a filter and conduct analyses using data in over 150 foreign languages and obtain insightful results in any of those languages)
Sentiment (KI Social automatically detects sentiment in 26 languages)
Emotion (available in English)
Demographic information (where available)

3) COMPETITION ANALYSIS

Our competitive intelligence tools enable your business to capture and analyze data, and adjust your marketing strategies accordingly. Topics of investigation could include:

products,
website changes,
customers,
marketing strategies, and
strategic investment(s).

Competitive intelligence tools will help your brand to analyze current competitor strategies, and also to anticipate future competitor activities. These tools are often leveraged alongside buyer intent data tools, which capture research around actual consumer journeys and signs of their purchase intent.

4) INDUSTRY AND PRODUCT TREND DISCOVERY

Social media monitoring tools keep track of trends and topics amongst consumers, competitors, and the wider community. They can be used to gather collaborative feedback directly from customers, regarding new concepts, product development, or refinement of current products.

5) CAMPAIGN MEASUREMENT

Tracking engagement, reach, follower growth, customer satisfaction, and the customer journey will provide you with valuable data, allowing you to upgrade your social media strategy.

1. Engagement rate: Includinglikes, comments, shares, and retweets.

2. Reach analysis: This is the number of unique users who interacted with your content.

3. Measure follower growth: Target both potential customers and current followers.

4. Customer satisfaction:

Are consumers who’ve previously followed your brand still continuing to do so? It’s as important to keep loyal fans as to reach out to new ones.
Are your follower numbers growing? What tactics were most successful?
Are you responding quickly to follower posts? 42% of consumers expect a response on social media within an hour.
What is the sentiment of posts on your pages: positive, negative, or neutral?

KI Design is an innovative company that has been successfully providing social media monitoring, data analytics, information security, and public sector digital transformation consulting services since 2001. KI Design’s team is led by a team of North American experts in privacy, data science, and compliance.

Our work with multiple federal government departments and agencies, private companies, and non-profit organizations has helped us understand that while many of these organizations could benefit from social media and big data analytics, few have the capacity to undertake these complex studies using existing in-house resources and expertise. That’s where we come in.

KI Design prioritizes ethical practices and has designed and developed auditing and monitoring systems for critical public services such as health, energy, and aviation.

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