Does social media lead to valuable long-term customer engagement? Stephen Samild on Analystfirst.com isn’t so sure. He believes that analytical resources are better deployed in places other than using social media. A sales transaction records an identifiable customer, a specific product and a precise amount of money. But social media demands small measures of time and none of money. Eyeballs, tweets, likes and mentions, though they may be plentiful, are not dollars spent.
People offline are not necessarily who they say they are when they’re online. Social media user accounts are personas. Without a reliable and substantive signal in place—such as money changing hands—the relationship between an online persona’s social sentiment and an offline person’s commercial value is weak. For the vast majority of businesses, analytical resources are probably better deployed almost anywhere other than on social media analytics. Online, for most businesses, is just another sales channel and should be evaluated accordingly
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