My favorite quote from one of this week's reading selections (Social media analytics and business intelligence research: A systematic review) reflects the power of having active conversations with consumers. "…social media data reflects customer-driven information without any censorship." J.Choi et al., p.13.

As consumer voices on social media continue to steadily grow each fiscal quarter, the days of just needing to know the number of followers an account has in order to gauge the social media health of the business are a very distant memory. Also becoming a distant memory are the impersonal tones of corporate press releases traditionally put in conventional media outlets by public relations managers.

Those types of press releases do not work in this era of social media and marketing. They are too controlling of the narrative and do not allow for feedback from the consumers. Consumers want to give feedback (aka engagement) and have a conversation whether it be in the form of reviews made up of words, or in the forms of “likes”, emojis, gifs, shares, saves, downloads, reposts, hashtags, video clips, photo sharing, and tagging.

Influencers also play an important role in the dynamic social media conversations regarding consumer products and services and the metrics related to those conversations. This role was recognized by two companies that joined forces on January 17th of 2024.

On that date, Mavrck, a leading influencer marketing solution for online businesses acquired Later, a well-known social media management platform which was originally used primarily for scheduling posts on Instagram and had expanded their analytical and revenue driving tools over the years.  The combination of these two businesses produced three flagship products; Later Social, Later Influence, and Later Link in Bio, which are all reflective of the importance of the data produced by consumer voices on social media.

Businesses that recognize the importance of social media data for their current business decisions and their future development are incorporating social media data collecting, sorting, analyzing and interpreting tools into the management of their business. This is necessary for the life cycle of the business. The trends influencing consumer voices are ever changing. However, those voices, now that they have methods to be heard by businesses in influential ways, will not be silenced or censored – a fact that businesses need to embrace.

Can you imagine how many letters were actually written to companies about their products in the era before the Internet?




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