Social Media Analytics in Social CRM – Towards a Research Agenda

Social Media have emerged as an additional source of information for companies. Regarding an analysis of the huge data volumes within the Social Web, other approaches than manually analyzing social content are needed. Thus, Social Media Analytics (SMA) applications have emerged in recent years and have become inevitable for automatically generating valuable insights. However, these tools still suffer different shortcomings, which inhibit a deeper analysis and understanding of data. This research investigates and categorizes currently available analytics methods by outlining literature and analyzing practical applications. Furthermore, it draws a line between descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics in the field of Social Media Analytics. As a result, this research complements existing research with strategic questions, possible outcomes of SMA applications, and enabling methods to compute these outcomes, and finally defines a research agenda.