Michelle Abuda BS'14 was one of the graduate students trying to make the analytics of social media tool BrandSnap easier to understand.
For a recent project, UT Dallas graduate students in a marketing analytics class partnered with KBM Group to study its social media performance tool and offered their suggestions for improvements.
Working in teams and using the new analytics lab in the Naveen Jindal School of Management, students explored methods for KBM Group to more closely score social media performance and value for its clients that use BrandSnap. The social media tool tracks daily reach and engagement across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest for KBM Group’s clients, representing 1,500 brands. BrandSnap also charts trends in brand momentum over time as well as against competing brands, so that social media content and strategy can be optimized.
One of the students, Michelle Abuda BS’14, said her team, one of several in the class, focused on making the BrandSnap score easier to understand.
“Just figuring out which methods to use was probably the most difficult part of the task,” said Abuda, who will graduate in December with a master’s degree in business analytics.
But she said the experience was invaluable.
“Working on real data and presenting our findings in front of the corporate representatives was extremely beneficial for our careers,” Abuda said. “KBM Group was not afraid to ask why you’re doing something a certain way or why you think that the method you have chosen will help them. The presentations were definitely a great learning experience.”
“We’re still discussing possible changes to our methodologies based upon these results, and very well may implement one or more within our future processes.”
Seth Drake,
KBM Group’s associate director of consumer insights and analytics
Seth Drake, KBM Group’s associate director of consumer insights and analytics, said reaching out to JSOM students made sense.
“We view JSOM as having a strong marketing analytics program that has continually updated its curriculum to stay relevant,” he said.
Alexander Edsel, director of the graduate marketing program, said the project is testament to the good relationships UT Dallas has with corporations.
“It is a great example of our alliance with industry leaders to provide advanced students with a real-world project to solve a complex, data-driven marketing challenge,” Edsel said.
While KBM Group highlighted some goals for the students, criteria for the project were intentionally minimal, Drake said.
“We gave them some ideas, but kept the goals fairly loose in order to allow for exploration and creativity. One goal was to improve our measurement of client brands across social media, a rapidly evolving space. Another goal was to see if we could find a relationship between a brand’s social engagement and other measures of brand value.”
Alexander Edsel
From Drake’s perspective, KBM Group got a win-win from the project.
“We got affirmation that our brand engagement score has a strong relationship to brand value, as well as suggestions as to how we can improve the scoring calculations themselves,” he said. “We’re still discussing possible changes to our methodologies based upon these results, and very well may implement one or more within our future processes.”
KBM Group also supported JSOM marketing programs with a $12,750 gift.
“This collaboration with KBM Group on social media research is a high priority for JSOM, given our school’s commitment to enhancing our social media offering and visibility on social media research,” said Dr. Ernan Haruvy, marketing professor.
This story was reported and written by freelance contributor Jeanne Spreier.