One of the many benefits of most social media and marketing tools is that they offer the opportunity to collect data that can be analyzed to improve future campaigns and other business procedures. Knowing how best to make changes based upon what this data tells you can be vital to getting the most out of the information that it offers.

1. Adapt to your audience’s interests and concerns. Seeing how customers respond and react to certain messages, media and other content will help give you a good idea of what matters to them, thus allowing you to adapt your goals to reflect these things.

2. Develop your media. Social data can help you improve what you already offer on existing sites, networks and in various types of media and propaganda as well as help introduce new media and options through which to reach your audience.

3. Find outside influences. Within every audience there is “that person.” That person—or persons—speak out about your brand and have a huge impact on how other people look at it. Knowing who these individuals are is important because consumers tend to listen to and trust other consumers more than the brand in question, and following these individuals will help you see how they are influencing your brand’s image.

4. Respond to consumers. Whether it’s a matter of satisfaction, dissatisfaction or a mere need for consumer-company communication, you can create open conversations with consumers, which is the only way to create an opportunity for positive communication. Even if conversations take a negative turn, responding with genuine concern will help things end on a positive note.

Social data can offer a plethora of information that will help you develop and improve your marketing campaign, but only if you actually make use of it. As opposed to letting this data to be collected without achieving anything, apply what it tells you to improve your campaign and enjoy the results as they are compounded over time.