Leveraging the “Where” of Customers’ Social Interactions with MapAnything

original post on the MapAnything blog

As the “Where” company, MapAnything helps companies understand where their business is, and where it needs to be. Let’s take that a step further…wouldn’t it also be helpful to know, not only where your customers are, but also what are they saying about you?

As a product manager at MapAnything, I’m always exploring innovative ways for our clients to visualize the “where” of their data. So, how can MapAnything put the “where” in your customer’s social interactions? With the help of Twitter and Zapier, of course!

So, why do it?

A few use cases to consider:

• Call Center — Discover exactly “where” customers are located when they tweet about needing immediate help or assistance, allowing for a field agent to be efficiently assigned.
• Marketing — Pinpoint “where” concentrations of prospects exist who are talking about your brand or products, so educated market expansion suggestions can be made.
• Sales — Locate “where” attendees, at a show or event, are discussing certain topics and/or your product, so reps can stop by for an in-person visit.
• Customer Service/Support — Determine “where” positive versus negative comments are being made about your brand, so agents can address each accordingly.

How the process works

🐦 Twitter +💥 Zapier + 🌩 Salesforce + 🌎 MapAnything = 📌 “Where” of Customer Social Interactions

While we all are familiar with Twitter by now, it’s worth mentioning the frequently untapped goldmine of brand commentary and nurture opportunities that it stimulates. Most professionals tend to be less familiar with Zapier, so let me describe the part it will play in enabling your success. It’s actually pretty straightforward. Zapier is an automation tool that helps move data between apps, like Twitter and Salesforce.

Setting it all up

Here’s how to capture tweet locations, get them into Salesforce via Zapier, and put them on a map within MapAnything.

Salesforce Configuration

For this to work, you must update Salesforce to start capturing tweets. Each tweet will become a record.

1. Create an tweet object
2. Add fields for:

• User — Text (255)
• Description — Text (255)
• Address — Text (100)
• Latitude — Number (3 integer and 15 decimal)
• Longitude — Number (3 integer and 15 decimal)

Zapier configuration

Next set up Zapier to start monitoring tweets for certain @mentions and store them into Salesforce.

1. Create a Zapier account
2. Create a Zap (think of this like the formula and logic of connecting apps)
3. Connect your Twitter
4. Select Search Mention
5. Enter the business you want to monitor
6. Connect your Salesforce
7. Select the Create Custom Object action
8. Map the Twitter fields to Salesforce tweet fields
9. Click Save

Now, anytime someone @mentions your company, or one that you define, Zapier will store the tweet in Salesforce.

Show tweets in MapAnything

Last step…we’re almost there! Now we need to get MapAnything ready to map tweet locations:

1. Create a Tweets base object in the MapAnything Configuration
2. Select Address (twitter geolocation) to Street Address. Don’t worry about the other fields. MapAnything knows what to do!
3. Select the Latitude and Longitude fields
4. Launch MapAnything
5. Create a Tweets Marker Layer
6. Save and plot

It’s likely the map shows no results. That’s because you need to wait for Zapier to grab @mentions, since you just it set up. It only works for tweets that occur moving forward.

See your customers’ social interactions

So, now what?

• Wait for tweets with @mentions (or post to your own company Twitter account to test)
• Zapier will process them in a few moments
• Plot the Tweets Marker Layer again
• Did they show up in MapAnything?
• Now you should be able to see where people are tweeting about your business
• Where are they? See any trends?

A few extras to consider

• Display MapAnything on a big screen in your office. Set the Marker Layer to update every 5 minutes. Now everyone can see tweets pop up on the map in near-real-time! Set a date range to see only today’s tweets! Or those in the last week.
• Already using Salesforce Social Studio? MapAnything can help visualize the “Where” and Salesforce Social Studio will help you with the “what.”

Wrapping it all up

Where are your customer social interactions taking place? Now you know! We invite you to Tweet and follow us @MapAnything. Be sure to include your geolocation!

Want to see your salesforce.com data on the map? Check out MapAnything on the AppExchange.