Social media platforms are massive hubs of rich user data that can be used as an aid for machine learning or educated business decisions. As we go through organic content created by real interactions between internet users, they generate the most useful material for Artificial Intelligence to learn from as well as essential knowledge about user tendencies that keep giving new insight into our desires and demands.
With billions of active daily users across the most popular platforms, the information within them is too valuable, and businesses that invest in the collection and analysis of available knowledge come out on top by making the fastest and most accurate decisions.
Because companies that understand the client base are destined for success, we have tons of businesses pouring investments into data science and analytics to extract as much value as possible from social media platforms. In this article, we will focus on the process of data scraping, and why businesses put so much effort into automated data collection. Here you will learn how web scraping works, its main benefits and challenges, as well as the value of crucial support offered by internet privacy tools. For example, if you want to collect information from YouTube, running your bot traffic through a YouTube proxy will ensure the fluidity of the process without the endangerment of your IP address. If you use a YouTube proxy, a TikTok proxy, or any other proxy to extract data, you can push your bots to their limits and never worry about blocking.
What is data scraping?
Data scraping involves running a script or a complex collection tool, pointing it at a desired target to extract information. Most scrapers follow two steps: scraping, a process that collects the HTML code from a source, and parsing which changes the structure of the information to put key elements into an organized data set.
The best way to understand the power of automated data collection is to try it yourself. To create your first scraping script, we recommend Python – the world’s most popular programming language that allows us to write code that is simple and easy to understand, even for an untrained eye.
The best part is, you don’t even need a lot of programming knowledge to create your first web scraper. The web is full of tutorials that will let you create a simple and easily customizable script that will let you target many websites with ease. Python has a very active community that provides tons of libraries like BeautifulSoup that take care of the next step – parsing the data into an understandable format.
But most modern businesses, especially ones that have resources to spare, usually buy pre-built tools that offer more control and navigate social media platforms a bit better. Social media scrapers are better at avoiding the disruption caused by discrepancies in a more complex code, and constant updates from the developer make them the most reliable tools for collecting valuable user information from these networks.
Data scraping benefits
Once the collection of data is successful, companies and business-minded individuals can use this knowledge for many valuable insights. Here are the most common benefits that make web scraping so detrimental in the competitive business environment.
Competitor monitoring
Every modern company strives to establish a strong foothold on social media platforms. Data scraping lets you collect information about your competitors, their posted content, promotions and discounts.
Unlike web scraping of competitor websites, tracking competitors on social media also shows the reactions and interactions from the customer base. If users are not pleased, you can adjust your business strategy to appease their demands. In other cases, if followers love the decisions made by the competitor, you can make changes to adapt to their strengths.
Easy search for advertisers
Social media platforms are full of influencers and content creators that look to make some extra money from paid advertisement deals. These are great opportunities for both potential parties, where businesses can find the best creator with web scraping and choose the perfect target audience to promote their products and services.
Market research
The combination of the benefits described above lets you collect all the necessary information for effective market research. By knowing which products and services have an abundant supply, while understanding the demands of social media users, you can use the collected information to have a clear overview of the market and the most urgent needs of clients. Satisfying them is a sure way to success.
The biggest concern – digital privacy
Web scrapers send more data requests than the average internet user. Because of that, modern companies use residential proxy servers to get fresh, untraceable IP addresses that protect every connection, keeping any bot detection tools at bay. Still, if your bot gets caught, the best proxy providers have thousands of addresses that can quickly put the bot back to work.
