Social intelligence was originally defined as the ability to act wisely in human relations. It’s the capacity to know oneself and to know others too. In today’s digital age, the definition expands slightly beyond simple human interaction. Social media intelligence is about making informed decisions based on the insights you gather from social monitoring. It is much more involved than simple social listening.
What Exactly is Social Media Intelligence?
Consider customer conversations on social media like chatter in your ear. When you hear a sound, your ear may be the instrument that picks up on it, but your brain is what is processing the sound wave.
Social media intelligence is the brain behind the social listening.
In a more formal sense, social media intelligence is defined by the tools and solutions that a business uses to monitor social channels. Additionally, it incorporates responding to social cues and social analysis based on customer needs.
The Stack
There is a particular structure to all of this social interaction. That is why it is considered an intelligent design. Digital and social media marketing are not hard concepts when you break it down. In order to understand social data in a simple and flexible way, think of it as a stack:
There are four levels to the social media intelligence stack. It starts with social listening. Once the data is collected, you need to have a way to manage it. Then you must have a strategy to analyze the information, and finally, a means to deliver the results.
Each level has its own set of technologies that empower a brand to make the most socially informed decisions as possible. For example, a technology for managing social information includes automation tools. When it comes to distributing social data, reporting and notification tools are helpful forms of tech. It all depends on what level of social media intelligence strategy you reside, and the platforms you feel comfortable with (or that best fit your business).
Managing Social Data
Once you have collected a decent amount of data from your social monitoring efforts, it must be segmented and routed correctly. This is where you are sorting your information and putting it into virtual bins so it is easier to manage. From categorizing subsets to customizing rules, there are many ways in which social data can be filtered. Here are a few ideas to give you a jump on social metric management:
- Location: continent, country, city, region
- Date and Time: yearly, monthly, minutes
- Channel type: social network, news, blog, forum, etc.
- Social Media Statistics: likes, comments, impressions, influence, etc.
- Sentiment: positive, negative, neutral
- Site stats: visitors, click-through-rate, conversions, dwell time, etc.
There are so many ways to measure and manage human behavior. The sky is the limit. Just make sure your strategy is relevant to your goals and produces insight on specific questions.
Conversation Analytics
Although not always necessary, you can take analyzing social data a step further by using tools which employ advanced analytics. It allows you to examine social strata right down to the very bone. This typically works for larger brands, or if you have a brand name that can be confused by search engines.
For example, the big clothing company the Gap. The brand surely has social data management in place that will understand the difference in conversation between someone talking about the clothes or a divide between cliffs. Advanced analytics looks at a social data set and mines it further to extract the information that is relevant (using key attributes).
This is sometimes referred to as Boolean processing. It’s about parsing social conversations to find the data gold!
Distributing Information
Now it’s time to reap the fruits of your labor. The is the final stage of the social stack and is often the most overlooked. Bad idea. This is where you get all your data that you can do something with. Distributing the information will ultimately define the way in which these insights are conveyed across your business.
Traditionally, analytics and reporting existed on the dashboard of whatever social tool you were using. But now, with the rise of mobile business, distribution is a huge part of social media intelligence. Information can be disseminated through methods like:
- Command centers
- SMS or e-mail alerts
- Open API’s
- Reports
- Automation
It all depends on how you choose to consume the social information about your business. If you are on the go, your mobile device is probably the best bet.
Navigating the social landscape is a step-by-step process. From listening to management, analytics and distribution, each action is required to provide a meaningful vision. Through effective social media intelligence, a business can better understand their customers and practice more informed decision making.