As the Social Media Monitoring solutions evolve into Listening Platforms, what is the next, best step for full integration in service of Brand Strategy?

1. Social Media as Business Intelligence
With more-and-more data coming online everyday, why is it that
most Brands use it in a post mortem approach to measuring
performance in Marketing & Communications Strategy?
Is this the best we can currently do?
“Social Intelligence is an emerging discipline. Most
brands’ listening strategies still only use social media
data reactively – mainly monitoring brand mentions.
Few have yet to take the next steps toward
proactively using the data to inform their marketing
and business decisions.”
Zach Hofer-Shall - Forrester Research
“Trends 2010: Listening Platforms” - Sept 9, 2010
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2. The Basics of Social Media Data
Includes 3 Parts:
• Technologies: Digital technologies that facilitate forms of online content allowing for end
users to engage in multi-directional conversations in or around that content
• Content Single-Sourcing / Syndication: Media (content) that can be re-purposed in many
different forms and in many different places
• User Generated Content (UGC): Technology combined with social interaction to create or
co-create content and value
Digital Content User Generated
Technologies Syndication Content
The
Conversation
Cloud
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3. The Basics of Social Media Influence
The
Conversation
Cloud
60%
• Share of Voice: A Brand‟s Share of
Voice within the competitive brand
40% landscape
20%
• Share of Conversation: A Brand‟s
Brand Share
mention in conversation around
categories of products, services, and
Influence
attributes
• On-Topic Post
• Author Reputation Relative
• Author Reach Authority
• Platform Authority
• Platform Reach
• Content and Context Sphere of
Resonance with the Influence / Reach
Community / Audience
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4. If You Can’t Engage, What Else Can You Do?
Create Actionable Insights for:
Engagement Insights
Influence the Inform Brand
Influencer Lexicon
Leverage Influencer Inform MarCom
Platform Strategy
Inform Creative
Concepting
Inform Editorial
Process
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5. The Social Media Business Process – SM vs. MR
Social Media Listening Outputs Market Research Outputs
Conversation Pre Qualified / Sorted
Cloud Panel or Focus Group
Targeted Survey /
Brand / Indication
Share of Voice / Interview
Conversation 60%
40%
20%
Psychographics
Influencer
Ethnographies Personas Attitudinal Insights
• On-Topic Post Demographics
• Author Reputation Relative
• Author Reach Authority
• Platform Authority The primary difference between the two methodologies is that there‟s a more
• Platform Reach quantitative process and approach on the Social Media Listening side – and a more
• Content and Context Sphere of qualitative process and approach on the Market Research side.
Resonance with the Influence / Reach
Community / Audience Social Information Mining or Social Intelligence is a hybrid of the two – with a heavy
emphasis on Text Analytics, Linguistics, Semiotics, Anthropology, Semantics, Virtual
Ethnography, Demographics, Geographies, etc.
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6. Lexicon Sample Tracker
Unbranded Strategic Keyword Phrases
Unbranded Search Phrases - Referred
Page Views (to a Brand.com 2010):
120,000
• What‟s driving the paradigm-shift in Brand
100,000 engagement is that Search Engines such as
80,000 Google are indexing more-and-more Social
Media data (Caffeine Update in 2010).
60,000
Q1
40,000 Q2 • This simple study was for unbranded
Q3
20,000 keyword phrases or brand attributes that
Q4 have pull-through to the Brand.com website
0 versus the indexing of content associated to
Period1 Period2 Period3 Period4
the same phrases in Google.
• This trend will continue and new, better
Unbranded Search Phrases - Google means for Brand Engagement Intelligence
must take into consideration the ever-
Index Results (2010): expanding universe of content (data) that is
25,000,000 relevant to the Brand. Especially as
20,000,000 competition for the Brand‟s strategic
keywords and attributes increases
15,000,000 exponentially.
Q4
10,000,000 Q3
Q2
5,000,000 Q1
0
Period1 Period2 Period3 Period4
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7. Branded vs. Unbranded Lexicon Sample
Performance in Social Media (Q1 2011)
Total Relevant Posts: 41,593
The vast difference in conversation volumes illustrates the “whitespace” opportunity for the Brand to “intercept” or join the
conversation. The whitespace also represents the strategic research opportunity at hand: Social Intelligence.
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8. The Social Intelligence Value Proposition
• With the massive volume of data being mounted online on a daily basis, appropriate research methodologies and solutions
are required to deal with the onslaught. Social Media Monitoring solutions are fine for near real-time crisis management
and mitigation, aspects of customer service, public relations, and online reputation management – but such solutions
typically lack the rigor to effectively assess true sentiment, qualitative characteristics, contextual relationships, and
attitudinal proclivities for a large volume individuals and their representative content “objects” and the
connections/relevance to much larger conversations and themes.
• More traditional market research methodologies hint at the Social Media Monitoring platform shortcomings; the effective
and rigorous sampling of pre-qualified target audience (or audiences) based upon vetted segmentation criteria. Only by
leveraging “highly-throttled” sampling of Social Media “big pipes” can we begin to identify audience attitudes in general.
This requires a thorough hybrid approach of quantitative and qualitative means whereby subject matter experts comb-
through a large volume of “content objects” and assess the appropriate coding or categorization for further and deeper
analyses.
• Social Media Monitoring has been evolved into Social Media Listening to attempt to address these issues and
challenges. The trouble is that most platforms have not evolved to keep pace with advanced usage. Thorough analyses
take time, research expertise, and subject matter expertise and most Social Media Monitoring solutions are designed for
MarCom attribution to further support budgetary allocations and ROI. This isn‟t much different from the evolution of Web
Analytics…
• Brands have demanded that Social Media conversations be “mapped” to the traditional consumer / customer journey – the
research process and continuum. While this may appear entirely plausible from the theoretical perspective, the reality of
Social Media Content Objects is that they represent only an „abstract‟ of a much more complex and comprehensive
conversation (or theme) – and that contextual scenario must be understood in order to take advantage of the real value
and opportunity of Social Intelligence: Predictive Modeling in the vein of Business Intelligence.
• Social Intelligence solutions will take full advantage of Social Media “big pipes” but will also allow for integration across
Search, Web Analytics, Text Analytics, Media, Market Research, Mobile, eCRM, etc. Virtually any data repository available
via API would become grist-for-the-mill. And the Social Intelligence platform would allow for a simplistic, engaging graphical
user interface (GUI) for synthesized data representation in a interactive dashboard (SaaS / Web application) for the Brand
business strategists. So, Social Intelligence, Business Intelligence, and Data Visualization are connected at the hip.
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