Our CMO, Mark Harrington, recently wrote a feature piece in Social Media today called ‘Beyond “Buzz”: Five Key Social Business Intelligence Considerations.’ In the piece he reviews the major considerations leading companies are making when selecting their social business solution. We caught up with Mark to talk more in-depth on a variety of topics related to the feature.

Q: Of the five major considerations you lay out (quality, action, complexity, speed and expertise), which tends to be the most significant driver for businesses seeking advanced social intelligence?

A: Tough question since every business is different. It’s hard to diminish the importance of any of them, but I think we see speed and expertise and two significant drivers with most clients. In terms of speed, we often see a company come to us in need of an immediate social tracking solution. It ranges from an emerging industry issue or a product launch to a major action by a competitor or a social crisis. In most cases the company needs immediate, actionable intelligence to help guide their strategic plan and tactical actions. The other that tends to stand out is expertise. A lot of organizations head down the self-service tool route and realize that they end up getting meaningless noisy “buzz.” They also realize that they deep expertise to analyze and identify critical findings, else they simply get buried in irrelevant noise.

Q: When you look at the intelligence ListenLogic provides, where does the value for a company come from?

We talk to so many clients who review our findings on their markets, products, consumers, influencers and competitors and immediately say, ‘We’ve never seen anything like this.” The value of the insight is multidimensional. First, it’s deep and robust, providing understanding across millions of individuals a scale not widely accessible, even to the largest corporations. Second, it’s timely – back to the importance of speed. Yu need the answer now, not after the crisis or initiative is over. Finally, everything we provide is focused on the ability to take action. This is where “buzz” falls short, because you can’t act on it, or even trust it. We provide fast, detailed intelligence that corporations use to set strategy, drive innovation, make decisions and overall impact their business. That’s where the value really comes from.

Q: You mention a lot of teams that an benefit from social intelligence like “Risk, Legal, Corporate Communications, Marketing, Product, Brand, Insights and Innovation.” Do you see that expanding across the enterprise?

That largely depends on the culture and foresight of the company. Marketing, Brand and Product have been early adopters, primarily because of the nature of their responsibilities. They need to understand their markets, consumers, competitors and trends. Risk, Legal and Corporate Communications are emerging since these groups are starting to see significant threats that emerge via social media. We’re also seeing a lot growth with Insights and Innovation Teams. Beyond this, there is growing interest from groups like Human Resources and Investor Relations to get a better handle on the shifts and behaviors of their constituents, in this case employees and investors, respectively.

-LL-

As the world becomes social, large enterprises are being challenged to come up with new and more efficient ways to stay ahead of social media and get closer to their customers. Many of these companies have become polarized by the volume.

Dr. Steve Andriole, Thomas G. Labrecque Professor at The Villanova School of Business, outlines 10 Things Management Should Know About Social Business Intelligence (SBI).

About this whitepaper

This whitepaper discusses critical issues that large businesses must understand prior to fusing social into every aspect of their business, including:

1. All Social Data is Not Created Equal
2. Social Data Must Integrate
3. Derivative and Predictive Analytics
4. Man Versus Machine Classification
5. Social Business Intelligence Strategies

Be sure to request this social business intelligence whitepaper to find out more about how social business intelligence can transform your organization.

As worldwide social media use continues to rise, social media budgets are rising as well. More spending means more responsibility and more expected return on investment. ROI has always been in question when spending on social media, but even more in today’s economy. According to eMarketer establishing measurements for ROI tops the list of social strategy goals in 2011.

How do we measure social media ROI and what strategies help us reach that return? That question is answered differently by brands, small businesses, and agencies.  By looking at how we use social media, we can build some basic metrics for measurement: Revenue, Knowledge, Protection.

Revenue: Social Commerce and Location-Based Services

Just look at how social commerce grew in 2010 and it’s hard to dispute how social media can directly provide ROI and even become an integral part of your business. Most importantly, you’ll recognize social commerce (purchasing direct from social media platforms) can directly reflect how well your brand engages consumers and positions itself on social media.  This proves that revenue can now be a key indicator of an effective campaign, even in social media.

Location-based services continue to prove a great tool for driving in-store traffic that may otherwise walk right by, and if they are utilizing a check-in deal/coupon, tracking those sales becomes much simpler than measuring brand awareness through social media.

Knowledge: Consumer Insights and Competitive Intelligence

According to a MarketingProfs study, 80% of CMO’s reported customer suggestions help shape product decisions. This means that gaining a better understanding of your consumers, competitors and your market is one of the safest bets for social media ROI.

By listening to your consumers through social media you can gain insight into their wants and needs, informing your product innovation and marketing campaigns. Through listening to your industry broadly, you can uncover industry trends as well as glean an immense amount of competitive intelligence.

Leveraging social media for market research is often less costly than traditional market research.  Additionally, the leveraging identifies shifts in trends earlier, and can span across the entire enterprise providing a return on investment all departments can see.

Protection: Brand Monitoring and Threat Awareness

Brand monitoring continues to top the list of must-haves for social media strategists in 2011, but is it enough? Having a brand monitoring dashboard is essential for brands, but does it solve a problem if no one is looking at it?  There is no ROI in data, it’s all in how you use it. Having the expert manpower and a sound brand monitoring & threat tracking strategy is just as important as the technology behind it.

What should you be looking for? Customer complaints, mentions in online and news media, employee activity, and of course videos in reference to the brand. We all know how fast news in social media can spread and if you’re not actively monitoring your brand, there’s a good chance that a large portion of your customers will be aware of an incident before you are. Don’t just get a dashboard, develop a brand monitoring and threat tracking strategy to actively monitor your brand.

Where are you searching for ROI when it comes to social media? Is it all about building brand awareness or does revenue reign supreme now that monetizing social media is becoming more achievable?

The list of social media monitoring tools gets longer everyday. Each tool offers something different. There are lots of bells and whistles that separate the free from premium, things like sentiment and influence analysis, workflow and demographics. But regardless of the tool, tools provide data – not answers.  A tool alone is not enough.

1. Technology is only part of the equation
   A monitoring tool requires human interpretation. No matter how cool the technology, a tool provides data (for you to dig into), not insight into what the data means or what to do with it.
2. Social Media Monitoring probably isn’t your core competency
   Social media monitoring is both art and science.  Experience is everything.  Much like SEM and SEO, listening requires skill and in-depth knowledge of technology and linguistics.  For this reason you’re probably not executing SEM & SEO campaigns in-house, you’ve outsourced them to the experts.  Social media monitoring is no different, it’s complicated and it’s time-consuming.
3. Social media monitoring is cool, but first establish why you want to listen
   Sure people are talking about your product or service, but what are you ‘listening’ for?  Is it to track a campaign? Learn more about a competitor? Measure a new product launch?  Data in of itself doesn’t deliver better business decisions.
4. Tools offer promises, not deliverables
   Insights, intelligence, action and ROI are the promises of tools, not the deliverables.  Expert people are needed to turn these promises into deliverables.
5. Real-time insights drive the ROI
   More timely, insightful information makes for better decision making.  Better decision making is what drives ROI.
6. Answers are everything
   Ask a social media monitoring tool to answer a question…

Social media intelligence is the combination of social media monitoring technology and expert insight delivery.  It includes dashboards, reports to answer tough questions, and expert services to better understand what the data means and (most importantly) what to do with the data.   You’re able to answer questions like: Is our ad campaign working? What do people think of our new spokesperson? Why do teens choose our competitor? How do we increase enrollment?

If you’ve already tried a DIY monitoring tool and want to take the next step in gathering intelligence, we can help.  Contact us and we’ll show you how social media intelligence transforms business.

ROI (Return on Investment) has become a major question mark in the social media monitoring space. Sure, people are talking about your brand, but how can you leverage social media monitoring to drive ROI?  There are plenty of tools in the market that help track social conservations.  As can be expected not all tools are the same; some focus on delivering relevant and accurate data, others focus on measurement and engagement.  But the ‘Tool’ you choose is just one-half of the equation, the other half (and more costly part) is the “People”.

The True Cost of Social Media Monitoring

Let’s take a look at a simple calculation on what it costs to operate a social media monitoring unit (the investment) and the deliverable outputs (the ROI).

Tool Technology ($0 – $3,000 / mo) + People ($3,000 – $15,000 + / mo) = Charts + Tons of Data

You spend $100,000′s a year and you get charts… data.  While social data is cool at first (management is so excited that people are actually talking about your company) it doesn’t take long until managers start to say “My sentiment is up, my volume is up, I get it.  But so what?  What can I do with this data?  How can I make decisions from it?”  Yes, you’ve spent hours/days/months preparing data, probably hired some new bodies, paid for a social media monitoring tool, and in the end all your team produces is charts and data.  So what’s your ROI? Zero.  There isn’t any.

The Key to ROI?  Help managers make more informed decisions. Provide them with insights to answer specific business questions.

Social media is the world’s largest focus group.  It’s a new standard for conducting research.  Take advantage of it!  Try interpreting social media data to understand what consumers think about your products, what issues are emerging in the market, identify the personas for smart segmentation strategies, and see if your offline campaigns are working.  Give your stakeholders and managers insights into their business.  Help them move the revenue needle!

A Monitoring Tool vs. Solution

Instead of focusing on finding a tool to deliver charts or spreadsheets of data, try looking for a social media monitoring solution.  A monitoring solution that combines technology and human expert analysis to help you better interpret social media data and answer business questions.  Your costs will be lower and your ROI will be much higher.

Technology w/ Expert Human Analysis = High ROI

While there are plenty tools in the market, there is only one solution. At ListenLogic, we turn social media into business intelligence.  Contact Us today and take a look at what we have to offer.

Best in Class Tool + Expert Human Insights = Smarter Business Decisions