Perspectives & Strategy

With the rise of every new business tool comes the need to leverage it correctly in order to provide business value. I have talked before about “when people are talking about your brand the business needs to be on the pulse” and needs to responding appropriately. Social Media intelligence is about managing that intervention.

Business Intelligence is traditionally capable of measuring business performance via a number of indicators. Traditionally the majority of these are financial indicators relate to the corporate balance sheet and are an indication of corporate performance. However many global corporations measure activities that have no immediate link to the balance sheet, such as production cycles. In the same way it is possible to measure the contribution made by Social Media to the business.

There are however several aspects that we do need to consider in looking at the value proposition made by Social Media to the business:

♦ The value of enhanced communications and collaboration.

♦ The ability to listen and understand what is being said about us.

♦ Responding appropriately to customers/prospects.

♦ Engaging the marketplace.

I have spoken much about the value to be gained from improving collaboration within the workplace. We have to consider that for every employee there is a sphere of influence radiating out from themselves through their team into the company at large an even influencing those outside the organisation. This collaborative sphere should be seen as one that adds value. However through the use of Social Media the company is investing in relationships. We must remember that collaboration is much more than communications it is about experts speaking up when appropriate. Experts can be found across the business in all roles, it may be as little as the truck driver who knows that customer deliveries must be delayed by half a day because the customer is closed due to a function, or it may be the analyst who discovers that two drivers have overlapping routes and that the delivery schedule can be rationalised and made more efficient.

Listening and understanding what is being said about our business is an important factor of Social Media. For example the music industry has always employed talent spotters on the street who are listening out to the youth to see who the latest upcoming artists are, yet this reach can only go so far. Social Media can add an extra dimension to this capability. Being in-tune with what is being discussed can allow a prospective talent to be identified without being in the locality.

Listening and understanding applies to all types of businesses, but how? Googling your brand or company should show your web-site to the top of the search results, but it is unlikely to show what someone just said about you on Twitter. Using traditional search engines (like Google and Bing) takes time and a lot of effort to discover what was said yesterday, let alone an hour ago. The social media landscape is busy and plenty of noise so monitoring searches on Twitter can also waste time, a resource that is precious in any business. The challenge is to identify and hear the conversations happening on blogs, social networks, forums, news sites, and more. You will need a tool that allows you listen to millions of conversations in real-time without having to waste time. It is important to respond appropriately and the majority of the time a simple thank you goes a long way. Yet a person who starts a hate campaign against your product or company needs to be placated, or managed well before the press come knocking on the door.

As an aside it should be noted that Social Media is a two way street. Part of listening is being seen to be paying attention. If someone follows you then you should consider following them back – it is seen as being attentive to your audience. CNN has over 150,000 followers on Twitter yet the service only follows a handful of people. Following back is an essential part of being responsive. I am not saying you follow everyone blindly, again business guidelines are required here, but you should consider following competitors, customers, prospects and market experts at a minimum.

Responding appropriately is a vital component. Giving away a free flight because a passenger praised your airline’s check-in procedure may not be a proportionate response. These elements should be decided upon within the marketing department, yet be executed across the company.

Engaging the marketplace is perhaps the most important aspect that can win new business. In researching a talk I gave earlier this year on Social Media I saw how a Customer Services representative at Dell Computer answered a question on Twitter about when Windows 7 was planned to be released. This release date is now only days away, but at the time few people knew. Because Dell customer service answered the question they gained a friend in the overall PC user community, even if the person asking the question was not a Dell user they may consider Dell to be on the short-list for their next purchase. The expertise is not about answering questions on your product, or brand, but giving fair advice on your competitor’s products, and also responding to general discussions in the marketplace.

We should also remember that monitoring competitor information in Social Media is as simple as investigating your own performance. Here everything is open an visible to all. Social Media is full of opinions and counter-opinions, these change almost by the hour and can be influenced by a wealth of factors. If you are not monitoring your competitors they will be monitoring and measuring you.

Engaging the marketplace is about being seen as the expert, the ‘person’ everyone wants to listen too. This is about building trust, being the market expert. That is adding value to the business.

Business Intelligence is though about the ability to measure the value in the things that we do for the business. Normally BI measures $ value, $ costs. Social Media Intelligence is more a process of discovery of the things being talked about. Yet measurement is still important. It should be a valid business goal in real-time to track and measure campaigns, brands, products and sentiment (positive, negative or neutral), and provide additional context by analysing results over time, as well as comparisons with competitors.