It's no secret that social media contains a lot of useful marketing information. As a marketer, you can use Social Media Intelligence (SMI or SOCMINT) to improve your sales and marketing campaigns. Here's how to do it right.
Social media intelligence is the process of collecting and analyzing data from social media platforms to generate insights and make informed decisions. It collects data from various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and others, and uses that data to monitor trends, spot patterns, and gain insights into customer behavior, brand reputation, and overall customer sentiment .
Social media intelligence is essential for businesses and organizations looking to stay on top and remain competitive in today's fast-paced digital environment. It helps them understand their customers' needs and preferences, track the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns, and respond quickly to negative feedback or criticism.
Social media intelligence involves using advanced analytical tools and techniques such as natural language processing and machine learning to process large amounts of social media data and generate valuable insights. These insights can inform strategic decisions, improve customer retention and drive business growth.
Today I will explain how you can use social media intelligence for marketing strategies and business decisions. Let's see what awaits us.
Table of contents:
- Social networks as a source of knowledge
- Social Media Intelligence vs. Social Media Monitoring vs. Social Listening
- Social Media Monitoring
- social listening
- Social Media Intelligence
- Why does social media intelligence make such a difference?
- Social-Media-Intelligence-Tools
Social networks as a source of knowledge
It's no surprise that social media holds tons of valuable information. Some people wouldn't even believe how much Facebook or other platforms know about them.
Luckily for user privacy, most personal information is hidden and inaccessible to third parties. At the same time, social networks use this data to improve the ad experience for both users and marketers. What does that mean?
If you have social media accounts, you can use insights and analytics tools to find out who is following your brand. You can check basic metrics like demographics, interests, and the operating system used.
Use Brand24 to analyze social media mentions. Create custom reports and get notifications straight to your inbox.
Social Media Intelligence vs. Social Media Monitoring vs. Social Listening
Social media intelligence, social media monitoring, social listening - all these terms sound similar, but there are some differences.
Social Media Monitoring
Social monitoring is the first step to social media intelligence. Social media website monitoring is one way to collect data from posts and conversations happening on social media using various tools.
Social media monitoring means tracking, analyzing and responding to conversations happening in real-time. Social media monitoring tools scan websites for branded discussions or other relevant keywords. The simpler tools collect mentions from different sources in one dashboard, while the more advanced also provide additional analysis functions.
Chia wrote a great article aboutSocial Media Monitoringif you want more information about the process.
social listening
While social listening and media monitoring are similar concepts, there are some differences you need to be aware of.
Social listening implies a broader scope of monitoring and analysis. It includes not only tracking brand-related conversations, but also industry trends, competitor activity, and broader topics of interest to your audience. The main goal of social listening is to get information about the customer.sentiment analysis, preferences and behaviors to inform general business and marketing strategies.
In other words, social media monitoring focuses more on immediate feedback and feedback from customers. In contrast, social listening focuses more on understanding the broader context and trends of conversations on social media. The two processes overlap, but at the same time have different characteristics.
Social Media Intelligence
Now we come to the main topic: the intelligence of social networks.
Social intelligence can (and should) be based on social listening and monitoring, but involves many more data points and analysis.
Social media intelligence involves collecting, analyzing, and applying insights from social data to support decision making. This includes examining data from various social media platforms to monitor trends, spot patterns and gain insights into customer behavior, brand reputation and overall market sentiment. Social media intelligence relies on advanced analytics tools and techniques such as natural language processing and machine learning to process large amounts of social media data and generate valuable insights.
Use Brand24 as a social media intelligence tool. Get the free trial and start analyzing.
Social networking sites contain a lot of valuable information for digital marketing purposes.
Before the golden age of social media, people were much more anonymous on the internet. It has taken a lot of work to collect information from consumers. Prior to social media analysis, marketers would have to rely on manual labor; for example questionnaires. Now you can use advanced analytics tools to understand your audience's buying behavior and use them in data-driven marketing.
Here are some benefits leading brands expect from social media intelligence activities.
information in real time
The intelligence of social networks allows you to get real-time information about the behavior, preferences and opinions of customers. This means you can respond quickly to customer needs and adapt to changing market trends, giving you a competitive edge in your future campaigns.
Improved customer retention
By conducting social media analytics, your business can understand customer needs and preferences and tailor your products and services to meet those needs. These actions will significantly improve customer retention and loyalty.
Better decision-making processes.
The valuable insights that social media intelligence provides can inform strategic decisions.
By understanding market trends, customer sentiment, and competitive activity, your brand can make more informed decisions about product development, marketing strategies, and overall business operations.
crisis management
Social media intelligence tools allow you to monitor and respond to negative comments or criticism in real time. In this way you can defuse possible crises and protect the reputation of the brand.
Competitive advantage
It goes without saying that social media intelligence gives you a competitive edge. The data collected, used properly, will help you track market trends, identify growth opportunities and quickly adapt to changing customer needs and preferences.
Social-Media-Intelligence-Tools
The advantage of modern digital marketing is that there are dozens of free and paid tools that can help you do your job better, easier and faster. Here are some of the best social media intelligence apps that you should try.
marca24
Brand24 is a social listening and media monitoring tool that easily doubles as a social media intelligence collector app. Gather all publicly available brand mentions (or mentions of a selected keyword, doesn't have to be brand related) and use the data points obtained to create a baseline analysis.
Brand24's success lies behind its advanced analytics capabilities. You can use it for analytics and sentiment monitoring.context of the discussion. In addition, Brand24 provides the social and general reach of the media and calculates theAVE (Advertising Value Equivalency).
We offer a 14-day free trial (no card required) and the cheapest plan is $69/month. Why not try the social listening tool and let us know what you think? Use the button below to register.
Monitor social media with Brand24. Free 14-day trial available!
Hootsuite perspectives
Hootsuite Insights is a social media listening and monitoring tool that helps businesses track brand mentions, analyze sentiment, and identify industry trends. It allows users to monitor multiple social media channels in real-time and gather insights from customer conversations.
Hootsuite is also a social media management tool, so you might want to check it out if you're serious about social media marketing. One of Hootsuite's great advantages is its easy integration with other popular social solutions like Hubspot, Mailchimp or Canva.
You can try a 30-day free trial or purchase a paid plan starting at $99 per month.
Brandwatch
Brandwatch is another popular social media intelligence tool based on collecting social listening data.
You can use it to track reputation, analyze customer sentiment, and monitor competitor activity. It provides users with real-time insights from social media data, enabling them to make informed decisions on marketing and business strategies.
While Brandwatch is certainly a good tool that provides valuable customer insights, it is expensive and is mainly recommended for companies with large budgets. The price will be discussed individually according to your preferences and needs.
NetBase fee
NetBase Quid is a social media analytics tool that provides businesses with insights into customer behavior, market trends and competitor activity. It uses advanced natural language processing techniques and machine learning to analyze social media data and provide users with actionable insights.
The market and consumer intelligence tool is definitely useful in your marketing stack, but again, pricing is discussed on an individual basis, meaning it's geared more towards businesses than small private businesses.
chupalo
Last but not least, you can also try Swydo, a digital marketing reporting and analysis platform. With Swydo, companies and marketing agencies can measure and report on the effectiveness of their digital marketing campaigns. Swydo integrates with multiple marketing platforms including Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook Ads and more, allowing you to collect data and information from many sources and present it in a clear, easy-to-understand format.
Swydo's paid plans start at $39/month (10 data sources included).