A Comprehensive Guide To Social Business Intelligence

Over 1.5 billion conversations happen on social media every hour. Social media is no longer just a place to hang out. It's a treasure trove of valuable data that can make your business a lot more money if you pay attention. As social media technology matures, it plays a bigger role in competitive strategy.

Social media data shed light on why a product is successful in a particular market. It even helps identify early trends that influence product development or marketing messages. Business intelligence will only help make this data easy to understand, making it easier to spot trends.

In this blog, we will see how social business intelligence works, how it is useful to your business, and how you can use it for smarter business decision-making.

What Is Social Business Intelligence?

Social Business Intelligence (SBI) was once a lot of work. It involved market research from public and private sources, months of data analysis, and creating long reports for internal stakeholders (who probably didn't read them). Businesses only checked their social data once a year because it was so hard to get.

Fast forward to today, and social intelligence has changed in almost every way, thanks to the massive amounts of social data the internet produces. Today's social intelligence is more about analyzing conversations and online behavior. This data leads to deeper insights and understanding of business operations, giving businesses a fly-on-the-wall perspective.

Social media has changed information mapping. Before, we relied on primary sources like experts, employees, and suppliers and secondary sources like articles and market research. Today, social intelligence taps into a new goldmine: people's conversations in social spaces. Every consumer and influencer talking about your brand is a potential expert. This is why social intelligence is such a valuable strategy for businesses.

Social Business Intelligence is a way to use social media data to improve your business.

How Does Social Business Intelligence Work?

• Data gathering: SBI tools collect data from different social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, & Instagram. They track and monitor conversations, mentions, comments, and other interactions related to your brand, product, or industry.

• Data analysis: Once the data is collected, it needs to be analyzed to extract useful insights. SBI professionals use specialized tools and techniques, such as sentiment analysis, text mining, and natural language processing, to uncover patterns, trends, and sentiments around a specific topic or brand.

• Business insights: The goal of SBI is to find actionable insights that will help you make better business decisions. You can adapt your strategies, improve your products and services, and enhance customer experiences by understanding customer sentiments, preferences, and emerging trends.

• Competitor analysis: SBI also helps you to collect insights into your competitors' activities. You can identify their strengths & weaknesses, as well as potential gaps in the market, by monitoring their social media presence and analyze their engagement with customers. This information will help you refine your own strategies and stay competitive.

The Benefits Of Social Business Intelligence

Even though many businesses know the importance of social intelligence and data collection, they often don't use the data they collect. This is because people don't yet fully understand the value of social intelligence. SBI can be used for your entire business, not just marketing.

Here are just a few of the many benefits of collecting social data:

Spotting Micro-trends

Trends are like waves in the ocean. They come and go, but micro-trends are like the waves just forming, the ones you can ride the best. So, pay attention to the waves you can surf! Micro-trends will help you get ahead of your competition. The sooner you spot them, the more likely you are to gain market share.

Social intelligence analysis helps you spot trends faster. The internet has a wealth of tools to collect social data in every form, from social monitoring to social surveying. Collecting social data will always give you a competitive advantage.

Predictive Analytics

You can test different strategies without any risk by using social intelligence. For example, you publish a post that doesn't get much engagement. Changing the headline of the post can make a big difference. You can even change the content of the post a few times and see how it affects the social results. Then, use that data to make better decisions in the future.

PA Consulting Group is a company that uses its social intelligence to test its value. They wanted to see if they could predict the future occupancy rate of a hotel using social data. They were able to achieve 98% accuracy just by using social intelligence. This is predictive analytics at its best.

On the Fast Track

Marketing analysts used to spend 80% of their time collecting data and only 20% analyzing it. But with social intelligence, the tables have turned. Analysts now have access to a variety of tools that allow them to create dynamic maps to pinpoint expertise in social data. And you don't have to be an expert to use them.

General Electric's social campaign is a prime example of how social intelligence can be used to get quick results. To collect new ideas for a "social airplane," they offered prizes on Virgin Airlines.

General Electric created a Twitter account called @ecomagination and organized key topics around specific hashtags. This campaign resulted in more than 90,000 followers and thousands of new ideas within just two hours. A traditional campaign like this would have taken weeks.

Better Than Market Research

Social media answers critical business questions, helping businesses quickly report progress to board members and stakeholders. It also provides key evidence to support major business investments. Social intelligence is so sophisticated and voluminous that it can never be compared to market research, which is essentially just studying old numbers.

To use social intelligence as effectively as market research, you need to understand its benefits. Social intelligence analysis gives you much deeper insights in a variety of ways, such as:

• How customers perceive your customer service compared to the competition
• How to best reach your target market
• What future products do customers prefer
• Key complaints that no one is telling you directly
• How your competition is succeeding and failing

It's simple. You are using public commentary and behavior to make future decisions.

Competitive Analysis

Social media and the internet give you a thousand ways to research your competitors. This is called "competitive intelligence," and it's all out there for you to see. Social intelligence helps you not only understand your competitors' plans but also learn from their successes and failures. This isn't about spying because the data is public. It's simply about being smart.

Advanced social intelligence allows businesses to study their entire industry. It opens the door to broader research that includes social data points about:

• Customers
• Suppliers
• Employees
• Stakeholders
• Competitors
• Key influencers
• Potential competitors
• Potential customers

These social findings are then used to develop essential influence strategies. This creates a blueprint for signals and content strategies that enhance reputation, such as blogs, press releases, social media posts, and so on.

Evaluate Your Sales Funnel

With social business intelligence, you will identify which channels are working best for your business. Understand how each channel, from engagement to clicks to sales, affects your revenue. Then, use this information to make data-driven improvements to your sales funnel. It will also help you create better content for each stage of the sales funnel so you can get the most out of your marketing budget.

Measure The Success Of Your Campaigns

Social business intelligence tools make it easy to measure the results of your campaigns. Track how people responded to your campaigns and see if they were successful. This information will help you figure out what combination of elements your brand needs for a successful marketing strategy. Then, you can start creating more successful campaigns and making strategic offers.

How To Use Social Business Intelligence To Improve Business Decision-making?

Define Clear Objectives And Goals

Your goals can range from enhancing brand awareness, optimizing customer engagement, or staying ahead of market trends. But, having clear goals ensures that your SBI efforts align with strategic priorities.

Monitor Social Media Conversations

Stay attuned to social media conversations relevant to your brand and industry. SBI tools help you monitor mentions, comments, and trends, thus providing insights into customer preferences and industry developments. Real-time monitoring allows you to make timely and informed decisions.

Analyze Customer Sentiments

Understand how your audience feels about your brand and products. SBI tools help you gauge public opinion by analyzing customer sentiments expressed on social media. Strengthening the positive sentiments and addressing negative sentiments becomes a proactive part of your strategy.

Identify Influencers And Trends

Find key influencers who shape conversations in your industry. SBI allows you to identify thought leaders and trending topics, which provides you with opportunities for fruitful collaborations.

Use Predictive Analytics

Go beyond historical data with predictive analytics. SBI tools forecast future trends based on social data patterns. Anticipate shifts in consumer behavior, emerging market trends, and potential challenges to make decisions that position your business for success.

Promote Cross-Departmental Collaboration

Break down silos and encourage collaboration between departments. SBI is not just for marketing; it's a tool that benefits different functions. Sales, customer service, and product development teams all use social insights to improve their strategies and to encourage a holistic approach to decision-making.

Continuously Evolve Strategies

SBI is dynamic. Regularly revisit and adapt your strategies based on changing and evolving social dynamics. Continuous refinement will ensure that your decisions align with the ever-changing social environment, thus keeping your business agile and responsive.

Integrate SBI With Overall Business Strategy

Ensure that SBI aligns with your overall business strategy. This integration will ensure that social insights contribute directly to your business objectives and create a symbiotic relationship between SBI and strategic decision-making.

Measure And Evaluate Impact

Quantify the impact of SBI on your business decisions. Measure key performance indicators (KPIs) related to your SBI initiatives, assess their success, and refine your approach based on performance metrics.

Social Business Intelligence Tool For Smarter Decision-Making

Statusbrew is a social media management tool that offers a comprehensive suite of features for social business intelligence. Here are the key features that make Statusbrew a valuable tool for SBI:

Social Listening

Statusbrew tracks conversations and mentions of your brand, competitors, and industry topics across different social media platforms. This comprehensive listening solution provides data on customer sentiment, competitor strategies, and emerging industry trends.

Advanced Analytics And Reporting

Statusbrew provides robust analytics features that transform raw social media data into actionable insights. You can track key metrics such as engagement rates, reach, and sentiment to measure the efficacy of your social media campaigns & identify areas for improvement. Statusbrew also offers customizable reporting capabilities to generate reports tailored to your needs.

Social Media Data Visualization

Statusbrew's data visualization capability allows you to convert your social media data into visually appealing charts, graphs, and dashboards. So, you can easily identify trends and patterns, making it easier to understand and communicate your takeaways to stakeholders.

Social Media Competitive Analysis

Statusbrew benchmarks your social media performance against competitors so you can track metrics such as follower growth, engagement rates, and content performance to identify areas where you can improve your competitive edge.

Real-time Social Media Monitoring

Statusbrew offers real-time social media monitoring to allow you to stay on top of trending conversations and customer issues. You can quickly respond to customer feedback, manage crises, and capitalize on opportunities.

And much more. Book a FREE demo today to understand how Statusbrew can help you extract meaningful insights from social media!

Try Statusbrew

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