Keeping an eye on your Social Media Environment

Understanding your customers is no longer a luxury in the business world, it is essential. Information is the lifeblood of an organization and even more, it’s the backbone of a strategy.

Regardless of size, entities must be able to assess their Social Media environment in order to predict strategies and shape success. Social Media intelligence is much more than knowing what people are doing or saying about your brands, products or campaigns, it is the translation of that knowledge into practical application.

Social media is free, easy, unaided even unbiased (literally Wild) but how can we really track the buzz around our subjects of interest?

Well, you can but be cautious don't just go out there without the necessary social media survival kit.

Obviously when it comes to social media we all have different needs, requirements... budgets and unfortunately the one-size-fits-all solution doesn't always work and common sense needs to be used.

Social Media Intelligence is about :

1. Direction: Why do you need to collect data? Customer Care, Consumer behaviour, product perception, Leadership Image, threats/opportunities detection, early warning. Basically what are the main reasons to keep an eye on the radar.
2. Collection: As mentioned earlier the organization is on I.V for fresh data and  consequently the right keywords are paramount - Keyword generation phase: you need to take into consideration how people interact online, the expression used, mispellings, all declensions...
3. Analysis: It's a funnel-shaped process where a pool of relevant data has been captured and archived. The next step is to make sense of this information using mappings, trend analysis and other kind of reports to easily visualize large volumes of data to turn the raw data into actionable intelligence.
4. Digest: Here is what I like to call the "one step back".  You have valuable information but how can you go the extra mile and make sure that your client or yourself will capitalize on the value of online buzz and swiftly comprehend the big picture?
5. Dissemination: the right piece of information sent at the right time to the right person within your entity. It's one of the biggest challenge faced today by Social Media experts.
6. Interaction: Here is where we need to be cautious, engagement is critical but make sure that you are using the right people to interact with your audience.

The Social Media Intelligence Cycle is basically Listening-Measurement-Engagement. I was willing to share my perspective of this SMI cycle.

Don't use information like a drunk man uses a lamppost, more for support rather than illumination.