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Understanding Social Media Intelligence: Why to Invest Now
Imagine you manage your brand's social media account, but you're seeing a decline in post views. Despite trying every new trend, posting high-quality content and even hiring a creative team, your posts still need to catch up to their targets.
And then you come across something that changes your game — social media intelligence! And this discovery helps your brand to make more informed decisions, improve customer relations and stay ahead of the competition.
Social media intelligence shares actionable insights for taking the right, impactful calls. Studies show that about 80% of consumers make purchasing decisions based on their friends’ posts on social media. So, if you’re a brand trying to grow and define your position in the market, you ought to be using social media intelligence to tailor your social content so many more such friends share your posts.
In this article, we’ll define social media intelligence and its benefits. We’ll also describe ways to gather social media intelligence and essential tools to help you along the way.
What is social media intelligence?
Social media intelligence is the use of data from social media platforms, like Facebook, X (previously Twitter) and Instagram, to gain actionable insights into public opinion, customer behavior, market trends and competitor activities.
At its core, social media intelligence involves four key components:
- Monitoring: Social media intelligence tools can help you constantly track what’s being said about your brand on social media. You can monitor social media mentions, keywords or trends online to make more informed decisions.
- Data gathering: Social media intelligence tools collect data from different social media platforms. From user-profiles and posts to likes, shares and comments, these tools collect everything your brand needs to know to improve its social media reach.
- Data analysis: This involves segregating the collected data and placing them under categories so that they can be used to identify patterns, trends and sentiments. Social media intelligence tools can break down the collected data into meaningful insights.
- Actionable insights: This involves transforming the social media findings into practical strategies that can help your brand grow. Whether it’s improving customer service or launching a new digital marketing campaign, social media intelligence helps create a blueprint for business success.
Related Read: Social Media Business Intelligence: How to Use It
What is the difference between social media intelligence, social media listening and social media monitoring?
Social media intelligence, social media listening and social media monitoring may sound similar, but there are a few clear-cut distinctions between them. Here are some of the key differences:
| Social media intelligence | Social media listening | Social media monitoring |
Definition | Refers to the overall process of gathering and analyzing social media data to draw actionable insights. | Covers the broader practice of analyzing conversations around a brand, industry or topic. | Tracks the social mentions of your brand, products and services or domain-specific keywords and finds related conversations. |
Purpose | Helps you make informed business decisions on product development, market segmentation, competitive analysis and more. | Aids in collecting information about social media customer behavior and identifying opportunities. | It is used for the real-time identification of brand mentions, customer queries and the need for social media crisis management. |
Focus | Derive actionable business insights by carefully analyzing social media data and data from other sources. | Understand the overall trends, customer insights, and sentiments within the industry. | Track real-time brand-related mentions to help your company in providing immediate responses. |
Example | A fashion brand can use social media intelligence to analyze its competitors’ strategies, such as limited-time deals or influencer collaborations. | An automotive manufacturer can gauge consumer interest (such as preference for specific features like self-driving) by using social media listening before developing a new car. | A travel agency can monitor mentions of flight cancellations or delays from a particular airline to inform its customers. |
What is social media intelligence used for?
While social media intelligence can be used for a variety of reasons, at its core, there are four essential uses:
Business applications
Social media intelligence helps businesses conduct market research. Companies can understand consumer sentiment, preferences and behaviors to refine product development and marketing strategies. They can also manage brand reputation with it by identifying potential crises, measuring brand sentiment and taking corrective actions.
Security and law enforcement
Social media intelligence helps security and law enforcement agencies in identifying potential threats, like cyberattacks or social unrest, by monitoring online conversations. It also helps analyze social media data to predict crime hotspots and effectively allocate resources (such as personnel and equipment).
Public policy and governance
Social media intelligence helps governments estimate public opinion on policies and initiatives. It can also bring insights on public reactions during crises to help develop informed response strategies. Governments can identify emerging issues and public concerns to formulate better policies.
Ethical considerations
Social media intelligence helps organizations identify and counter the spread of false information through responsible and ethical data use. This can help brands stay relevant and not be affected by social media biases.
Benefits of using social media intelligence
Social media intelligence can help brands grow substantially if used correctly. By using the large amount of data generated on social media platforms right, businesses can gain invaluable insights into customer behavior, market trends and brand perception. Here are the key benefits:
- Gathering honest insights: Social media is an excellent source for unfiltered customer feedback. How? By listening to conversations and tracking interactions, you can get insights into how customers perceive your products, and any pain points they’re struggling with. For example, a clothing retailer can use social media intelligence to gather honest feedback on product-related topics, such as size diversity or the use of eco-friendly materials.
- Understanding your customers: There are over 5 billion social media users worldwide. Social media intelligence can help you leverage this data to analyze demographics, interests and online behavior. This enables you to understand your customers' needs and likes, which, in turn, can help you analyze your target audience down to a tee.
- Managing crises effectively: Social media posts can lead to negative comments from users more often than not. But there is a way to counter them. By using social listening, brands can identify unfortunate incidents and address issues before they escalate. Look at how Microsoft handled user complaints when it faced a global outage. CEO Satya Nadella immediately posted a response on X (formerly Twitter) to reassure customers that Microsoft is working towards resolving the issue swiftly.
Source - Spotting new opportunities and trends: Social media intelligence can help brands in finding trends so they can market their products or services better and gain viral traction. For instance, several brands in India leveraged the "look between" trend to post relatable content. The result? High visibility and engagement for brands. Zomato’s X post (or tweet), for example, received more than 300,000 views.
Source
🤕 Keeping up with trends as and when they surface can be a pain!
Staying tuned into happening topics manually is not only incredibly time-consuming but frustrating as well. There’s only so often that you can look at the news or the trending topics sections of multiple social media platforms. This is where Sprinklr’s AI-powered social media management solution can be a lifesaver, as it: 📣 Lets you know what's trending across the globe in real time 📊 Helps you analyze those trends based on brand, country, topic and severity 👂🏼 Performs topic-based listening to uncover practical insights about your brand, customers, industry and more
How to collect social media intelligence
While there are various methods for gathering social media intelligence, one of the most effective approaches is to utilize the platforms your audience frequents. Here are the leading ones:
1. Facebook
You can monitor your brand page and join relevant groups on this platform to gain social insights through online communities. This will help you understand how your target audience perceives your brand. It is also a good idea to go beyond basic demographics and explore detailed audience data, like education, job titles and life events, to create highly targeted advertising campaigns.
Here’s how you could find groups that are relevant to your brand if you’re in the skiing business:
2. Instagram
Metrics like the number of replies and shares are great data points for understanding audience engagement and preferences. You can also track relevant hashtags to identify Instagram trends, influencers, and potential customers for your brand. On a side note, if you’re unsure about how you can go about your social media hashtag strategy, check out our dedicated guide on how to find the hashtags that actually work.
Pro Tip 💡: Test various content formats like Reels, Stories and carousels to get intel on which content type resonates the best with your audience. For example, Reels are great for short-form videos, while Stories can be used for quick updates and behind-the-scenes content. The format that gets you better reach and social media engagement can be used more often than others.
3. X (formerly Twitter)
X is excellent for tracking real-time brand mentions. Set up alerts for your brand name and potential crisis-related keywords to quickly identify and respond to all negative sentiments on the platform. This is also a great place to discover influencers in your niche by tracking relevant hashtags.
Pro Tip 💡: Leverage X Spaces to host real-time conversations related to your brand. This feature allows you to organize live audio discussions. Use it to gather audience feedback and conduct product demos. This will not only help you understand customer sentiment but also enable you to target newer audiences.
4. YouTube
Use YouTube's analytics to identify videos that retain your viewers and reduce drop-offs. By analyzing this data, you can course-correct and create engaging content consistently. It can also help you understand the best call-to-action placements and messaging to maximize conversions and audience engagement.
Pro Tip 💡: Building communities is the future of social media. Respond to comments frequently on your YouTube videos and engage with your viewers consistently to build a loyal customer community. Thank your viewers for their contributions to let them know that you value their input.
Social media intelligence tools
Although the market is saturated with data-gathering solutions, few possess all the features necessary to excel in social media intelligence. Here are a few toolkits that are used widely:
1. Sprinklr Social
Sprinklr Social is a comprehensive, 360-degree platform for social media intelligence and management. It offers a unified view of all social media channels, and it's super-easy to use and navigate. Businesses can use this tool to automate their social media efforts and gain deeper, actionable data to make more informed decisions.
Key features:
Unified management: This social media management tool allows you to handle all your social accounts from a single platform. It supports more than 30 channels and allows you to add new ones easily.
Social listening: Sprinklr’s social listening tool can help you track mentions of your brand, ongoing trends and competitor activity through a detailed dashboard. You can even identify consumer sentiment (positive, negative or neutral) and emotions with the help of advanced AI algorithms.
GET REAL-TIME INTEL WITH SOCIAL LISTENING NOW
Audience insights: Sprinklr’s Audience Insights offering can help you gain valuable data on the demographics and preferences of your target audience. By leveraging this, you can find new business opportunities and improve ROI significantly.
2. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a platform that offers social media management and a dashboard to track analytics. The platform helps users to schedule posts, engage with audiences and track the performance of their content across multiple platforms.
3. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is mainly used for customer relationship management (CRM) and social media management. It offers tools for tracking social conversations, managing customer inquiries and measuring ROI.
4. Brandwatch
Brandwatch is a social media management tool with advanced search options. It allows users to monitor large volumes of online conversations and identify ongoing trends, influencers and potential crises.
Get new insights from social media intelligence investments
Your brand needs to stay relevant in today’s immersive social media landscape. That is only possible if your brand understands its audience and tailors its strategies according to their requirements. So leveraging social media intelligence has become the need of the hour for businesses. By understanding consumer sentiment, market trends and insights, companies can identify opportunities and enhance customer satisfaction.
But there’s just so much data on social media platforms that businesses struggle to collect it and extract meaningful insights.
This is where Sprinklr Social comes in.
The platform helps brands manage multiple social media channels and make informed decisions in a data-driven landscape. Sprinklr's advanced AI-powered listening capabilities enable businesses to analyze large volumes of social data efficiently. It provides insights into user engagement, demographic information, and content performance. And that’s just the start of it.
Curious enough to try it out for yourself and see how it can take your social media intelligence quotient up a notch?
Frequently Asked Questions
Businesses need to prioritize data privacy, transparency and consent. By establishing clear brand guidelines for data collection, storage and usage, organizations can ensure ethical use of social media intelligence.
Social media intelligence differs across industries because brands may prioritize different types of data points while gathering actionable insights. Let’s say a popular smartphone brand launches a new product. The technology industry might focus on sentiment analysis to gauge consumer interest in the product. At the same time, financial institutions might use social media data to assess the product’s impact on the stock market.
Small businesses can use social media intelligence to monitor conversations. The best approach is prioritizing social media platforms with the highest customer engagement.
Brands can track key metrics, such as customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value and return on ad spend, to measure the ROI of their social media intelligence efforts.
Companies can integrate social media intelligence with other sources, such as sales data and consumer feedback, for a holistic view of the customer journey. For instance, a clothing brand can assess whether positive social media mentions lead to increased sales and tweak their strategies accordingly.