It’s obvious that social media has become an integral part of enterprise marketing, but what’s still unclear to many is how to use social data to their advantage.
That’s where social business intelligence (BI) comes in. Social BI helps to bridge the gap between unstructured data and actionable insights to help organizations make enhanced and well-informed decisions.
Since social BI is still a relatively new technology, I thought I’d ask an industry expert a few questions about how social business intelligence is changing the game.
I recently sat down with Mike Maziarka, director of product marketing, analytics & services at Cision, a prominent vendor in the Social BI sphere. Here’s what he had to say:
Q: Given your expertise, what do you think is the biggest up-and-coming trend in social business intelligence? (for example, penetration into a new industry, new technology, etc.)
Real-time, integrated voice-of-the-customer insights.
Our clients are moving away from a pure metrics approach, to leveraging social for deeper insights. Sentiment or share of discussion alone are not enough to inform strategic decision making. Using more sophisticated segmentations for understanding audiences, purchase drivers, the decision journey, attitudes and behaviors lead to insights that are actionable.
Secondly, there is growing momentum to not view social data in a vacuum. Integrating or aligning with other research modalities and data streams helps to answer unanswered questions, fill gaps and inform other research. Curating focus groups in social discussion and aligning organic social discussion with brand trackers provides context, and is often quicker and cheaper than traditional research.
Q: What is the most popular social BI tool that your company offers? Why?
Cision offers both industry leading social BI technology through our Visible Intelligence platform and the world-renowned Cision Global Insights, our analysts division that provides actionable insights to our customers. With growing momentum for both options, customer preference is based on the client’s organization and experience.
For organizations building their own Social Intelligence Centers of Excellence, Cision provides direct use of its platform for the tools they need to analyze and draw conclusions from the burgeoning amounts of social posts. The platform enables effective targeting of applicable content, analytics to help make sense of it, and discovery tools for identifying trends and themes. Customers love the platform because it is fast and easy to use, enabling them to locate and make sense of massive quantities of social information very rapidly.
For organizations without available resources or experience in leveraging social intelligence, the Cision Global Insights team provides analytical and consulting services for aligning social insights with business questions and needs. From mining social for actionable insights to integrating with other data sources, the Cision team applies its methodology to obtain value from social. Customers who work with our analysts view the team as an extension of their own, providing keen insight to important business and marketing questions, when they need it.
Q: Because social BI is a relatively new technology, what is the biggest challenge that vendors in this market still face?
The biggest challenge has very little to do with the technology, but instead questions of how to correlate social data and intelligence with other marketing and business data. The goal for many clients is to ultimately understand how to connect the dots between campaigns (or programs/products/messaging) and then how the market responds and acts to them. Cause and effect, using social as a barometer, can help to drive future success and make course corrections when necessary.
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Michael Maziarka has over 20 years of experience in the content & document management, social media, electronic publishing, and infrastructure software industries. During his career, Michael served in management and individual contributor roles including product marketing, product management, corporate communications, industry analyst, analyst relations, and consultant. He has held P&L responsibility and participated as a senior management team member, working for small through large companies including Cymfony, BEA Systems, InfoTrends, Xyvision, Frame Technology, and Datalogics. Recognized as an content industry expert, Mr. Maziarka has chaired numerous Seybold Enterprise Publishing Conferences and Content Management & Collaboration Forums for the Internet World conferences. During his tenures at Xyvision, Frame Technology, and Datalogics, Mr. Maziarka was active in industry consortiums and industry standardization initiatives. He held the Chair position on the Board of Directors for OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (formerly SGML Open). He was also active in the development of the CALS electronic publishing standards, and has participated in J2008 and ANSI committee work. Mr. Maziarka holds an M.B.A. Degree from DePaul University and a B.S. Degree in Computer Engineering from Iowa State University. |
