A lot goes into the making of a successful business strategy. And, understanding your client base is one critical factor, without which you cannot build a successful product launch or generate a robust sales and marketing plan. It is in this context that social intelligence has gained a lot of attention in recent times, and is also seen as a major influencing factor in the success of any business.
Contrary to the traditional method, wherein information is collected from a broad range of sources and insights are gained through old-school analytics; social media facilitates informed competitive strategy by overcoming the loopholes in the traditional analytics through in-depth details on the clients in a well-structured manner.
How can social intelligence help?
Clearly, there are critics who still prefer the old ways and are quite skeptical about the extent to which social media and social listening (in particular) can help an organization. The fact is that social intelligence is just a part of the solution, and not ‘the solution’ itself. Through the ability to listen, social intelligence helps a business to widen the scope of their products, fix the existing issues, and make a framework for better products and services which their target audience is looking for. Social intelligence thus acts as a bridge between customer expectations and business reality. It also acts as a catalyst in influencing the online conversations about a brand and enables reputation building and management.
By filling in the gaps present in the traditional analytics, and joining the dots to build a complete picture social media creates a scenario wherein the organizations get a close-up view of all their activities. When backed with sentiment analysis, social intelligence provides near-real-time analysis of every marketing and sales strategy which have been adopted till date.
Top-3 takeaways from the implementation of social intelligence
#1 Sales generation
This is perhaps one of the most obvious advantages of resorting to social listening and working through social intelligence. Not only does it help discover new sales and services opportunities, but social intelligence also gives a clear picture on how the existing customers are responding to a specific product or service. Social listening, therefore, is all about responding to customer feedback and updating the product portfolio accordingly.
#2 Bringing in innovation
One of the best ways in which businesses can innovate in the most meaningful manner is by having a deep understanding of the market and their customers. Social intelligence provides an almost balanced view on the positives and negatives of a product which automatically opens doors for innovation. The benefit of adopting social intelligence is that businesses also get to know where do they stand when compared to their competitors – which goes a long way in product enhancement as well as innovation strategies.
#3 Brand promotion
Today, perhaps, one of the most foolproof methods of promoting your brand is by making the right kind of noise on the social media channels. Brand promotion has evolved immensely in this format, with marketers being constantly on their toes to create the right image strategy. The data collected through social intelligence is a powerful resource which when used in the right manner can help in disrupting the market. Right from creating a ‘buzz’ about your brand, to roping in influencers, and conducting webinars, social intelligence provides greater visibility to your brand and promotes it in the right manner amongst the right audience.
Thus, from finding the most appropriate data to engaging people and building conversation on a common platform, social intelligence is a powerfully scalable tool that every business should leverage for long term gains.
