How to get buy-in across your organisation with Taylor Dickson, Analytics Architect at Brandwatch

The use of social social data within most brands and organisations is still quite new. Many don’t even have a dedicated social intelligence team. And, although we know social intelligence can offer interesting insights and new perspectives on business challenges, it can be difficult to explain to the wider organisation what the benefits are and why it’s so important. Particularly to leadership.

At Observe Summit, we’re going to be discussing how social intelligence professionals within brands can go about getting buy-in from the wider organisation. We caught up with Taylor Dickson, Analytics Architect at Brandwatch, who will be moderating a panel discussion on this topic to learn more.

Can you briefly describe the challenge you'll be tackling at Observe Summit this year?

I am absolutely thrilled to be moderating a panel all about getting buy-in to digital data across an organisation. It's a critical topic for anyone working in social intelligence: without buy-in, collaboration and integration across a business, one can be limited in the value insights and recommendations can potentially provide. We'll be looking at ways to avoid that challenge.

I will be joined by some exceptional attendees (panel list here), talking about measuring and demonstrating the success of a digital data strategy; collaborating with different disciplines across a business; and the incredibly important act of getting leadership buy-in to investment in social data analytics.

I've already been fortunate enough to have a conversation with the group, and let me tell you: the insight, experience, and stories they have to share are too good to miss.

What's the biggest benefit of using digital conversations to gain insight?

It's no secret that social media fundamentally changed the landscape of human interaction: we're able to connect, share, and discuss ideas across time and space like never before. It might sound dramatic to put it that way, but let's face it: when else in history could an individual from every country on the planet take part in the same conversation simultaneously?

These conversations are happening whether we as researchers/brands are paying attention or not. Think about what that's done to information exchange: opinions on products, personalities or events that may once have only been shared in face-to-face conversation are now brandished like banners online, where the positions we hold become part of the identities we portray.

Taking the time to interpret and understand those positions, and the people that hold them, can give us insights into culture and motivation you'd be hard-pressed to find in any other data source - and connecting with motivation is fundamental to driving meaningful behavioural change (like inspiring someone to buy a product!)

Why is it important for brands to consider using social data analysis within their growth strategies?

Your customers exist in their world first, and yours second (if at all); that means it's critical to understand the ideas and behaviours they engage with day-to-day. You could ask them about it in a survey, sure, but prompting an answer can introduce a natural bias into the result. Social data offers a unique opportunity to interpret any audience as they exist 'in the (digital) wild'.

Know their world, and build a growth strategy around being an authentic value-led part of it.

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