Social Media Intelligence: Are Technology Decisions Letting us Down?

Social media intelligence relies on robust, effective and innovate technology and thanks to some brilliant people, it’s there. We have, within a few clicks, access to ‘the largest pool of consumer opinion ever available and we can use it to learn about almost everything’. But great tech is only part of the story.

Humans are needed first to get the tech in place, then to get the best from it.  It sounds boringly obvious - without humans making the right choices, making use of the functionality, and using their creative process to interpret the data, the tech doesn’t shine. So are decisions around purchase and the way we use the tools and tech blocking us from getting the most from social intelligence?

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Technology - the pitch and the use. Something doesn’t add up.

This industry moves incredibly fast. The tools are bringing out updates to their software almost as quickly as new hashtags go viral. Yet researchers are often complaining of a kind of tool fatigue - using the same functionality to do similar things. So while the innovation may well be there, the inspiration to use it might not be.

We were shocked to find that 68% of practitioners still analyse data away from the platform they use. Yet a quick search will bring up hundreds of tools that list ‘analytics’ as a functionality.

Why are 68% of users preferring pen and paper or excel spreadsheets to using the technology? We can blame technology to some extent but at least some of those users aren’t getting the best from the tools they’ve signed up to.  To make it more confusing, 81% said they do have the confidence that tools can help to complete analysis quickly and easily.

Nearly 80% of social intelligence work, according to the people doing it, comes under the ‘general analytics’ header (ie it’s nothing fancy), yet the technology we have available allows us to work in very focused ways (ie lots of fancy).  When we were putting the lineup for our tech demo day together, the options for ‘innovative’ tools and tech were abundant. We’ve listed AI specialists, TikTok pioneers and visual analytics.

One tool to rule them all?

When we asked, 26% of users said they believe tech decisions are letting them down. Of course, there’s no right way to implement technology. Technology is an enabler when it is embraced correctly. And a pain in the spreadsheet when it’s not embraced. One approach that seems to be gaining popularity is to use the right tool for the right job.

Many feel that a single vendor can’t provide all the capabilities they need and most believe it’s not effective to put all your eggs in one basket (buy all social data analysis tools from the same vendor.) Enter tool stacking - a common strategy to increase an organisation's confidence to meet social intelligence objectives.

In 2019, 85% of organisations invested in more than one social data analysis solution and the average number of tools used is 3. So integration is key. But knowing how to integrate and doing it successfully will be crucial. We’ve been looking into ways to integrate in a way that makes the most of each tool. For the tools demo’ing at our event next week, we’ve mapped their integrations.

‘As advanced as technology has gotten you still need analysts who understand the technology, their business and social conversations to deliver success.’ Jackie Cuyvers, CEO Convosphere.

Tension over RFP processes, the underuse of existing tools and loss of trust in technology providers might be threatening our success with social intelligence BUT with a step back we can see how we can avoid it. We think that starts with humans making great decisions about what software options to go with.

The 1st Social Intelligence Tech Demo Day will focus on showcasing the key players across the market and a case study of their approach to social data analysis. The demo day will take place online on 18th June between 11am-8pm BST, featuring keynote addresses aimed at guiding attendees in RFP process, choosing tech providers and improving the ways brands drive success through deep understanding of consumer behaviour.

Sources:
The State of Social Intelligence 2019, Paining a Picture with Social Data, The Social Intelligence Lab.