The Social Intelligence Technology Landscape
Earlier this year we decided to put an end to vague definitions, confusing marketing lingo and dubious explanations in the social intelligence technology (SITech) space and create the first-ever SITech Landscape. In it we’ve identified every social intelligence tool, the types of projects you can use them for and the features and functionalities that you should expect them to have. Already there’s more than 500 and counting, so download the report to see the full list.
We can’t be the only ones to have noticed that social listening technology has really taken off in the last few years. On the one hand it’s great to have so much choice, but having a choice means making decisions. And that’s hard to do when you don’t have all the information. Because until now, there hasn’t been a consistent way that technology vendors have talked about their products. They all like to use fancy marketing jargon to explain what they do…without really explaining what they do. We know a lot of them do the same thing. We also know a lot of them do different things. But it’s hard to know what things they actually do.
We were pretty fed up with all this vaguery, which is why we decided to map the social listening technology landscape, define the different categories of social listening tech and explain how the tools in these categories can help your business. It was a mammoth task, but we’re excited to finally reveal the first version of the SITech Landscape…
Download the SITech landscape map to get:
- A complete, at-a-glance view of the whole social intelligence technology landscape
- Clear explanations of the different social listening technology categories and how they can support your work
- A list of SITech vendors highlighting which categories they operate in
- Tips on how to begin researching which social listening tools are right for your projects
- A sneak peek at the product development roadmaps of some leading SITech vendors
- Insights into the future of social listening technology development…
…and much more
Why is social listening technology so important?
As social media and the internet in general has grown over the last couple of decades, it’s given brands more data to understand their customers better than ever before. The problem is, there’s now too much data for a human to analyse.
That’s where social intelligence technology - SITech - comes in. These tools can help you quickly collect and analyse this vast amount of internet data and discover insights about consumers that you can use to shape your growth strategy. And, as the space develops, many are incorporating fancy new technology, such as AI and predictive analytics, to make it even easier for us social listening pros to do our work better and quicker.
But, while it can be tempting to rely on these tools to do just the work for us, the best insights usually come from mixing technology and manual analysis. This makes it really important to choose the right tech based on the projects you’re working on.
How to choose the right social listening tools
Most SITech started by simply offering a way to track and monitor conversations that were happening online - think brand mentions, social media engagement etc. However tools have developed to help you do more advanced stuff: audience analysis, real-time analysis, trend prediction, mind reading* and so on. This is great…when the tools do what they say they’re going to do. But, while many use these fancy buzz words, they’re not always going to work for your social listening projects.
That means you need to take charge when buying new tech to make sure you’re choosing the one(s) that’s right for your business. So, be clear about your objectives, think about how it will work with other tools you have and make sure it meets the needs and use cases of all users.
*We’re only joking. No tools can read minds…as far as we know…
What does the SITech Landscape look like?
When we started looking into the social intelligence technology landscape, we were amazed at just how many tools are out there - loads offer some really cool solutions to our biggest challenges and some claim to be SITech when they aren’t really. There were even a few that aren’t even marketing themselves as SITech.
In the end we identified *gulp* more than 500 social intelligence technology providers that we could place within 9 technology categories and 37 subcategories ranging from Social Listening & Monitoring and Influencer Marketing & Analysis to Audience Analysis and Trends & Foresight.
We’ve given you clear definitions of each category and subcategory so that you can understand the different elements of social intelligence they cover and the use cases that they can help with. This should making building your SITech stack a lot easier.
What’s the future of SITech?
Given how quickly we’ve reached 500+ social listening tools, we’re sure - scratch that - we KNOW the SITech space is going to continue to grow and change. In the last couple of years we’ve seen how generative AI has influenced our industry and now we’re seeing the impact that short-form video is having on tech developments.
On top of this, we’re also predicting that we’ll see SITech vendors beginning to focus on things like predictive analytics, real-time optimisation, personalisation at scale and augmented decision making. You can read more about what this all means and how it might impact you in the report.
Download the SITech Landscape map to find your perfect tool
Getting to grips with who does what, how, where and why in the social intelligence tech space is no easy task. And as these tools are supposed to make your life easier, you shouldn’t need a degree in decoding marketing jargon to work out which ones are best for the projects you’re working on. So we did the hard work for you and laid it all out in a handy map. The report also:
- Outlines the different social intelligence categories
- Lists the different tools and technologies that fall under each category
- Explains exactly what the tools in each category does
- Gives you an idea of which types of tools you should be using for which use cases
This is useful whether you’re a seasoned professional looking for a new addition to your tech stack, or a complete novice just trying to understand WTF social listening technology even is.
So what are you waiting for, download the report now.
Want to buy the best tech for your needs?
Check out our Social Intelligence Tech Buyer's Guide and get the information you need to get the best tech for your business needs.