It doesn’t appear, on the face of it, to make sense. According to data compiled by Tonefuse, tween idol Justin Bieber’s fans are more likely than the average American consumer to buy, not bubblegum-flavored lip gloss, but books online. The “whys” and the “hows” of that apparent correlation is the domain of social listening and web analytics firms, but the onus for making sense all of those volumes of data falls on CMOs and digital agencies.
The specter of a realm of new knowledge called social intelligence can be an intimidating one, but it is incredibly important. Social intelligence informs ad buys, audience segmentation analysis, even long-term product strategy. This issue of DIGIDAY: DATA examines the “social” portion of social intelligence, with insights from Rob Key, CEO of Converseon, a social media consultancy with an emphasis on translating real-time data into bottom-line strategy, and Dan Greenberg, CEO of Sharethrough, a social seeding and marketing platform focusing on branded content.
What we do as decision-makers, ranging from deciding what data to look at in determining audience targeting policy to elucidating social strategy to brand managers, is based on our understanding of the context of social data and the meaning of that data.
What are leading companies doing? They’re bulking up on analytics and taking bold strides into social media, with responsive, long-term strategy that is context aware and device-savvy. The major search engines and platforms are connecting social campaign innovations to brand strategy and binding it all together with real-time data that becomes more detailed as technology advances.
Need more resources? Check out Converseon’s Webinar series on social listening here and examine Sharethrough’s case studies on social video with integrated metrics here.
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