February 2012 | Vol. 4 Issue 2                  In Collaboration with the Frost & Sullivan Institute




HIGH POWER PANEL DISCUSSION

Tapping into Social Media
for Effective Competitive Intelligence

  By Andrew Beurschgens
Head of Market Intelligence
everything everywhere

 

This was not the first U.K. competitive intelligence networking event or conference session on social media, but it may well have been one of the most debated sessions given the calibre of the panel addressing the following issues:
  • Social media: can we be there as competitive intelligence practitioners?

  • Critical success factors in leveraging social media in intelligence

  • Navigating the social media monitoring tool landscape: choosing between do-it-yourself and full-service monitoring tools

The Source is Rich but the Problem is Volume

Social media provides a rich pool of people actively volunteering information and perspectives. Social media offers unsolicited, unstructured conversations compared with solicited and structured conversations as prompted by classic market research. It is a great way to elicit perspectives online in the same way an experienced interviewer can elicit the right comments and unlock the required insight over the phone or face-to-face. But a well thought-out and focused search plan needs to be devised to better sift through the sheer volume of content: you have to know what you are looking for and you have to be creative in that search.

The Power of IT to Search the Noise

The challenge with social media is to find the hidden gems, the needle in the hay stack. There are three types of listening tools to achieve this, namely:

  • Free tools like Google Alerts. These are not scalable but are invaluable places to start and experiment.

  • DIY tools like Radian 6, Sysomos and BrandWatch. Big players in the listening space, they leverage dashboards to scan lots of data in a simple fashion. Their advantage is very much in the eye of the beholder.

  • Full service providers like Synthesio, where the effort is outsourced. These mix the value of human interaction with technology to organize the noise into predefined groups.

The choice of vendor type is driven by what you are trying to achieve, the level of resources you have and the volume of social media being digested. Establish criteria to compare and contrast the growing number of vendors that are aiming to satisfy all social media ills to allow not just the competitive or market intelligence function to benefit, but to allow other functions to benefit as well—typically marketing, PR, sales, customer service, and human resources.

It is also particularly important to leverage the human aspect of scanning. For example, if you’re searching for comments on the company Orange, a search on the company name in social media can deliver anything from the color orange to parts of America (Orange County), to the fruit or a rugby team (Orange Free State in South Africa). The power of human intervention in technology to help solve this issue is paramount.

You Have to Start Somewhere

If you are new to social media, experiment with it by investigating your company first. Although essentially a counter-intelligence activity, this is a useful way to explore how social media works. Then, compare this with the results of investigating your competitors! Don’t rely on just one social media channel but access several as each can provide different insights and nuggets about the searched entity.

Beginners were advised to start small. Base your efforts on the Key Intelligence Topic technique, the process by which an unarticulated management need is established. Some participants used LinkedIn to identify a list of competitor employees and then tracked them over time to establish what they were doing and saying about a particular topic; starting small with a specific objective in mind. Use social media as a funnel to guide the right type of content to the competitive intelligence team, especially if that team is small.

What’s Next?

Results of a straw poll showed that the audience was at different stages with their adoption of social media. Half had a YouTube account and one in two had a Twitter account; but only one in four had sent more than five tweets. As such, the discussion was beneficial for this audience.

The panellists concluded with the following take-aways:

  • You can set up a Twitter account to follow others without having to send any tweets; with many tools being free of charge.

  • Look at your competitors’ Facebook pages to see how many followers they have.

  • Leverage LinkedIn to track when executives change roles or leave a company; this can provide an early warning about the stability of the company’s management. Interview those who leave.

  • Social media is another source of insight; treat it as a means to an end, not the end in itself. Failure to leverage social media eliminates a unique information source. Funnel the noise through a filter to support an unarticulated business need.

  • Don’t be afraid; social media is fascinating and has many benefits.

“So What” for the Audience?

If the networking event managed to persuade members of the audience to consider issues in a different light and, more importantly, to quickly act upon them, then the objective was met. The process of thinking through how to better leverage social media as the means to an end, rather than the end itself, was a clear win/win situation. Given the richness of the case studies shared by the panellists, the audience was convinced that if customers are present, then there is value to be had.

The Panellists

Beth Elliott, Catriona Oldershaw, U.K. Managing Director of Synthesio; Arthur Weiss, Managing Partner of AWARE; and Cormac Heron, Director of Bright Beehive.

Networking Event Series

The SCIP-recognised U.K. international affiliate, the U.K. Competitive Intelligence Forum (UK CIF), hosts a series of networking events that bring together professionals from all corners of the discipline: service providers, consultants, academics, and practitioners. Previous discussion themes and presentations can be downloaded from the website after registering on the site. To explore speaking opportunities and/or to be proactively kept abreast of upcoming events in the U.K., register your interest and details at info@ukcif.co.uk.

About the author

Andrew Beurschgens is the head of market intelligence at the recently formed U.K. joint venture between Orange and T-Mobile, everything everywhere. In cooperation with other volunteers from both the practitioner and supply side of the competitive intelligence discipline, Beurschgens is acting secretary of the SCIP U.K. International Group, the U.K. Competitive Intelligence Forum. He is a recipient of the Catalyst Award for his volunteer services to the profession, and currently serves on the SCIP Board of Directors. He can be reached at info@ukcif.co.uk.



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