The Role Of Business Intelligence In Social Media Marketing

Social media provides a wealth of information that marketers can use to understand their target audiences’ behaviours and preferences, but it can also be a tumultuous hubbub of thoughts and opinions. To arrive at any reliable conclusions requires vast amounts of data to be analysed and visualised.

Here Glen Rabie (pictured below), co-founder and CEO of Yellowfin, looks at how Business Intelligence (BI) tools can help marketing departments make the most of these important channels to market.

There is no disputing that marketing has become an increasingly data-driven industry. Social media has also become a gateway to collect data, interact with customers, understand their preferences and gain direct feedback. However, vast amounts of social data needs to be more than simply monitored – for true strategic insight it needs to be both analysed and visualised.

Beyond monitoring tools, marketers should be tapping into BI tools that have API connectors and the capability to analyse and visualise third-party social applications. These BI tools provide a quick way of understanding the impact of social media marketing activities. What’s more they can be an incredibly useful and cost-effective way for time-pressed marketers to demonstrate the ROI of their social media campaigns.

Using BI in social media marketing can also help improve resource management, increase conversion rates and predict future trends and issues. Social media is an ever-changing environment that needs a reactive and flexible marketing strategy based on data insights. Today, certain BI tools are enabling marketers to gain a holistic view across multiple social media platforms, ensuring quick and reliable decisions can be made based on a myriad of data sources.

But most marketers are not technology experts. A product marketing manager does not want to have to construct a new BI chart or dashboard to track performance of the company’s YouTube channel and compare it with social commentary on Facebook. Marketers want pre-built charts and reports that provide classic ‘views’ of data.