Over the past decade we have seen social media data being used as a source of learning. Social listening, monitoring, tracking and reporting have made it into the day to day of many brands.
Even though the social data usage is widely spread, “social intelligence” is still at early stage and at slow growth. The social intelligence practice lies behind. Brands and organizations perceive the process as an innovation and are still reluctant in adopting it.
The past year 2020, has been such a challenging year for humanity. Everyone has learned how life can be completely unpredictable. Brands and organization have understood how quickly perception can change and have realized that honestly no- one can certainly claim “I know my consumer”.
With this in mind, the industry of Social Media Intelligence has a long way to build trust and create meaningful ways in integrating social intelligence into business functions.
#1 Social Media Intelligence will become essential in “humanizing” your brand
- 68% of people don’t think brands share interesting content, according to the latest survey in 2020
- On the other hand, a huge uptake of social media usage by brands has been noticed in 2020
- The brands that really “won” social media though are the ones that sit down and listened to the consumers
- Rather than creating their own conversations, they entered the consumer’s conversations
People want to connect with each other, not with brands. Listening to consumers can help you humanize your brand.
#2 Identifying the metrics that matter most becomes essential
- The market will move away from measuring the vanity measures that are easy to measure. Likes and Shares measurements will become less important
- Instagram is already moving away from reporting the Like measure and so will the whole industry
- Sentiment and share of voice metrics is the start but with the advanced use of AI and machine learning there will be more interesting things to move onto. Humans and machines will find the optimum way to work together. As tech advances, social intelligence experts will focus more on understanding context and interpreting the data to create actionable insights
- AI will be used to contextualize new concepts and answer real business questions
The use of Social Media Intelligence experts along with AI and Machine Learning will bring a new era in the depth and relevance of the analysis provided.
#3 Social Data becomes a credible research method
- While traditional research methodologies are shrinking gradually, the social data becomes a credible alternative
- In 2020, social data stepped in with many delighted to find the digital research methods exist and can do the job faster, more accurate and cheaper
- With the advantages of looking into perception of brands in the past and compare to present, understanding consumer conversations before asking (spontaneous and intuitive recordings) the social media research methodology will gain more and more credibility
In 2021, companies in social media intelligence will further grow through strategic partnerships in the markets.
#4 The increasing importance of visual data
- Facebook reporting a 50% increase in viewers watching live videos
- Tik Tok experiences a massive 75% increase
- Video content is 79% of all content that is out there online
- Virtual reality is not really a new trend; it is something that is always a matter of subject. For a long time, social media have been mulling over the idea of adding both VR and AR to everyday interactions in social media
Visual analysis will become essential and a crucial component of Social Intelligence. New technologies that can recognize scenes and analyze video will enable video as part of the insight sources.
#5 Tighter social media regulation impacts social listening work
- GDPR and CCPA was the beginning. Even though the regulations did not have a direct impact on the practices of social media intelligence, in 2021 this is expected to change
- Tighter regulations in the social media space will impact our social data analysis activities
- Stricter data collection and storage legislation is expected to impact the whole landscape of social media data
More regulatory bodies will enter the industry demanding stricter rules.
Sources:
The Social Intelligence Lab, “Social Data Trends 2021”
Goho PR Agency, “5 Key Social Media Trends for 2021”
Econsultancy.com, “Social media trends in 2021: What do the experts predict?”
Social Media Today, “25 Predictions for Social Media Marketing in 2021”
