- By Admin
- December 11, 2013
- Digital Marketing
Social Media Intelligence (SMI) refers to the newly emerging process of gathering information by using social media sites. SMI challenges the traditional way online business marketed themselves and researched trends and popular products. Comparing the old way of doing things with how things are done now shows not only the differences but also the importance of SMI.
The old-school way of starting social media marketing was by compiling a wide range of sources that information could be gathered from. These included web report and printed studies and in-person research. The newer method involves focusing in on people and their online conversations, searches, and activities.
Step two is gathering data, which a few years back meant reading over reports, surveys, and studies that other people had conducted and analyzing their results. The modern approach is to engage your target audience and in essence have them tell you what they want to see by the things they are actively talking about and looking for, then tracking and recording these points for future reference.
The next step is analyzing the data, which, in the old-school method meant sitting down and pouring over the figures, comments, and reports and trying to make sense of it all. The SMI approach make use of newer technology to search for buzz words, key words, common phrases, high traffic sites, and other key factors than can help narrow the marketing area.
The fourth step is to communicate with the target audience. The approaches are basically the same but the SMI approach uses modern social media marketing as the form of communication. Brand marketing, reputation management, and product promotion are some of the key points that are necessary when communicating with your target audience about the products or services that you offer.
The last phase of this process has remained unchanged as it is the time where all the information that has been gathered and all the insights that have been learned must be complied and a final decision much be reached.
Social media marketing has been around for quite a while, but it has changed form and format over the years to accommodate the growing trend of social media. With sites like Facebook and Twitter growing steadily and new sites being developed all the time, any online site must keep SMI in mind when developing their marketing decisions. The process is the same but the way the steps are carried out has gone through quite the transformation over the last decade. In order to survive you must keep up with the ever-changing online market.
