During the first quarter of 2019, our friends and colleagues from The Social Intelligence Lab developed a global survey among social intelligence professionals to establish what is The State of Social Intelligence in 2019. This study shows, for example, that 43% of organisations consider it a priority to invest in internal staff over the next 12 months to improve their social intelligence capabilities.
After an exhaustive analysis of the responses of more than 200 professionals in the industry, Dr. Jillian Ney and her team have been able to paint "a masterpiece with social data". Complemented by numerous reflections and testimonials from reputable experts in the sector, professionals from various fields of industry, from agencies to social intelligence platforms to major brands, the report, with more than 90 pages, presents an approach to the reality that we live, it is for those of us who work day by day with the insights that are extracted from social data.
In today's post, we want to highlight 10 facts about the state of social intelligence that we think you should know, but if you want to access the full report for free you can download it on this page.
1. 52% of the participants in the study believe that senior leaders do not clearly understand the objectives and outcomes obtained from social intelligence activities. This is a fairly common challenge in relatively new disciplines.
2. More than half of respondents do not know how social data is used in their organisation. Although traditionally this discipline of social intelligence is associated with marketing activities, isolating the potential of the insights extracted from social data to a single operating unit within companies is wasting a very valuable asset for the different areas that make up the business.
3. 57% consider that social intelligence has met or exceeded their expectations. To achieve these results it has been essential to obtain actionable insights and follow up on the correct metrics. Four out of five respondents say that social data provides unique insights that could not be obtained from other data or research sources.
4. 43% of organisations consider it a priority to invest in internal staff over the next 12 months to improve their social intelligence capabilities. While their last priority in this regard is to invest in new technologies of data analysis.
5. The problem of the budget is the main obstacle faced by 6 out of 10 organisations when it comes to social intelligence capabilities.
6. When talking about social intelligence, the activity that takes the most amount of time for 50% of respondents is data analysis. Although technological advances such as AI are facilitating and enhancing social intelligence practices, the human factor remains key when it comes to analyzing and interpreting data.
7. The main objectives for organisations in the use of social intelligence are: obtaining insights about customers, measuring the success of their campaigns, getting to know customers better, understanding their customers’ feelings and brand positioning.
8. 43% of respondents use social data for the identification of influencers, the correlation between the demographics of an influencer's audience and the target audience of a campaign, and the engagement of this audience, are key metrics that need to be taken into account when choosing an influencer for 9 out of 10 of the respondents.
9. 85% of the organisations invested this year in more than one social data analysis solution. 3 is the average number of tools purchased by organisations.
10. More than half of the respondents plan to, in the future, expand their use of social data analysis technologies. The integration between the different tools is a key and decisive factor when deciding on one or the other.
As stated by Dr. Jillian Ney, at the beginning of the report The State of Social Intelligence 2019: the results of this study offer a snapshot of the state of the industry. There are technical elements and science around data analysis, but the dependent variable for success is people. The interpretation by the human is what gives meaning to the data and provides the knowledge of how to action the insights into business decisions.
If you want to download the full report for free, you can do it from this page.