In this series of profiles, we'll be putting the spotlight on some of the wonderful speakers who will be featured at The Social Shake-Up this June.
The social media management marketplace turned its attention to the enterprise in 2008 and since that time, Eric Berkowitz has developed his expertise in the implementation of technology and service offerings for social media monitoring, analytics, and engagement. With experience in client service, sales, and product management roles, Eric brings a unique perspective to the ways emerging technologies are ushering in a new age of social consumers and enterprises. At Tracx, Eric serves as Vice President of Product Strategy, where he is responsible for client development, go-to-market and product strategy. He was kind enough to answer a few questions for us this week.
These days, it seems like most brands have caught on to the power of social intelligence and big data, but can you name the biggest stumbling block they're experiencing when it comes to turning that flood of data into targeted insights that can dictate strategy?
Sure, there are actually several. I’d have to say that many brands assume that more data is better. An indiscriminate big data approach wastes time and money. Enterprises obsessed with drinking from the data firehose make the false assumption that all data is valuable. In reality, starting with specific and strategic business questions allows you to collect the right data to answer the important business questions you have.
Another stumbling block is analyzing data in a vacuum. Storing data in silos makes you susceptible to missing important links or attributions between seemingly disparate KPIs or business outcomes that may be exposed by a more integrated approach. The interplay between different datasets can reveal huge insights and opportunities.
There are also several other assumptions that brands make. One is assuming you know what to look for. How do you know what you don’t know? Most enterprises define specific brands, competitors, campaigns, and categories of interest. More sophisticated enterprises also create systems to alert them to their blind spots (emerging, trends, opportunities, or threats that could not be anticipated). The other assumption is that it’s all algorithms and analytics. In contrast, running effective big data intelligence programs requires additional resources and processes, and some of them are very manual and time-consuming (data cleansing, archiving, retrieval, governance and compliance).
What are some common missed opportunities when it comes to data — intelligence that people are overlooking?
Every day, more than 1.8 billion images are shared on social media. And with the ubiquity of smartphone cameras and exploding popularity of photo-centric social platforms, this number will grow exponentially. Social media users are discussing brands online, but those mentions aren’t limited to just text. The next big thing in intelligence is Visual Listening. Tracx has a rich history in analytics and this year, we introduced the industry’s first and only visual listening solution that delivers integrated Photo and Text Analytics together on one unified social enterprise platform - so that brands can glean the deepest intelligence from their audiences.
Another aspect of overlooked intelligence has to do with sentiment analysis – most companies are looking at just positive, negative or neutral sentiment analysis – but this is only scratching the surface. We’ve redefined social analytics by enabling entities/posts to be identified as representing mixed sentiment which really helps improve sentiment classification accuracy for deeper and more qualified analytics. Brands can get the real feel, zero in on specific sentiments for developing smarter responses and gaining intelligent actionable insights.
What’s a good example of how brands are using social intelligence in a really smart way?
Brands that analyze sentiment accurately, conduct visual listening along with text social monitoring, and use predictive analytics to make big decisions are using social intelligence in a smart way. For example, a top 3 retailer in the US is using Tracx to make important inventory and logistics decisions. They are using Sentity, our advanced sentiment analysis engine, to go beyond ranking positive, negative and neutral, to analyze mixed sentiments to gauge interest in a new product line. They were able to use our deep analytics to quickly determine that interest in a new clothing line was minimal on the East Coast, but the West Coast couldn’t get enough of it. They used this immediate intelligence to revise inventory and logistics to support retail demand. That’s smart -- and it impacts the bottom line in a measurable way.
Finally, can you give us a sneak preview of what you’ll be talking about in your panel, “Beyond Social Listening: Making Insights Actionable"?
Certainly. In this era of always-on, real-time communication, localization and globalization — large enterprises need to move as quickly as their consumers do, engaging them where and when they demand and responding to questions and concerns in an instant. I’ll be talking about this actionable moment --that highly customized experience which incorporates contextual relevance and personalization and is delivered to a user almost instantly. Intelligence done right is important. But we need to utilize only the data that matters, using robust sentiment analysis, predictive analytics and visual listening, and pull all these insights through social publishing, marketing and engagement - this is where we make insights actionable - giving data a purpose that drives meaningful and highly effective engagement. It’s as close to 1-to-1 marketing and interaction as it gets in social. We look forward to exploring this important topic with you and all the Social Shakeup attendees.
Our thanks to Eric for taking the time to answer these questions. Don't miss out on seeing him and a host of other experts from leading brands, up close and personal, this June – register for The Social Shake-Up today.