Competitive Research IN SOCIAL MEDIA

by Sol Magana (They/them) Date: 09/01/2022 / INFO 282-13 / Using Social Media for Competitive Research and Company Research / Professor Sean Gaffney

Technology has changed the way we create and run a business. We no longer have to wait for weeks or months to get feedback for a product or service launched. We can get real-time feedback via technology. By applying different business intelligence tools to do competitive research, we can learn about our competition and help define our business plan of action. One of these business intelligence tools is social media research, and another is UX Design. Both tools can help a business implement systems to guarantee higher success rates. Each one of these tools relates to one another. Competitive research paired with the psychology behind UX Design can help create a more outstanding foundation for success for any business.

Businesses use social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter (among many others) for their benefit by researching their competition, connecting with their clients, and predicting future business development. The process of gathering information on social media for a business is called social business research, and it is part of the marketing plan and strategy. According to Durcevic (2019), social business research refers to using digital technologies that identify and analyze business-based data to develop new corporate insights. When doing this business intelligence work, we are looking for data that can help us discern how our product or service is doing or will do, and how we can improve this. We use a process called data mining. This process of sorting through large data sets identifies patterns and relationships that can help solve business problems through data analysis. Data mining techniques and tools enable enterprises to predict future trends and make more-informed business decisions. (Techtarget, 2021)

The Youtube video “Social Media and Business Intelligence” (n.d.) discusses how we can use the data being shared on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn to categorize and develop new ideas or concepts for our business. We do this by listening and paying attention to patterns the users share on these social media sites. We gather social media users’ tastes, wants, needs, aspirations, preferences, their opinion about our product or service. Companies create charts of this information to discern patterns and individual characteristics to know how their targeted users might respond. Gathering and using the data sorted is a potent tool; companies can use it in marketing campaigns to increase revenue or persuade individuals to vote a certain way. Social media reaches billions of people around the world. Each social platform holds different numbers of followers and demographics, and each platform provides business intelligence tools to define analytics.

Here is a 2022 chart with the most-used social media platforms around the world:

As you can see on the chart, Facebook takes the lead when it comes to social media users around the planet. According to Walsh (2022), a business must have the right marketing strategy to get and retain new clients. It is essential to use the right social media platform for marketing research. The key is choosing the demographic your services or products target and selecting the social media platform accordingly. There is power in reaching all these users for your business’s benefit. The right marketing plan must strengthen brand awareness, engage the audience, and connect with key potential customers. For example, if your company offers services for people over 40, it might be more helpful to use Facebook than Snapchat. The mission and vision for your business can guide your market research on understanding the customer (purchasers, consumers, influencers), the company (product design, promotion, pricing, placement, service, sales), and the competitors (and how their market offerings interact in the market environment). (Qualtrics,n.a) A successful marketing strategy and research will help you attain your business goals.

Competitive intelligence practitioners use tools to analyze the data collected from social media platforms. According to Scip (2022), “competitive intelligence enables organizations to reduce strategic risk and increase revenue opportunities by having a deep understanding of their operating environment-far beyond simply monitoring competitors.” Social media platforms offer tools to implement your marketing and competitors’ analysis. Accessibility to these tools can make it more affordable for a small business to execute its marketing plan and offset the cost of a larger company’s marketing plan.

An analytics tool such as Facebook Creator Studio can help assess the engagement, average engagement, rate per post, reach, fan page growth or audience evolution, and content strategy stats. Video engagement seems to be a popular way to engage current and future clients. The image below shows the results of this idea being tested.

Competitive business practitioners use social media intelligence to their benefit by obtaining information about their competition, connecting with their clients, and predicting future business development. They do this by using analytics tools that provide information that can inform their marketing decisions.

Gary V. (2021), a successful entrepreneur, suggests that companies become experts in social listening. He uses any comment posted on his social media profiles to engage with the visitors. Every message can allow him to create more media content and get essential information from its users. Gary suggests keeping track of your brand/business name and social media handles, your products, your branded hashtags, your slogans, relevant unbranded hashtags, industry-specific keywords, and competitors’ brand names/handles/products/slogans following information for competitive research. Relationship-building skills are essential for success on social media. Responding to our clients or visitors can help us define truth. One in ten visitors is a rotten apple, but there is hope for the other nine. If we engage them in their responses, we can develop relationships. The main goal to have in mind is to make sure the clients come back after the first purchase, and for this, we need to keep them engaged. UX Design can help delve into this engagement.

UX Design is about persuasion. UX designers spend hours using Psychology principles and graphic designs to persuade users to buy a product or a service. UX designers work on social media platforms. They study users’ characteristics and design user interfaces that can influence a user or client to respond in a specific way. They can influence engagement between users and products and create a narrative in which users will continue to return for more products. They use cognitive psychology tools to increase the user’s engagement with the social media platform. Suppose a company uses UX Design to engage a user to buy a product. Can the same tool help engage a user in conversation to build a relationship that can last enough for the company to be profitable and meaningful? The answer is yes.

UX Designer Chris Nodder (2013) shares that to persuade, Psychologists use an effect called priming. He says advertisers create an image of a brand associated with an emotion, an occasion, or a location and that when you experience that emotion, event, or location, what will come up will be the brand associated with that.

Companies can use UX Design to manufacture behavioral tools that can help do this social listening. As Gary V. (2021) says, if we focus on the user and their needs through social listening (UX Design), we can make sure that our work is resonating with clients and can help a company expand into cultural conversations. And the most crucial aspect of participating in this engagement is showing you care. “Consumer attention is a privilege, not a right.” Gary V. states.

According to Durcevic (2019), social media research or intelligence is compelling and has the power to discern patterns. It can help us tell the future of our business. But at what cost do we continue this practice? And only for profit and power? Here are two examples of companies or governments not caring about the user’s well-being:

The first example is in the film “The Social Dilemma” (2020); this film focuses on humans’ consequences of using social media and how these social media companies do whatever they can to control your use. Companies can manipulate users to overuse technological tools that can harm their physical, mental, and emotional health with the only intention of monetizing this use. Social media use can affect our mental health and communication patterns and even influence us to join an extremist organization.

Here is a chart of use specifics in social media for 2022:

The second example of evil design is the information we received from Edward Snowden, a National Security Agency contractor. According to History (2020), on June 6, 2013, we learned that our government was spying on us. The American government used technology to spy on Americans and other countries through our webcams, phones, and emails. The American government gathered our personal information for their benefit and kept this surveillance top secret. They spied on us while we used social media, personal computers, or phones. We paid taxes to the government to look through our webcams on our own devices and spy on us without our approval.

In conclusion, we are in an era where the mission and intention of a company define its potential. Companies can use competitive research, social media research, and UX Design to benefit an organization’s marketing and financial plans. However, companies must use these practices within regulations and safety procedures that keep the user’s well-being in mind. It is not ok to abuse power.

We can use these technological tools to unite and broaden the social media conversation and create meaningful change. Finally, we must protect ourselves from abuse and keep boundaries for organizations and companies, including our government.

CommunitiesRus. (n.d.). Social Media and Business Intelligence. YouTube. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWd69HnpK3w

Cucu, E. (2022). 15 Facebook analytics tools every marketer should try. Retrieved from: https://www.socialinsider.io/blog/facebook-analytics-tools/

Durcevic, S. (2019, May 9th). Introduction to the basic business intelligence concepts. Retrieved from https://www.datapine.com/blog/business-intelligence-concepts-and-bi-basics/

History.com Editors (n.d.) Edward Snowden discloses U.S. government operations. History. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/edward-snowden-discloses-u-s-government-operations

Jeff Orlowski-Yang. (2020). The Social Dilemma. Retrieved from: https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/

Nodder, C. (2013). Evil by Design? How Interaction Design Can Lead Us into Temptation. User Experience Magazine, 13(3). Retrieved from https://uxpamagazine.org/evil-by-design/

Qualtrics. (n.a.). The ultimate guide to market research and how to conduct it like a pro. Retrieved from: https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/research/market-research-guide/

Scip. (2022, June 30). What is Competitive Intelligence? Retrieved from https://www.scip.org/page/CI-MI-Basics-Topic-Hub

Vaynerchuk, G (2021). What is social listening and why is it important. Gary Vaynerchuck. Retrieved from: https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/what-is-social-listening-and-why-is-it-important/

Walsh, S. (2022, May 5th). The Top 10 social media sites and platforms 2022. SEJ. Retrieved from: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media/biggest-social-media-sites/#close

We are social (2022, July 26) The global state of digital in July 2022/part two. Retrieved from: https://wearesocial.com/us/blog/2022/07/the-global-state-of-digital-in-july-2022-part-two/

What is data science? The ultimate guide. Techtarget. (2021, September). Retrieved from: https://www.techtarget.com/searchbusinessanalytics/definition/datamining#:~:text=Data%20mining%20is%20the%20process,make%20more%2Dinformed%20business%20decdecisi.