At Socialtyze, data is at the core of everything we do. We’ve developed and honed complex processes for data analysis over several years. The umbrella term we like to use for this is “Social Listening”, and while it implies a passive ‘listening to’ data, it in fact is a much more involved process. Let me start with an analogy of a teacher on her first day with a new class. Her job is to assess the levels and personalities of the students. What’s her trick? She listens. The actions, words and behaviors of the children comprise the ‘data’ that comes into her full view. She then takes this information and begins to define children by types and capabilities. She then devises a strategy based on her analysis and understanding and applies it to the various groups. All the while she stays focused on her core objectives, and she optimizes and improves her strategy over the course of the year. In essence, that is exactly the same process we take with our clients when we listen to their social data. Let me explain.

Social Listening, as I mentioned earlier, is a term used to describe a larger social data methodology that we use here at Socialtyze. The process begins with one of two start points: Data mining or data harvesting. The distinction between the two is that data mining is when we find a data source and ‘turn it on’ so to speak, and the data comes flowing in and we look for patterns and relationships within the data set. Data harvesting, by contrast is typically a web crawling methodology that is often referred to as ‘focused web crawling’; it is the application of human or machine built query parameters in the data mining process, i.e.: “Go look for data of this sort.” Both processes are a form of data gathering. At Socialtyze we focus our attention equally between data mining and data harvesting processes. We scour a client’s social data in a pre-defined query based methodology and we also mine large amounts of available social data via various social APIs.

Once we have the data the next step is to determine what to do with it. This is where it gets interesting. This is where our process of Social Listening takes an important and industry distinctive direction.

Looking at the chart above you can see that we’ve broken data analysis into two phases. This chart should be looked at as a depiction specifically of social data analysis. To date, we’ve seen a tremendous amount of data gathering, which is evident in the proliferation of social media dashboards that showcase brand or individual user data points like: followers, engagements, trending data, leaderboards etc. And it would be unfair and inaccurate to portray the present and near past as an environment devoid of social data mining and harvesting. There are many great companies out there providing these services in very important and interesting ways today. Where Socialtyze differentiates itself is in the application of this data in the specific objective of delivering real and measurable earned media ROI to brands in social media.

What we do is mine and harvest social data, we ‘listen’ to the engagement and performance history of the data, and then we use what we’ve learned to set parameters within predefined guidelines (algorithms in some instances) that output an optimal earned media ROI focused strategy for social media actions by our clients. This is a stark contrast and departure from the days of harvesting and mining data and merely presenting it to a client as a discussion point. Our methodology and system delivers a true and actionable data strategy. The results: our clients see massive increases in engagement and reach within social in the range of 100’s of percentage points time and again. This entire process of gathering, listening, analyzing, deriving strategy and creating an actionable data driven plan is what we call “Social Listening.”

I’ll end with a personal story: Prior to taking on the role of Managing Director at Socialtyze, I ran the broader social media effort at Demand Media. This was a company that taught me the importance of social listening and that learning formed the basis for much of what we do here at Socialtyze in the realm of data analysis. Demand Media ‘listened’ to the SERPs (search engine results pages) and determined what type of long tail content people were consistently searching for. They then built a studio of writers and wrote that content for those people. They also devised a powerful strategy for delivering those articles to the end user and for reaching higher levels of ranking within the SERPs so that users could reach this content quickly and easily. The point is: They proved tremendous value to the end client by listening to data, organizing a strategy out of what they learned and delivering an actionable data plan in order to reach their target audience. Similarly here at Socialtyze, we listen to our client’s social data, we devise a strategy based on what we learn and we deliver an actionable plan and the tools and services to execute on the plan in a holistic and an ever more intelligent way. That, in a nutshell, is what we call “Social Listening”.