When Social Media Data meets Business Intelligence

Business intelligence is a blanket term used to describe the many ways industries analyze and collect raw data. When used in combination with social media, BI can provide companies information such as customer demographics, search habits, and social behaviors, thanks to Data Visualization Tools.

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“A Picture is worth a thousand words” is a common expression of the Chinese philosopher Confucius’ authorship, used to convey the power of communication through images. A strong power, which also allows data to turn into explanatory images. 

A critical task always recognized in the Data Scientist work is to communicate what the data mean. A good data visualization can be the difference between success and failure in business decisions, with good data storytelling. 

The world is full of relevant data for companies: proprietary, 2nd party, 3rd party data, from different sources (survey, web analytics, social media). A holistic approach to data could be the winning strategy to have a complete overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the business processes and of the consumers. 

Social media are useful for many things, but one of the most useful aspects of social media is the ability to gather data. The data businesses can glean from social networking to monitor the brand reputation, increase understanding of the customer experience, and set the tone for the personality of your business, profiling a defined audience. For that reason, it’s important to recognize the ways that social media and business intelligence (BI) go hand in hand, on a road to company success.

The term Business Intelligence refers to the tools and technology used for the collection, integration, visualization, and analysis of raw data. Today, with ever increasing amounts of free-flowing data, efficient BI tools are very important to make the most of the knowledge that hides in raw and unprocessed data. (credit: Towards Data Science)

Used in combination with social media listening and data, BI can provide companies information such as customer demographics, search habits, and social behaviors. Each of these factors is incredibly useful in increasing revenue opportunities, driving marketing efforts, generating leads, and raising brand awareness. 

With the rise of BI phenomenon, advanced BI tools and technologies were introduced. This made a lot of potentially efficient BI tools available in the market for customers. One of these can be the Data visualization tools, useful to display all kinds of data (above all social media ones) in visualization by images.

Data Visualization has become a fascinating area in the Big Data era, with the challenge of representing data in large volumes.

The final work of a Data Scientist is to show the results of analyzes, statistical design, predictions that will happen, the history that the data wants to tell. It uses data visualization techniques, interactive and visual ways to represent the information in a format more human, more attractive, and visual. It is the most expressive form of connection between computers and human beings, easing the information known in a graphic and representative way.

Visualization is not just presenting data, but interpreting, understanding it to support decision making.

Data Visualization allows interaction with the data, giving life and meaning to the data analysis, and keeping users interested in the information. Companies need to use proper data visualization tools and know-how to turn the insights and practical information generated from Big Data into advantages to design better customer experience. Data Visualization uses higher-level tools such as Tableau, PowerBi and Data Studio.

Tableau is one of the leading software of the data visualization market, enabling various types of graphs creation, charts, dashboards, stories, maps and other elements without programming. It includes various functions of descriptive and inferential statistics with analytical charts generation. Allows other tools integration such as Excel, SQL, SAP, Amazon, and others.

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful data visualization tool and a very popular one. It is a cloud-based software which is well known for its easy-to-use functionality for data preparation and data visualization. Power BI comes with a lot of visualization features such as custom visualizations, creating visualizations using natural languages, having Cortana personal assistant etc.

Microsoft Power BI offers connectivity to a wide range of data sources such as Oracle, IBM, SQL Server, Salesforce, Google analytics, Azure DevOps, Excel, text files, JSON, Zendesk, Mailchimp etc. In addition to this, integration with big data sources is also easy with the help of direct connections using web services.

Data Studio is a  free tool from Google that lets users make custom reports with data from Google’s marketing services and external sources. Data Studio is Google’s reporting solution for users who want to go beyond the data and dashboards of Google Analytics.

The data widgets in Data Studio are notable for their variety, customization options, live data and interactive controls. Data sources include Google products (Analytics, AdWords, Search Console, Sheets, YouTube, etc.), database connectors, file upload, social media data and “community” connectors to popular marketing services.

In the Data Visualization Tool all essential information is immediately accessible and  the Data is prioritized.

Information is displayed clearly in a visual hierarchy on one screen, with additional opportunities to drill down for more. Elements (chart, table, form) are displayed in a minimized view with the ability to bring up more details and the design improves usability with filters allowing users to customize how data is displayed and filters content using labels, categories, and KPIs.

In BI tools it’s possible to associate actions on social media with sales volume, revenue increases or decreases, and other relevant metrics, like contextual data (financial, behavior data..).

Combining qualitative data from social media with classic quantitative data that is hosted in the BI systems could seem difficult.

However, as social data becomes increasingly information leveraged by business, it becomes more feasible to unite them with BI systems that manage structured and unstructured data.As widely seen, the holistic approach to data study could be the best solution to exploit all types of data, from any source and of any nature.

An approach used above all by large companies, from the entertainment sector to the food sector, who have combined proprietary data and contextual data to overcome the current crisis due to the COVID-19 emergence. All this through the use of data visualization tools that have certainly favored and simplified the work of internal resources, with business intelligence-based approach to data.

Would you like to know how a Digital Consumer Intelligence approach can help your Business?

Watch the 16 April 2020 webinar “The Consumer of the Future”.

This webinar was held in Italian.