Social Media Intelligence: What It Is and How It Impacts Influencer Marketing

At the root of the influencer marketing industry, there is a great deal of data and analytics that keep everything running. The way marketers utilize all of that information is through social media intelligence.

Social media intelligence is a blanket term for how experts analyze useful social media insights to:

• Anticipate meaningful trends.
• Guide digital marketing campaigns.
• Understand online audiences.
• Predict user behaviors.
• And more!

In this blog post, we are going to break down how social media intelligence impacts the influencer marketing industry specifically.

By looking at audience demographics, campaign types, influencer engagement rates, and other data points, influencer marketing experts are able to improve their strategies.

Let’s take a closer look at how you can optimize your influencer marketing strategy using social media intelligence.

How Social Media Intelligence is Used in Influencer Marketing

Social media intelligence can play an important role in running your influencer marketing campaigns on multiple platforms.

Wondering how?

Let’s discuss the top three purposes for which experts use social media intelligence in influencer marketing.

1. To Predict and Document Industry Trends

Social media intelligence can help influencer marketing experts identify and understand emerging trends in the market. These trends can be apparent through everyday social media data and analytics.

For example:

With social media intelligence, food and lifestyle brands can get insights about shared values and preferences, trends, and opportunities to develop new products. The image below shows what matters to vegans.

Image via Linkfluence

Marketers can also identify emerging trends by analyzing the reasons and strategies behind the success of certain influencer marketing campaigns.

Every year, influencer marketing experts analyze social data and publish reports about what’s working and what’s not in the industry. They are able to uncover a great deal of useful information and actionable insights through social media intelligence.

Want to identify industry trends?

Check out a few insightful predictions about the future of influencer marketing on this blog.

2. To Create and Update Influencer Marketing Software

Social media intelligence also gives experts the ability to create influencer marketing software and update it according to current and anticipated trends.

Though there is a lot more to creating software, social media intelligence comes in handy when it comes to determining what features to include in the software or tool.

If you’re looking for powerful tools for your influencer campaigns, check out this post on the best free influencer marketing tools.

Here are the top five tools that will give you valuable information about potential influencers and their audiences:

• NeoReach
• Upfluence
• HypeAuditor
• Publicfast
• Post For Rent

The developers of each of these tools utilized social media intelligence to inform the features of their platforms. They analyzed collected data from social channels about basic metrics, social conversations, and individual campaigns to appeal to current trends in their software.

3. To Track Campaign Progress

In many ways, social media intelligence guides influencer campaigns from start to finish.

Through social media listening, influencer marketing experts can analyze social media data to determine how well a campaign is performing.

Social media intelligence allows marketers to monitor conversations and see how different social media users interact with their posts. This helps them make changes to their content and campaign based on the actionable insights they get from the tool.

For example:

• If engagement rates and sales are going down during a campaign, it can be an indicator that the current strategy should be altered.
• On the other hand, if engagement rates and sales are rising during a campaign, this means that the current strategy is working well. You should use it in other influencer marketing campaigns as well.
• If your campaign engagement rates declined after you collaborated with a new influencer or started using another content format, you will need to rethink and revise your plan.

That’s how using social media intelligence can guide your influencer campaigns. Analyzing the collected social data can help you make informed decisions and save you from losing money on ineffective strategies.

FAQs

Q1. What is social media intelligence?

A. Social media intelligence refers to the use of tools and solutions to analyze social data from multiple social media platforms.

It helps businesses and marketers predict and document trends, create software solutions, and launch successful social media marketing and influencer campaigns.

Q2. What is influencer marketing?

A. Influencer marketing is a branch of digital marketing in which businesses partner with social media influencers to promote their products and services.

Marketers use social media intelligence to vet influencer accounts for their authenticity, audience demographics, fan growth, and other basic metrics.

Q3. What is the difference between social media intelligence and social media listening?

A. Social media listening is a tactic used by brands in which they monitor social media platforms to evaluate posts and discussions involving either their brand or something related to it.

It is different from social media intelligence as social listening focuses on a specific brand while social media intelligence looks at the big picture and trends in the industry.

Q4. How do influencer marketing agencies utilize social media intelligence?

A. Social media intelligence is the backbone of everything that influencer marketing agencies do.

Influencer marketing agencies utilize social media intelligence to:

• Report current social media trends.
• Predict the upcoming trends.
• Analyze the reasons behind the success of their campaigns.
• Optimize their strategies to generate better results from future campaigns.

Q5. What are some good influencer marketing software and tools?

A. There are both paid and free influencer marketing software and tools available in the market. Some of them include:

• NeoReach
• Upfluence
• HypeAuditor
• Publicfast
• Post For Rent

Brands, agencies, and influencers involved can use them to collaborate and run successful campaigns. Check out 31 more influencer marketing platforms that you can try.

Q6. How do I get started with influencer marketing?

A. The easiest way to dive into influencer marketing as a brand is to hire an influencer marketing agency. They are the experts in the industry and can reduce the amount of stress associated with running influencer campaigns.

Check out the influencer marketing services you may need.

If you do not want to hire an agency, you should follow the steps below to get started with influencer marketing:

• Define your campaign goals.
• Conduct competitor and audience research.
• Find influencers who are relevant to your niche and share the same values and audience as your business.
• Vet influencers for their authenticity, fan growth, engagement rate, content style, and other analytics.
• Negotiate and collaborate with influencers that best fit your brand.
• Run campaigns on multiple social networks.
• Use social media intelligence tools for social media monitoring and collecting actionable insights about what works well and what doesn’t.
• Optimize your campaign strategy based on those insights to improve campaign ROI.

Q7. How much do influencers charge for influencer marketing campaigns?

A. The price that influencers charge for influencer marketing campaigns varies depending on a number of factors, which include:

• Their audience size and demographics
• Their engagement rate
• The types and number of posts you want them to create and publish
• The social media platform you choose to run your campaign on
• And other factors

Check out this comprehensive guide on how much influencers charge to get more details about influencer pricing and other costs associated with running influencer campaigns.

Ready to Improve Your Campaign ROI with Social Media Intelligence?

The data collected through social media intelligence tools has proven the power of social media and influencers in the marketing industry.

Tracking simple analytics such as follower count, engagement rate, and audience demographics allows you to improve your strategies and overall campaign performance tremendously. The more you keep up with trends and social data, the more successful your campaigns will likely be.

Are you ready to use social media intelligence to solidify your social media and influencer marketing strategy? If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below.