Choosing a Consumer Intelligence Solution

Search

Discover what your consumer says online by searching for their conversations across the web.

Data coverage

You can’t rely on hunches or gut instinct when making decisions. You need comprehensive data. Lots of vendors will claim to offer complete coverage, but many will fail to deliver. Accurate, clean, and reliable data is the foundation of all good decisions, helping you create better campaigns, spot threats, and understand your consumers.

Make sure to ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• A historical archive of 1.7 trillion+ conversations?
• An archive with data available back to 2010?
• Data sourced from 100 million+ sites (Twitter counting as one)?
• More than half a billion new conversations collected every day?
• Official Twitter Partnership for full current and historical Twitter data?
• Firehose access to exclusive sites like Reddit and Tumblr?
• Coverage from news sites (CNN, NY Times, Guardian, etc.)?
• Coverage from blogs (WordPress, Medium, Blogger, etc.)?
• Coverage from forums (Yahoo Answers, GoodReads, Mumsnet, etc.)?
• Coverage from review sites (Google Reviews, TripAdivsor, eBay, etc.)?
• Ability to collect paywalled or print (offline) news coverage?
• Ability to collect broadcast data from TV and radio?
• Global coverage from every country (where available)?
• Global coverage from every language (language agnostic crawlers)?

Data speed

A few years ago, Kylie Jenner posted a single tweet that wiped $13 billion from Snapchat’s market valuation within minutes. While it’s a unique case, it’s a stark reminder that companies need a real-time awareness of conversation online. You need to choose a solution that provides live coverage that updates by the minute to stay agile and effective.

Make sure to ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• Real-time data?
• Ability to analyze data minute-by-minute?
• Live visualizations that update in real-time?
• Always-on, smart email alerts?
• Live integration with other solutions (Hootsuite, Khoros, Vizia, etc.)?
• Firehose coverage of Twitter?

Data flexibility

As of January 2022, there are well over 1 billion sites live on the web. While most of these are unused or simply irrelevant, some might be vital to you. Perhaps it’s a brand-owned forum for your customers, a review site specific to your industry, or even a local news provider that’s important to you. Make sure you choose a solution that provides the flexibility to collect the data you need.

Make sure to ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• Ability to request new sites to crawl?
• SLA to add new sites (if possible) within 72 hours?
• New sites added on a weekly or daily basis?
• Exclusive partnerships with data providers?
• Proprietary data crawlers operated in-house?
• Ability to upload custom content (NPS scores, call logs, etc.)?

Data quality

You’ll need to present the insights you find to senior people either in your organization or at clients’ organizations. You need to make sure the data is reliable and trustworthy. The nature of online content can often be spammy or irrelevant so make sure you pick a provider that can ensure a high level of data quality.

Make sure to ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• Smart spam filters that automatically exclude irrelevant mentions?
• A black-list of sites that, by default, are not crawled?
• Crawlers that search for conversation in a site’s title or in the main block of text?
• Ability for the user to exclude irrelevant sites?
• Ability for the user to exclude irrelevant mentions (using keywords or machine learning)?
• Ability to preview results before activating a search?
• An automated search builder with built-in exclusion terms?

Data compliance

You will also need to ensure the data you are collecting is compliant, otherwise you could be exposing your brand to risk or violating industry or end-user data regulations.

Make sure to ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• Tools for compliantly collecting Facebook and Instagram data that have been officially approved by Meta?
• Only data that is publicly available and ethically sourced and handled?
• A comprehensive official user data privacy policy?
• IS027001 certification (or similar)?
• Ingestion of official compliance feeds from providers (eg Twitter) to ensure data that should not be stored is deleted in real time?
• The ability to restrict visibility of verbatim mentions so data can only be seen in aggregate when necessary?

Search functionality

To collect the right data from the immense pool of conversation online, you will need a powerful search tool functionality that allows you to find the data you need.

Make sure to ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• AI-powered search, identifying relevant mentions of brands, people, or topics without the need to write boolean queries?
• Ability to run unlimited quick searches and view results in a dashboard template with up to a year of historical data?
• An open, flexible search and an easy-to-use search builder?
• Ability to create language agnostic searches?
• Ability to search in over 190 different languages?
• Ability to search for over 800 logos?
• Ability to search for both keywords and images?
• Ability to filter search for conversations by custom-built audiences?
• Ability to collect all conversations by custom built audiences – including groups in the millions of authors?
• Ability to limit a search to a specific location (including geo-fencing)?
• A large search string limit (up to 100,000 characters)?
• Ability to preview 31 days of data before saving a query?
• Ability to sample large searches?
• Ability to specify how much historical data is needed (back to 2010)?
• A range of operators to help build your search? (40+ is advised)
• Ability to search for review ratings?
• Ability to search for mentions published within a specific (min to min) time range?
• Ability to search for Twitter authors with a certain number of followers / for verified authors?
• Ability to search for conversation from a specific author gender?
• The use of basic operators including AND, OR, NOT and NEAR?
• Channel specific searches for Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram?

Discovering relevant data is the foundation behind collecting valuable consumer insights. Without high quality data, you won’t be able to trust your insights or rely on the platform.

However, search is only the first element. Next you need to ensure your platform can effectively segment the large volumes of data you will collect.

Segment

Slice and dice your data to discover the strands of conversation that really matter.

Categorize conversation

Let’s say you’ve collected over a million conversations about your brands, competitors, products, and services. The only way you can discover insights in this conversation is by segmenting into categories. Doing so will allow you to compare competitors side by side, discover product specific complaints, compare all of your marketing campaigns against each other, and much more. To do so, you need to choose a solution that’s built with flexibility in mind.

Make sure to ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• Ability to automate segmentation of conversation into categories and subcategories in real-time?
• Keyword-based segmentation (eg segment “iPhone” and “iPad”)?
• Custom trained, machine learning-based segmentation (eg segment all posts about “intent to purchase”)?
• Attribute-based segmentation (eg sentiment, emotion, and content)?
• Demographic-based segmentation (eg location, language, author, gender)?
• Segmentation by out-of-the-box and custom built audiences?
• Unlimited custom audiences with which to segment data?
• No limits to the number of categories you can create?
• Ability to tag conversation to use as a filter?
• Pre-built industry specific machine learning classifiers?
• Easy-to-use machine learning classifiers (e.g. only requires ten training posts)?
• Ability to improve sentiment using keyword or machine learning-based categorization?
• Ability to apply segments to all areas of analysis (at a project, dashboard, or component level)?

Filter conversation

Once you’ve collected all your data and segmented it into categories that matter, you’re ready to start analyzing. However, while you analyze, you will need to keep slicing and dicing your data to discover insights.

Say you’re looking at conversation about your brand. You’ll want to filter it by sentiment, author gender, and location to really understand it.

Make sure to ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• No limits to the amount of filters you can apply?
• 50+ unique filters to breakdown your data?
• Keyword-based filters (e.g. exclude “ad”)?
• Attribute-based filters (e.g. sentiment, emotion, and content)?
• Demographic-based filters (e.g. location, language, author)?
• Source specific filters (e.g. filter by Instagram likes, comments, followers etc.)?
• Ability to combine any number of filters (upto 50,000 combinations)?
• Pre-built filter combinations (e.g. “growing crisis” or “brand associations”)?
• Entities to filter conversation by organizations, people, and locations?
• Ability to filter conversation by keywords, phrases, hashtags, and emojis?
• Ability to filter posts with images containing objects, actions, scenes, and logos?
• Ability to apply filters to all data and every search?
• Ability to apply filters to all areas of analysis (at a project, dashboard, or component level)?

Segmenting conversation to drill down to the data you really need is vital, especially when analyzing substantial volumes of conversation. Make sure that the platform you pick comes built in with effective ways to segment and filter, preferably with both manual and machine learning functionality.

After effectively segmenting data comes arguably the most important element: analysis.

Analysis

Analyze your data using bespoke visualizations, smart AI, and powerful interrogation tools.

Data visualizations

Simply having access to data does not mean you’ll discover a valuable insight. Often, when faced with large volumes of data, you’ll struggle to discover something meaningful. To uncover answers to your key business questions you’ll need the right visualizations to view your data.

Make sure to ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• No limits on the number of visualizations you can use?
• No limits on the number of dashboards you can create?
• No limits on the number of projects (shared workspaces) you can create?
• 30+ unique visualizations to display your data?
• Bespoke visualizations for Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram data?
• Bespoke visualizations for image analysis?
• Word/topic cloud visualizations?
• Geotagged map visualization?
• Word/topic wheel visualization?
• Benchmark visualizations?
• Multiple different views available for each visualization (eg stacked bar chart, horizontal bar chart, pie chart etc.)?
• Supported dashboard builder (dashboard built for you based on how you answer questions)?
• Dashboard template for key use cases (eg PR, reputation, demographics etc.)?
• Sample dashboards available to download and copy?
• Ability to click through on visualizations and see the actual verbatim mentions?

AI-based analysis

Discovering insights isn’t easy. It takes time, patience, and experience to uncover something valuable. Without AI support, you and your team will spend hours sifting through data, never sure if you’ve captured everything or missed something important.

AI can analyze large volumes of data in seconds and highlight the things that matter, so you can focus your attention and work more effectively.

Make sure to ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• Integrations with cutting edge large language models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT?
• Ability to surface AI-powered topics within any data set for thousands of known entities (eg every brand, person or topic that has a Wikipedia page)?
• AI-based peak detection, to highlight significant increases in conversation volumes?
• AI-based peak explanation, to explain the potential drivers behind the change in conversation?
• Ability for AI to detect changes in Facebook threads, hashtag conversations, news mentions, retweets, conversation about a link, conversation about a video, or mentions on a Reddit thread?
• AI analysis on all data sources (social, news, forums, review etc.)?
• No limit to the number of searches, content sources, or volume of data AI can analyse?
• Ability to identify logos, objects, actions, and scenes occuring in images?
• Ability to identify images containing more than one logo, object, action, or scene?
• AI-powered homepage which identifies insights you may have missed?
• Ability to improve sentiment using AI-powered machine learning?
• Ability to conduct topic extraction on all types of unstructured data?
• Ability to identify and surface organization names, locations, and people in unstructured data?
• Ability to sort unstructured data by total volume or by growth?
• Ability to identify location based on conversation?

Flexible analysis

Most first-time users underestimate the importance of flexibility when it comes to data analysis, but it’s arguably the most important element. An inflexible dashboard forces you to view your data in a certain way. A flexible dashboard allows you to compare any number of data sets, filter by a range of different means, and zoom in to dig deeper, or zoom out to see the big picture.

Make sure to ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• No limits to the number of searches you can add to a visualization?
• No limits to the number of filters you can add to a visualization?
• Ability to customize y-axis and x-axis in charts?
• Ability to breakdown data by 20+ attributes (eg language, city, emotion, author profession, image content)?
• 50,000+ combinations of views and visualizations available?
• Ability to filter all data using a keyword search?
• Ability to view text and image data within the same visualization?
• Ability to analyze data on a minute-by-minute scale?
• Ability to analyze multiple years of data in one chart?
• Ability to add notes or images to your dashboard?
• Ability to select a specific time zone?
• Ability to undo work and revert to a previous version?
• Ability to download a dashboard as a template and upload to another project?
• Ability to zoom into a chart to analyze a specific time frame?
• Ability to change a data source at a dashboard, tab, or visualization level?
• Ability to duplicate dashboards?
• Ability to build completely bespoke dashboards from scratch?
• Ability to sort data by a number of attributes (eg impact score)?

Action

Insights die when left in a dashboard. To get value you need to action your insights.

Alerts

As every brand knows, missing something happening online can be extraordinarily damaging. Whether it’s a data breach, a misplaced comment from your CEO, or negative mention in the press, you need to know about it as soon as it happens. But employing staff to constantly monitor every single mention about your brand is very costly. That’s why you need a consumer intelligence solution that will analyze every conversation you care about and alert you when needed.

Make sure to ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• Custom alerts which can trigger based on predefined criteria (eg sudden increase in negative volume, specific keywords mentioned, or conversation from a specific author)?
• AI-based alerts that analyze all data and email you as soon as a significant change occurs?
• AI-based analysis within the email, identifying what may have caused the shift in conversation?
• Ability to create alerts around a specific search, category, or tag?
• Adjust alerts based on filters (eg only negative mentions from verified Twitter users)?
• No limit to the number of custom or AI-based alerts you can create?
• Ability to send email alerts to any email address (including non-users)?
• Ability to edit the subject header in the alert email?
• Ability to specific the number of mentions included in the alert email?
• Ability to pause inactive alerts?
• A link included in the email, which sends users straight through to a dashboard to find out more?

Reports

The simplest way to share your insights across the organization is via a report. You need a platform that can instantly create beautiful and customizable reports, while also offering the ability to download data to add to your existing reports.

Make sure to ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• Automated PDF reports?
• Automated, fully customizable PPT reports?
• Ability to schedule both types of reports on a daily, weekly, or monthly cadence?
• Templated PDF reports?
• Ability to customize the visualizations included in a PPT report?
• Ability to upload a bespoke (branded) design to a PPT report?
• Export data to Excel, CSV, JPG, PNG, or SVG?
• Ability to export data at a dashboard, tab, or visualization level?
• Ability to download all raw data from a search?
• Ability to customize the columns in a CSV or Excel download?
• Ability to export data via a flexible API?
• Unlimited number of exports?
• A specialized research team to create regular reports?
• A specialized research team to create bespoke one-off reports?

Workflow

Chances are, there will be a number of people in your organization who want to access this consumer data. But how do you manage who sees what, who gets access, and how to organize your insights? With multiple people working in a team, you need a platform that can help you prioritize key conversations, send specific colleagues actions, and manage how you share access across all of your teams.

Make sure to ask vendors: “Does your product offer…”

• Different user types with varying levels of access?
• Different client types with varying levels of access (for agencies)?
• Ability to define who has access to each project?
• Ability to define who has access to each dashboard?
• Onboarding video training for new users?
• An Academy where new users can learn the basics and experienced users can learn advanced techniques?
• A customer Community where users can exchange ideas and ask questions with a peer group?
• Ability to assign specific mentions to individual or groups of users?
• Ability to (manually or automatically) assign priority based on mention significance (eg high priority for all negative mentions)?
• Ability to select between an open, pending, and closed status?
• Ability to ‘star’ important mentions?
• Ability to check mentions once they’ve been reviewed?