Social media: integrated not isolated

There are times when an individual finds a phrase that captures a truth that many of us have been talking around. Australian network sociologist Duncan Watts did this with ‘lighting many fires’ to explain how to deal with the loose and fluid social networks that many audiences actually live in. John Willshire landed on idea of ‘making things people want, not making people want things’, a phrase that perfectly captures the practice of a generation of new, digitally inspired creative agencies and the innovation labs that abound.

The latest excellent guide from the cross-industry collaboration IPASocialWorks manages to mint several of these. Integrated, Not Isolated is its sterling attempt to define current best practice in the use of social media as a source of consumer insight. The group is unusual in that it represents the three corners of the digital marketing triangle: agencies (via the IPA), marketers (via the Marketing Society, whose chairman Stephen Maher leads the group) and researchers (via the Market Research Society). In addition, there is active support from platforms, as Facebook and Twitter are both involved.

The report is unusual, too. First, it sees past the wheelspin and the buzz around specific vendors’ products and calls out pretend differences where it finds them. Second, it makes practical suggestions of things to do and things to avoid for those trying to squeeze insight out of social media data. And third, it acknowledges that there are few permanently correct answers in this evolving field and suggests where the better bets are to be placed (avoid too many ‘shiny things’). But as Professor Paddy Barwise observed at the launch, insight is probably the big opportunity for marketers, so this is all welcome.

The big players here are memorably brought to life. As co-author Tom Ewing puts it: “Social media is less a firehose, more the River Nile – a vital resource but you wouldn’t want to drink straight from it.” This coinage not only underlines the importance of interpretation today (when too many of us lazily assume social insight is a function of pressing the right buttons), but also argues for increased emphasis on interpretative skills as analytics become even more automated. The insights (as ever) don’t lie in the data but in what humans do with them.

As Jessica Salmon from O2 rightly observed in the panel afterwards, this probably means pulling social insight back into the mainstream insight team. The best results are going to come from integrating, not isolating, social insight and social analytics.