On Friday, influential social media analyst Jason Falls wrote a provocative blog post on Social Media Explorer called Where Social Media Monitoring Services Fail that really got to the heart of the value we provide our clients at Nexalogy Environics.
He wrote that although monitoring services do an adequate job, “…none of them do what you want them to do.They only do half the job. None of them tell you what to do with the information.” He goes on to say that the monitoring companies will probably never be good at the analysis half of the job because it’s not something you can do with an algorithm – it’s a strategic services job.
Falls’ post highlights something that is becoming clearer and clearer every day – there are two distinct segments in the social media analysis space: social media monitoring and social media intelligence. Though they are similar, there are important differences between their respective approaches and the kinds of client problems they can solve. Moreover, the more companies explore the value proposition of one group – the monitoring services – the more they understand the unique value of the other group in the space – the strategic analysis companies.
At Nexalogy Environics we’re all about the strategic analysis we provide our clients. The software we’ve built is the cornerstone of what we do, but it’s a tool we use to make methodologically sound analysis of social media datasets possible, not a client deliverable on its own.