Social Media Analytics as a Business Intelligence Practice: Current Landscape & Future Prospects

TLDR: In this article, the conceptual underpinnings of social media analytics and business intelligence are discussed, and the authors provide guidelines to help businesses align their social media programs, processes and technologies with the overall strategic objectives of the organization.

Abstract: Social media analytics is a nascent and emerging discipline that can help organizations formulate and implement measurement techniques for deriving insights from social media interactions and for evaluating the success of their own social media initiatives. Ultimately, a successful social media analytics program can enable businesses to improve their performance management initiatives across various business functions. However, businesses are still struggling with adopting, implementing and institutionalizing methodologies and techniques for an effective social media analytics program. This paper offers a business intelligence perspective of social media analytics with the aim to provide guidelines to help businesses align their social media programs, processes and technologies with the overall strategic objectives of the organization. Toward this, the paper outlines conceptual underpinnings of social media analytics and business intelligence, and draws upon findings from two online expert panels that were conducted to determine current practices, technologies and processes, and recommendations for businesses adopting social media analytics. By doing so, the paper hopes to offer a basis for establishing a baseline philosophy for businesses partaking various social media initiatives.