There have been some great posts published here in addition to this month’s Radian6 ebook on gaining a competitive edge with social media.

Free and paid tools provide any number of reports to help benchmark and measure competitive intel – share of voice, brand sentiment, distribution of voice, and more. In my experience, though, the most valuable intelligence comes from reading the data behind the reports.

Take word clouds, for example – a visual representation of text, based on themes in which the size of the word illustrates how often it was used (the larger the word appears, the more often it was mentioned). Social tools can run a word cloud based on the themes of conversation around your brand or your competitor’s. These might seem like a lot of visual eye candy at first glance, but if you stack them up against each other and dig deeper into them, they can reveal some interesting intelligence about online reputation that will shape what you know about your competition and guide your strategic initiatives.

For instance, in working with a university recently, we ran conversation clouds for the client and its competitors. One of the competitors was selected based on its national reputation for academic excellence. In reading the themes, however, we learned that the client actually has a stronger edge with regard to online brand messaging:

Client’s Conversation Cloud: (names have been blacked out for privacy purposes)

In looking at the themes of conversation about the client, we saw that the word “music” was fairly prominent, reinforcing the university’s well-known fine arts program. However, we saw no mention of their study abroad program, another area this university felt it was known for.

Additionally, we looked at the adjectives used in conjunction with the client as compared to its competition:

Competitor’s Conversation Cloud: (names have been blacked out for privacy purposes)

We saw conversations that were positive in tone with words like: peace, hope, heart, time, family, life – an excellent atmosphere for the client to join the conversation (which they had not, at the time of this research.)

In the competition’s themes, however, we saw a strong focus on sports teams and terms: team, won, game, field, women (in reference to sports teams). So, despite their offline reputation as a school known and widely regarded as strong in academic excellence and international studies, online conversations were not reinforcing that sentiment. In this regard, our client had a competitive edge on brand messaging.

Now, each of these words must be taken in context – another reason it’s so important to read and understand the context from which they came. For example, the word “love,” when seen prominently in a content cloud dropped into a report for the C-suite can easily be interpreted as, “People love us.” Or, “People love our competition a lot more.” However, without reading the content behind it (most clouds allow you to click on each word to reveal the stream of content that contributed to it), you cannot accurately make that assumption.

The word “love,” used as a verb as in, “I love this university” means something different than, “I fell in love at this university,” (which could just as easily make its way into a content theme if a past student, on her wedding day, blogged about falling in love at the university which was then shared by hundreds of her friends and fellow sorority sisters across the country.)

Taking the time to analyze and interpret the data that goes into reports can completely alter or reinforce not only the report, but also the assumptions you form based on competitive intelligence, and the strategies and tactics you develop in response.

What do you think? Do you believe that context is a key value marker when it comes to deciphering data? Do you make use of word clouds in your social media listening strategy? As always, we love to hear your thoughts and comments.

Kary Delaria is a digital communications strategist and social media research analyst for Kane Consulting, a communications firm specializing in integrating social media into marketing and communications processes. She can be reached via email or on Twitter.

Note: Kane Consulting uses the Radian6 Social Media Listening and Engagement Platform.

Tags: Guest Blogger, Radian6 ebooks, Radian6 platform, Social Media, social media analysis, social media measurement, word cloud