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Social media channels provide organizations with a communication channel they can participate in directly. Whether we’re using it for brand awareness, social selling, employee advocacy, or all of the above, most organizations recognize that being strategic and active on social media is an absolute must if you want to be a well-respected brand in 2024. 

But being strategic about your brand’s activity on social media means not just figuring out when to post, what to post about, and how to get your team engaged. It should also include you taking the insights you get about your audience, learning where they engage, and engaging with them to understand their interests. When you do, you will be able to be more relevant, become a more trusted brand, and build authority in your field. Doing this helps to drive your leads that you are in contact with further down the funnel. 

Paying attention to our audience engagement on social media and understanding it,  is where social intent data comes in. Many discussions take place about B2B intent data in the context of ABM (Account Based Marketing)  or other strategic marketing and sales programs. It provides insights into customer behaviors, interests, and purchase intentions. Figuring out intent at a certain time offers understanding of your  customer’s decision-making stage and process. Forrester research shows that 85% of organizations using intent data report substantial business benefits. Yet not all intent formulas include valuable social media activities and engagements, that missing part of the information makes the intent insights less complete and less accurate. Intent Data that includes social media activity and engagement of your leads will be more precise and helpful to your sales team.

How can you leverage social intent data from your brand’s social media program?

What is social intent data?

Social intent data is the digital traces your leads leave on social media that signal their interest in purchasing a product or service. These traces are derived from interactions such as likes, shares, or comments on posts in their feed or groups that they follow. Including this data in your analysis  will provide invaluable insights into user behavior and preferences, enabling you to score and prioritize who is more relevant to reach out to at this time and  identify potential leads. You will also be able to hone your content and get more engagement and get your message across.

The benefits of social intent data

Using social intent data offers several advantages:

• Enhanced targeting: By identifying users actively engaging with relevant content, you can more precisely target your marketing activities. 
• Improved personalization: Insights from social intent data enable marketers to create messages that resonate on a personal level, your content, your posts, and your communications can be better and significantly boost engagement and conversion rates.
• Efficient resource allocation: Focusing on followers who have shown a genuine interest in what you had to share, allows you to give them a higher score and priority for your sales team.
• Better engagement: Understanding which content types engage your audience enables the creation of more compelling and relevant material.

How can marketers use social intent data?

Marketers can use social intent data to enhance engagement and increase impact. 

1. Targeted advertising: Craft specific campaigns by understanding how to talk about the solution you provide. You can see what is trending as well as the interests and behaviors of your audience. This improves ad spend efficiency and conversion rates.
2. Personalized content creation: Use social interactions to identify content that resonates, creating personalized material that engages and builds stronger customer relationships.
3. Lead scoring and prioritization: Incorporating social intent data into lead scoring models can elevate their accuracy by considering social interactions as an indicator of interest. Similarly, this data can inform more personalized lead nurturing strategies, increasing the likelihood of guiding leads through the sales funnel effectively.
4. Customer segmentation: Check if you can segment your audience based on social engagement behaviors and then create marketing programs based on the topics and issues that these segments are interested in. This will boost click-through rates and ultimately conversions.
5. Improve customer experience: Tailor experiences at every touchpoint using insights from social interactions, from personalized recommendations to customized support.

How can social intent data improve account-based marketing programs?

1. Tailor messages and content to meet the specific interests of your target accounts: Social intent data includes information gathered from social media activities such as likes, shares, comments, and follows. This data helps marketers understand what topics and solutions are currently top-of-mind for their target accounts.
2. Early identification of opportunities: By monitoring social interactions, companies can identify signals that a particular company is in the market for their solutions. For example, if a decision-maker at a target account is discussing challenges or pain points on social media that your product addresses, you can quickly tailor your outreach with a relevant solution, potentially before your competition.
3. Better content at an account level: Understanding what kind of content engages your target accounts on social media can guide the creation of more compelling and relevant content. If certain topics or types of posts generate more engagement from target accounts, these can inform your content strategy, helping to attract and engage these accounts more effectively.
4. Better sales and marketing alignment: Social intent data provides real-time insights into what is most relevant to your target accounts, which can help align marketing and sales efforts. This alignment is crucial in ABM, where personalized messaging and timing can make or break a deal. Sales teams can use insights from social media to fine-tune their approach and engage in more meaningful conversations with potential buyers.
   
5. Measuring campaign effectiveness: Social intent data can help measure how well your ABM campaigns are resonating with your target accounts. By tracking engagement and interactions on social media, you can see which aspects of your campaign are working and which may need adjustment.
   
6. Competitive insights: Monitoring social media engagement can also provide insights into your competitors’ activities. You can see what kinds of content they are publishing and how target accounts are engaging with them, which can help refine your own strategies and identify gaps or opportunities.