Social Tools and Media Channels offer organisations an opportunity to listen to their customers, prospects, shareholders, business partners and competitors conversations online to gain new insights and levels of understanding about each stakeholder groups perception of them. To demonstrate the different ways in which social conversations can be used, I have developed a model called the social conversation sphere, which highlights the different layers and how you can use topic filters to refine the data set within each layer and gain deeper more focused insight as you head towards the core.

This diagram shows a social conversation sphere for Starbucks:

Once you have identified the layers and filters for your own conversation layer, then you can start to develop a social insight strategy, which may include the use of social media monitoring tools and social data warehouses combined with market reseearch methodologies which may include digital/online ethnography, semiotic analysis of content and website design. As more and more research companies develop new methodologies for mining and analysing social data, both on its own and in conjunction with other business and market data, it is likely more new strategies will evolve. The decks below provide an outline social insight strategy framework and explanation of online ethnography and semiotic analysis: