Thursday 7 August 2008

Using Social Networks as Competitive Intelligence tools

In this article I will review various Social Networks and advise on how to use them as a competitive intelligence tool.

Social Network analysis delivers many values to Competitive Intelligence. When talking about Social Netwok Analysis - the aim is to apply visual and statistical analysis of mapped social networks in order to analyze the linkages to understand the nature of interactions among groups of people.

Searching through someone's network group through a social networking platform i.e. Linkedin - can assist in finding attention-grabbing information i.e. information which you wouldn't nessesery find easily searching through the internet.

When trying to analyze information from Social Networks - you should take into account that you need to clearly identify relevent relationships (i.e. identify a person in that group who is a "key-leader" i.e. has a majory of connections that can link you and assist you in finding furhter deeper information regarding the person you are analyzing.)

You should also develop a data building plan- i.e. a plan for what & who to collect information from. You should mainly focus on the most relevant and obtainable data.

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