Comments on: Poll results: social media and competitive intelligence.

By: Lani Rosales

Lani Rosales — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:29:53 +0000

I’m willing to bet that many users don’t indicate that they are using social media for anything but personal use but if you analyze their use, their profiles typically indicate their career which inadvertently puts them in the “business user” category.

You’re right though, many wouldn’t consider themselves sophisticated or savvy but the cool thing is that many are more savvy than they actually realize, even if by accident.

By: Tim Walker

Tim Walker — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:09:17 +0000

You raise interesting points, Lani. I would call attention to the cross-section of people we polled, though: even though we didn’t scientifically control for age, industry, etc., we weren’t polling just people active on Twitter, for instance. While I agree with you that any business use of *anything* potentially speaks to the quest for competitive advantage, I wonder how many of the respondents to this poll would regard themselves as sophisticated business users of social media?

By: Lani Rosales

Lani Rosales — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:14:09 +0000

Tim, I suspect that if you rephrased it to ask “do you care what your competitors are doing and would you change your course if you knew their actions and the market’s responses to them?” the answer would be unequivocally “yes” in which case that 33% would be more like a 73%.

I believe that early adopters of social media have raised even higher protective walls and many have stuck to the mantra that they’re just using social media socially or that they are there independent of their competitors. Although I am an early adopter, I’m not buying it… if the same crowd asked if they were using social media for any professional reason whatsoever, they would answer yes. In that “yes” is an inherent care for competitive advantage otherwise the time would never have been invested.

**in full disclosure, I did take this poll and indicated that I use social media for competitive intelligence (although I use it for a myriad of other reasons).