“A Lesson in Social Espionage” — I must be missing something…

Having just read Uri Bar-Joseph’s “A Lesson in Social Espionage: How to Dissect a Competitors Social Media Strategy”, I am left a bit befuddled at the utility of his efforts.

He describes three hours of effort using multiple sites and data gathering techniques to pinpoint information such as which social networks Dove is active on, the number of followers, level of engagement, audience data, content data, etc. In the course of his article he highlights using Simply Measured software — conveniently the company for whom he is the marketing director.

While “level of engagement” is not defined in the article, it appears to consist of the typical social media measures of number of posts, likes, retweets, sharing, etc. So beyond making an elaborate point of Dove being active on social media mostly by sharing pictures, the effort yields little in terms of true competitive intelligence.

No attempt was made to establish a correlation with a surge in sales of Dove’s products — this was simply an accounting of social media activities that may or may not have any market value.

As last week’s article “Is Social Media Actually Helping Your Company’s Bottom Line?” from the March 2015 issue of Harvard Business Review noted:

“The value of any advertising, online or offline, depends on what effects it has on purchases.”

“But to justify an investment by activity and not outcomes is a tautology — we advertise because we advertise — not a meaningful business argument.”

I whole-heartedly agree with Frank Cespedes’ HBR critique that it is time to “look behind the curtain” and expect more from social media. The social espionage approach described by Uri Bar-Joseph is, at best, an incomplete effort. Why is it of interest that Dove’s followers, likes, etc. are growing in Brazil unless that activity can be linked to a corresponding growth in sales in that country. Unless your business strategy is to simply chase after, follow and repeat whatever your competition does — there is little value in the analysis.

Sure, check to see if your competitors are on social media. But unless you can also discern an impact on utilization of their product, don’t be tempted to follow along.

Perhaps a more meaningful competitive analysis would have been for Uri Bar-Joseph to test Dove’s social media strategy by liking or following them to see if the company uses social connections to distribute sample products or coupons to stimulate actual sales rather than just observing empty hashtag activism about the meaning of beauty.