Faced with an ever-growing flood of information, market intelligence has become a real skill in the service of business competitiveness. It is imperative to stay on top of market trends, to keep an eye on competitors' practices, and to monitor the evolution of one's own e-reputation. Monitoring is the perfect answer to all these needs. However, it's a time-consuming activity that can easily be relegated to the background, which is why it's a good idea to use shared monitoring tools.
The benefits of collaborative intelligence
Market intelligence involves researching and gathering information for a variety of purposes: monitoring communication strategies and reputations on social media, analyzing competition and prices in a given sector, keeping abreast of news or technological innovations...
The regular monitoring process enables the company to work on its positioning, improve its services, develop new solutions or products, and feed its editorial line and communication campaigns.
From a collective intelligence perspective, collaborating on the intelligence stage ensures that the information gathered by the various team members is shared. Collaborative intelligence thus boosts productivity and business performance.
How do I choose a monitoring tool?
To carry out this collective mission, it is essential to choose your monitoring tool strategically.
There are various criteria to take into account when defining the most appropriate solution:
- What are the objectives of monitoring? What needs does information gathering meet? Competitive intelligence, sector intelligence, e-reputation intelligence or technology intelligence...
- What are the priorities? Managing different sources, grouping, classifying, storing, distributing...
- What is the average budget allocated to this task? Free solution or subscription? Many monitoring tools offer freemium versions or trial periods before commitment.
The different monitoring tools to be used by several people
Most monitoring tools are regularly updated, and many have already integrated collaborative functions.
Web analysis and social network monitoring tools
Mention.com is a media monitoring solution that brings together information on a range of subjects, based on a defined set of keywords. News media, blogs, forums... but not only. The media monitoring tool also includes the various social networks, and allows you to set up a collaborative interface.
Talkwalker also combines web and social network monitoring. But the platform also integrates print, TV and radio sources. Talkwalker is considered one of the best alternatives to Google Alerts for brand performance monitoring and competitor analysis.
Social networks also offer monitoring functions. This is particularly true of Tweetdeck. Twitter's analysis platform enables the creation of hashtag tracking lists. Tweetdeck teams can work together to create teams of administrators and contributors who can feed these collections.
Price monitoring tools
Spy-Commerce, Price Observatory, Paarly... numerous solutions are available for managing e-commerce or distribution networks.
Price monitoring is an integral part of competitive analysis. It is necessary not only to monitor market trends, but also the prices offered by competitors, and to check that retailers are respecting their commitments on recommended retail prices.
Tools such as Spy-Commerce allow you to consolidate pricing information on a detailed dashboard according to selected product catalogs, in just a few clicks.
Feed aggregators
Feedly, Inoreader, Flipboard or Netvibes... RSS feed aggregators enable you to build up subscriptions to news from selected media almost instantaneously. No longer does any publication on industry trends or new competitor content go unnoticed.
These curation tools centralize all data according to desired themes. Some, like Inoreader, include podcasts, newsletters and Facebook pages in addition to RSS feeds.
Web traffic statistics and analysis tools
Digital intelligence involves monitoring the metrics of a company's website, brand or e-commerce site, as well as its direct competition. Traffic, bounce rate and search engine optimization studies are essential for monitoring and improving positioning.
Benchmarking, marketing analysis, SEO data study, niche and backlink monitoring... Tools like SimilarWeb, Semrush or Ahrefs are invaluable assets in website management and the implementation of an associated content strategy.