Competitive Intelligence and Business Intelligence Professionals Must Learn to Incorporate Deep web and Social media data into their evaluation and findings. BloomThink’s SWIFT – social web intelligence framework and tactics – program helps companies do just that.
Take a look at our Source and Signal table below. This is just a few of the sites and tools that can be used by the SWIFT practitioner or any savvy CI or BI professional to help bring meaning and context to the flood of data that is out there. This is how you create actionable intelligence rather than simply another data report!
| Source | Signal |
| Feed Stitcher | Site, blog and PR aggregation. http://feedstitch.com/ |
| Yahoo Pipes | Graphical tool for combining web sources. http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ |
| SpyFu | Competitor Keyword Analysis |
| Search Monitor | monitor competitors, affiliates and trade markets |
| Google Trends | Traffic and GEO trends |
| FeedCompare | Compare numbers (strength) of your subscribers vs your competitors |
| GroupHigh | Monitoring and tracking for your market. Turned around it can deliver keen insight on the competitive marketplace |
| MySiteGrader website grader | Grade your website against your competitor’s sites for the keywords you select. http://www.mysitegrader.com/ |
| socialmention | Social media, sentiment, top users, top keywords, top hashtags, top sources. |
| Addict-o-matic | 25 sources for aggregation including RSS feeds, Bing, Google, Google Blog, Flickr, WordPress, YouTube, Technorati |
| NetVibes | Fee based dashboard |
| Northern Light Search | Research aggregator and dashboard |
| Wildfire Social Monitor | Corporate & Market ComparisonsOverall sentiment analysis – trending market perspectives and background context on whether your market views you positively, negatively or ambivalently |
| Network & Relationships– degrees of separation, network reach, geography, work history, education, competitor connections in network
Competitor Projects – competitor staff areas of responsibility |
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| SlideShare | IP Tips, Drips & FUD – marketing focus, roadmap, conference participation, travel & marketing budget (e.g. booth # listed in presentation –> 10K minimum spend), viewing / reach stats, best practices, trends |
| Profile Development – targeted likes, hobbies etc of specific person and/or his/her network. Photos, places, apps, travel conferences etc. Network & Relationships – Degrees of separation, network reach, connections Competitor Strength – Likes, Engagement Level, Sentiment, Content Strategy, Effective vs ineffective messaging |
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| Twitter via tools like follwerwonk, NexaMe, Twiangulate, trendsmap.com etc. | Profile Development – targeted likes, hobbies etc of specific person and/or his/her network. Photos, places, apps, travel conferences etc. Geographic Trends Mapping – for overall market awareness in specific countries and cities (e.g. popular & breaking twitter trends in Shenzhen, Beijing or Nanjing) Network & Relationships – RT’s, favorites,travel, interests, influencers, IP Tips, Drips & FUD – find followers of competitors and co-opt them for counter intelligence or feed FUD |
| Fierce Medical Devices | News Feed – tagged with St. Jude Medical, tagged with Boston Scientific, tagged with Medtronic, tagged with X, |
| Google Alerts | News Feed – tailored alerts for anything Google crawlers pick up. Dial in sensitivity based on scope of query. |
| Klout, PeerIndex, EmpireAvenue | Marketing & Product – reveal competitor buzz building efforts, enable rapid response. Profile Development – identify Industry influencers and gravity wells |
| Google Keywords + Trends | Marketing & Product – Trends & Buzz Building. Keywords & related terms collected then entered into google trends |
| ThinkWithGoogle.com/insights | Market Trends – Research library, primary research, consumer insights |
| Advanced Search Engine Work Using Copernic Agent or similar |
Profile Development – [“full target name” +GeographicLocation:website ] narrows in on specific name at specific geography on specific website IP Tips, Drips & FUD – filetype: search for PDFs and PPTs, allintitle:,allinurl: |
| Published Journal Search | Marketing & product- current trends & focus areas tailored to industry audiences
Profile Development – track authorship and citation trail of published works by targets |
| Indeed.com/jobtrends | Market Trends – hiring as a leading indicator of focus and industry movement |
| Scribd | IP Tips, Drips & FUD – published and available research, papers & presentations |
| Competition Blogs, Forums & Community | Profile DevelopmentIP Tips, Drips & FUDMarketing & Product |
| Deep Email Miner | IP Tips, Drips & FUD – internal email social network mapping to explore nascent social connections buried in an email corpus. |
| Deep Web Analysis using Maltego, Casefile, Social Network Visualizer, AutoMap, scirus.com, brightplanet or similar | Marketing & IT Ecosystem – discover associated IP addresses and TLDs (top level domains), discovery and association engine. |
| ClipBoard.com | WebClipping manual aggregation dashboard tool |
| OutWit Technologies – http://www.outwit.com | Web Scraper programmatic human triggered web scraper for larger data volume collection. Can export collections to files or SQL |
| Newsle.com | Human Data Feed Aggregator – follow users who are in a network to see what they’re up to. |
| Pinterest Analysis Tools: PinAlerts Pinpuff Pinerly is good for tracking analytics data on Pinterest
Repinly helps you find influencers |
Pinterest is powerful, lots of traffic. Average time on Pinterest approx: 10 minutes, far more than other social sites.These allow you to get a message when someone pins something from your website. You can set up for alerts on competitor sites, too. |
| Rapportive | search for information online |
| Disruption Analysis Sources: Crunchbase www.whogotfunded.comSeekingAlpha CORI | Business & disruptor informationis a good tool to find information.SEC and other money-related findingsPublic Company Data
Contract Database |
| www.copyright.gov | Copyright and IP search |
| ThomasNet.com | product information on manufactured goods. |
| Domaintools.com | Paid service. Alerts based on domain registrations. See competitor domains |
| www.indeed.com | Hire/Fire/Openings – overarching jobs trend analysis. Find out who is staffing up |
| www.similarsites.com | –Find out who competes with whom |
| Boardreader.com | Find out what people are talking about. Also searches LinkedIn groups. |
| www.competemonkey.com | –set up alerts when a competitor’s site changes |
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