We often hear from our enterprise clients that they are conducting their own social media investigations internally. We certainly understand the motivation especially since the information is “free” out on the internet. And we’ve often heard executives say, “my 10 year old found that information”. These are all valid points. But quality information is not free. Just because you own a lawn mower does not make cutting the yard free – it takes time. If you value your time which as we all know is money, then an enterprise cannot afford to ignore the numbers, which speak for themselves. Those who choose to ignore them do so at their own or their own organizations’ risk. Companies of all sizes are very accustomed to paying for background checks, criminal records, driving records, etc. Why would anyone think that quality social media reporting is any different? In fact, Social Media reporting is a more robust and consistent source of valuable people information than any of the other data points combined. In fact, Xerox recently did away with all structured data background checks in favor of an internally developed social media grading system for new hires.

There is no turnkey and purely software based solution available today to capture this information. If there was, then it’s unlikely you and your associates would still surf the Internet virtually every day to find information. We encourage our clients to use every tool at their disposal to do this work but we are certain that none of the software services can deliver the results you desire. Try them yourself – Spokeo, Instant Checkmate, Pipl or countless others. Social media reporting is combination of CPU and IQ. The fact that some companies do it themselves proves this point. At SDC we are committed to helping our clients not spend countless hours and money doing this work in a haphazard and time consuming manner.