Every company should strive to be driven by data. As organizations and technologies become more sophisticated, we've been able to tap into the kinds of insights that wouldn't have even been imaginable 15 years ago. Those insights drive real business value, whether you're proactively increasing customer retention, engagement or satisfaction, or creating new products or services that solve problems your customers didn't even know they had. Social media analytics isn't just about the numbers-it tells a story about your business and customers.

"When I think about data, I inevitably think about social media. That might be because I spend my days working with our clients' executives to capture the voice of their customer, but I think it's because social media intelligence is the next data frontier," says Ryan Barretto, President of Sprout Social.

Social media data gives you actionable intelligence to drive your business forward. But how exactly does data turn into business intelligence? And do professionals from social practitioners to marketing leaders take advantage of social insights?

We spoke with several subject matter experts at Sprout, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Bowling Green State University (BGSU) and Madden Media, a destination marketing agency, to learn how a data point becomes social media intelligence.