The Fleeting Value Of Social Media Monitoring

1. tell that to investors and board members who see stock prices plummet as their brands get dragged thru the mud

2. that is also b/c until very recently no company has been able to quantify the damage caused by said damage to a brands reputation by these rumors/comments/etc. Companies like Vanno actually measure a companies rep score so you can watch it plummet or see it come back up as various damage control attempts are made.

A case can be made for the idea that if nobody is saying something bad about your company it means your doing something wrong. Controversy is good. So a few unfavorable opinions here and there are not the end of the world.

But if those opinions are spread in high quantity amongst the people that the company is targeting, then it is very detrimental. If your company name is attached in the search engine results with negative experiences then you are losing money. And it’s a stupid thing to do considering the fact that it is very easy to influence and change the perceptions of the masses in a positive way.

Jerry

Tom, I'm enjoying your unblinking examination of real-time and social media monitoring - you're right on, and I say that as somebody who was targeted earlier this year by a disgustingly & disturbingly aggressive company trying to silence my truthful tweets about their scam & subsequent harassment of me. Happy to say that this co's social media bully tactics blew up in their face when I made sure to sound the alarm to warn the authors & illustrators they were targeting with their scam.
Brands that obsessively monitor & try to suppress or marginalze or otherwise "control" social media conversations are liable to lose face and brand equity, not gain it.

mavennyc821 - Instead of spending $ to monitor social media conversations, companies should improve their branded offerings & make sure they're satisfying customers. Then only the crazy people will complain while the great mass of satisfied customers & other stakeholders will be able to disregard the crazy people who are unfairly complaining about the brand. Use social media to try to stop negative reporting about brand experiences = FAIL

Hi Tom,

You've got an interesting discussion going here. I think that, from a crisis management point of view, you're right that scaring companies into paying attention to social media isn't the right approach, and there is most certainly need to evaluate the impact of conversations and comments before arbitrarily responding to them all (and responding to them all in the same fashion).

But crisis comms and responding to criticism aren't the only reason to be participating in social media, and most certainly not the only reasons to be monitoring what's being said about your brand.

Engagement in social media needs to be well considered like any other business strategy. But the sheer ubiquity of the social web - and the expectations that today's customers have for improved customer service, responsiveness from businesses, and the opportunity to contribute their feedback as a result of it - isn't fleeting. It's a new set of communication tools (much like the phone or email once were) that are changing the way companies communicate with customers and vice versa, not just a channel for new press and media that needs to be managed.

I'm right there with you that it's critical "to distinguish between appropriate action and reaction." But I'd submit that social media monitoring and evaluation of the trends and insights it provides (not just every granular post itself) can help companies do just that - evaluate where their voice is needed and impactful. Monitoring is an increasingly valuable practice for businesses in today's hyper-connected world.

Thanks for continuing the discussion.

Cheers,
Amber Naslund
Director of Community, Radian6
@ambercadabra

@dougmilson

you missed my key point:
monitoring vs. measuring. most services out there can't measure the impact. i know of only one that can actually measure impact of social media - positive or negative on a company.

Monitoring vs. measurement is a useful distinction, which starts to get at some of the other things you can do with social media analysis. Monitoring is good for responding--for crisis comms, customer service and other modes. Measuring provides aggregate data, which can inform more types of decisions. One complaint may or may not merit a response, but thousands of complaints on the same topic should motivate change.

It's not all negative, either. That's just the easiest story to tell. What can you learn from what people *like*--about you or your competitors? These techniques can lead to insights about new product opportunities, areas for operational improvement, sales leads...

One post, one tweet, one opinion--sure, it might not matter, but there's much more to it than that. The key is to get out of the straitjacket of crisis response that the usual scary stories inspire, and explore the market intelligence opportunities in the data. It's information. What will your company do with it?

@mavennyc821: multiple vendors have reputation metrics and will point to the impact of positive or negative conversations, but that's just one analytical lens. The starting point needs to be the company's objectives, not the analysis of choice.

Nathan

We use measuring and monitoring to inform everything we do. It is impossible, in my view, to advise a company on their strategy for engaging with social media without understanding where the conversations about their brand - and their competitors' - are taking place, and what people are saying. Understanding this, over a period of time, allows a business to tackle real issues that their customers face, and provide information through social media that is both useful and encouraging - that builds on the brand.

Nigel Legg
Katugas Social Media Services.

I think there are a couple of challenges with monitoring. The first was summed up nicely by Nathan when he said that companies need to "get out of the straitjacket of crisis response" and see what's really valuable in social media data (which will be a little different for each company i.e. is your goal customer service, PR, Research, Marketing etc). The second has to do with the value of monitoring in relation to finding the information that really matters to your brand. Can you listen to every brand mention and be sure you're getting the most valuable information?

Alex Fortney
Marketing & Community Manager, Networked Insights
@alexfortney

As someone once said:

Some things just scream 'no comment.'