Monitoring and maintaining the level at which, and the way in which, people are talking about your brand online is so important. To say that the ‘online buzz will become too much’ for organisations is a silly statement (as said by Karl Harvard in his article in econsultancy.com) when it is so important for organisations to listen, engage and be involved.
Granted, there will come a point in every business where they may have to invest in employing a social media tsar to monitor and maintain conversations online. This may even stretch to a team of people, or dare I say it, even a whole department!
The importance of monitoring social media conversations about your brand is becoming ever more important. As sites like Twitter, do not only have activity from geeky guys like myself on them, more and more ‘ordinary’ people are using it to communicate online – and this is the key. Grass roots. The people the buy your product and service may be talking about and you don’t know if this is a good or bad thing!
Taking a look at these stats pulled together by Dan Zarella in an online presentation last November (I tried to find more up to date stats), even then it showed how important it was to monitor brand based conversations. The stats presented above show how over 50% of tweets about opinions were retweeted and almost 45% of product based tweets were retweeted.
With these kind of stats how can you not afford to invest in some way to learn how you can monitor your brand better? If the retweets about conversations pertaining to you brand are wholly negative, and there is a chance that they will build and others will give their opinion too. Is it worth ignoring the voice of the world and what they say about your brand?
We’ve not event touched on Facebook here… and I have seen a well known bank suffer at the hands of someone start a group called “[THE BANK'S NAME] are S@#T” – no egagement from the bank on this one!
BT do a good job. Their aim is to engage you, ask how they can help and they try and get you on the phone and not discussing it in social media.
Easyjet monitor what people are saying, and I even heard of an employee at an airport contacting someone tweeting about a delayed flight and sent someone to meet them.
If you only use it for one thing… use it for a proactive approach to better customer service. See a recent post of mine on this: Social Media is About Customer Service
I urge you to think about how you can look to get a better understanding of how you can monitor and engage better in social media. Get in touch if I can be of any help, attend one of The Social Media Guys events, or better still, just start listening.
Great post and I couldn’t agreed more.It’s surprising how many brands still don’t realise to what extent they are being discussed online. As highlighted in this post social media presents a huge opportunity for companies to reach out and engage.Looking forward to seeing how businesses become more and more innovative with this tool and make it their own.Olivia LandoltMarketing and Community Manager@6Consulting | UK authorised Radian6 provider
Great post Ant!I always tell people that the very least you can do in social media is at least be aware of what people are saying about you. Listening is the most important, and then engaging with people after you have heard what they have to say.That’s the easiest way to start in social media monitoring and measuring.Cheers,Sheldon, community manager for Sysomos
Those Twitter stats say it all!I think most companies/brands are starting to realise there has been a power shift toward the consumer.. as social media offers more ways for us to speak the need to watch and listen becomes ever prevalent. From there customer engagement is a great way to get strong brand respect and loyalty.ZakMoreover Technologies
Great to see the industry leaders agreeing with me… or is it that I agree with their products? Thanks for the comments guys.
haha, a little of both I think!