We’re listening— now what?
Last week, SmartBrief received about 438 mentions on Twitter, 112 shares on Facebook and 45 links on LinkedIn. Great, right? Well, not if we don’t know what to do with that information.
At an Ad:Tech session on Thursday titled, “Social Media Analysis: Real-time insights for your brand,” a diverse panel of researchers and practitioners shared strategies today’s marketers can use to make sense of social media activity and devise a response plan.
These discussions have always been happening, noted CNN.com’s Vice President of Audience Experience and Engagement Kay Madati. But now we have direct access to these conservations and we can watch them unfold in real time. The problem is not the lack of data, it’s how best to put that information to work, said Nielsen’s Pete Blackshaw.
Bonin Bough, PepsiCo’s Global Social Media Director provided some insights on Pepsi’s action plan. Bough starts by identifying the conversations that can help drive the bottom line. According to Bough, there are plenty of discussions online about Gatorade serving as an excellent hangover cure. There are also a number of conversations going on amongst athletes regarding Gatorade’s benefits as part of a training regimen. Bough makes sure to focus on the latter, since athletes are the true influencers for Gatorade’s market. Bough identifies brand advocates in these conversations, empowers them with information, digital tools or exclusive access to events, and then watches them proudly share with the social circle.
So what’s next for you? Start by identifying your brand advocates — fans who are already talking fondly about your products. Next, measure their influence. Ask how many contacts they have, but also how much credibility they carry in your marketplace. Once you’ve selected the best advocates, show them you appreciate their support by rewarding them with perks, exclusive access to promotions, launches, etc. Now watch these efforts closely. If you manage to filter out the noise and spend your resources engaging the most influential users, chances are you’ll have a more manageable and trackable set of data to work with. Manageable and trackable? Sounds like a whole new kind of social media to me.
Image credit, MorePixels via iStock
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Posted by Andrew Swenson on November 8th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Rob,
I just wrote a post like this a few days ago. “We’re transparent, authentic, and on Twitter…now what?”
It’s not enough to be present or to buy into the buzzwords (you need a platform for Social Web rearch, etc.), it’s time we start doing something with them.
In measuring influence, do you see any sort of qualitative or quantitative formula being developed—i.e. either some kind of theory of qualitative analysis (coming from something like Grounded Theory Development) or some kind of algorithm that would allow us to do this measure more efficiently?
I’m just wondering if our listening tools will need to get smarter.
-Andrew
Posted by Rob Birgfeld on November 9th, 2009 at 9:03 am
Andrew,
It seems to me like you’re hitting the nail on the head for what is next in social media measurement. As it stands now, much of the quantitative side is about tallying mentions– and at best, providing sentiment scores. The issue is that every business or brand will have it’s own set of goals that may or may not be reached via social channels. What looks to be next is a highly customizable tracking mechanism to help brands back in to whether their efforts are successful or not. What I liked about PepsiCo’s approach was that it created a manageable set of data to work with. I believe the quantitative will come in time, but we have a way to go– especially when we’re talking about blending these efforts with integrated marketing campaigns.
Posted by Joseph Fiore on November 10th, 2009 at 5:57 am
Rob,
Interesting topic and discussion – thanks for advancing it. Truth be told, this is my third post visit, and was reluctant to comment, but on the third try thought – go to it
As a vendor in the social media monitoring space, we’ve always wanted to approach the idea of actionable insights in such a way as to ensure the “risk radar” was smart enough to consider the parts that make each client assignment unique. We had to go through several product iterations to get this right, but we believe this is best accomplished through a manual process of human review (and as such, we include human review and interpretation in all our tiers of service).
Though what defines the “actionable” element and really fine tunes the risk radar for us is understanding the reputation and security risks of each client. Once these variables or risk are teased out as defined parameters, then and only then does it form the necessary basis for listening/monitoring tools to be guided, and along with it, opens up new possibilities in making them smarter.
I’ll use a crude example and hopefully it will resonate with the readers and the topic at hand. We stumble on a tweet and it reads “stuck on the 400 hwy – truck broke down.” This would seem more of a case of hard luck for the driver than any real threat, unless of course we knew the person drove an armoured truck for a living and happened to break down at a time of high risk for a truck heist. The only way the context of that tweet could be analyzed in a manner that would be perceived as a risk is if the monitoring company was able to associate that tweet to a driver who was employed by their client (a company that uses bullet-resistant armoured trucks to transport money and valuable goods).
So it is in the example of a transit breakdown on a highway that we can begin to identify some of the limitations of analysis when we leave the task of developing risk radars to machines. Still keeping with the above example, when we place an inordinately high expectation on the tools to get the analysis portion right, how can this be accomplished when a monitoring plan isn’t developed to be able to anticipate or realize there are strict protocols workers of armoured trucks must follow when breaking down on a highway. It is the “smarter” portion of analysis which would take an unassuming incident appearing in online environments to the point where the company would be notified of the matter, and only then could they take the necessary steps to ensure police are dispatched and alerted to appear at the scene until a tow arrives.
In order for listening and monitoring tools to take the leap towards interpreting risk and becoming smarter, they need to incorporate manual/human intervention and they must be able to mold to the requirements of each assignment on a case by case basis. The example above was used to illustrate the limitations of placing brand and reputation monitoring squarely on the lap of tools to get the machine analysis portion right. When we combine this expectation with a short-sighted monitoring plan, we can’t possibly figure out the “now what.” Regardless of the tools used, at some point people need to take over in order for smarter, more precise and qualitative analysis to take place.
Joseph
@RepuTrack
Posted by James on September 14th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
Social media is a great place to build a brand. Its free, easy to use, and millions of people are already using the platforms. If a company hasn't realized the the importance of social media, then they are 10-20 years behind the times: http://www.tradeassociations.org