Posts Tagged ‘ Monitoring ’

The focus is on cultural media supervising in this closing article in the series on Selecting a Media Monitoring Service

In earlier articles, Determining Your Media Monitoring Needs, Print News Monitoring vs. Online News Monitoring, and Broadcast Monitoring for TV and Radio News, I depict the individual approaches to news supervising

Definition: Social Media Monitoring

The social web is a fast-growing and fast-changing "platform" for consumers to discuss companies and products

Social media monitoring is the process of listening to online consumer reviews and conversations about your company, its brands and services

The overarching goal of social media monitoring is to learn from listening better understand consumer concerns about your organization, and then emply that knowledge to enhance your products and services

Social Media Monitoring Services

Your social media listening strategy should encompass all forms of word of mouth media and consumer discussion including but not limited to blogs, "complaint" sites, message boards, forums, Usenet news groups, and video sharing sites such as YouTube. You should also monitor cultural community sites like Facebook, MySpace and Linked-In, along with Twitter, the microblog

Social media supervising services monitor all forms of cultural media but not all services monitor all media. The services use specialised software to Multiple social media postings from Multiple sources, index all the content on a near-continuous basis, query the index utilizing the client's key words and key out consumer posts of interest, and then hand over the applicable posts to the client

Since it's impossible to predict where or when important market intelligence will "pop up" on the Web — or where it will be repeated or "go viral", it's best to monitor the widest possible range of social media

Market Intelligence vs. Worthless Chatter

Social media overflows with inane chatter. If McDonald's monitors cultural media, over 90% of the corporeal mentions will be akin to "I'm traveling to McDonald's" or "I'm meeting (name) at McDonald's" not very utilitarian for market intelligence purposes

Well-constructed search queries help minimize extraneous chatter. As an example, McDonald's could focus cultural media supervising on ad hoc product names (brands) instead of the corporeal name. Or it could use a "and not" operator in the Boolean query on average phrases like "traveling to" or "meet". That type of clip avoidance strategy will probable delete a bit of worthy conversation, but will certainly minimise futile chatter to be reexamined

In using social media monitoring as a customer service tool, it's important to review all mentions of company and brand names to identify and act on complaints (and compliments)

What should you be listening for?

As a starting point, monitor for your corporate name, your brands, the services you offer, and the names of key executives

Initially, just start looking for complaints, compliments and questions about your company. Look for any grave issues that necessitate to be rectified. Look for patterns or trends that are coming out plus or minus. Initially, there is no need to execute any serious measurement, especially if your company is not ample. Later, you may desire to spread out your taking heed to comprehend competitors and industry-specific issues and also do some conventional measurement of cultural media conversation

Who in the organization should do the listening?

The answer to "who should listen?will emerge from the reasons your organization wants to monitor social media. Is it to happen service complaints and rectify them? Then "customer service" should take heed and act often named "engagement" in cultural media circles

Is the reason to identify issues with product performance? Then marketing or product development should be listening

Is it to monitor corporate reputation? Then the public relations department should be listening

In large corporations, multiple departments should be involved in the listening process

How to listen?

Using free social media search engines can provide quite a good cross-section of word-of-mouth commentary by consumers on the Web. For blogs, seek Technorati, Google Blogs and Ice Rocket. Searching aggregate services causes a problem of matched content that you'll necessitate to filter out something that commercialised media supervising services do automatically

For message boards and forums (which may be even more important to monitor than blogs), try BoardReader which covers about 50,000 different online consumer discussion sites. The best way to get down supervising Facebook and Linked-In is to simply sign up as a member and come in search queries into each service's search engine

The downside of free search services is the time required to conduct the searches. It may not be the most fertile use of in-house staff. Staff time is better utilized for analysing, not seeking. If there are a restricted number of fresh posts each day, it may be bankable to monitor less frequently. But at least infrequent cultural media supervising is obligatory to understand any consumer issues and to assist the business reputation

Bottom Line: free social media search engines may well meet your needs if you have just a few search terms, typically receive only a few new postings each day, are willing to invest the time to conduct searches on a regular schedule using multiple free services, and have no need for advanced services to measure the quantity, reach, and tone of the social media postings. While it may not be cold, loose media supervising executed by in-house staff may be "acceptable enough". You must acknowledge, however, that it isn't truly "free". The staff time investment must have an adequate to return

Commercial Social Media Monitoring Services

The paid subscription services for social media monitoring provide more comprehensive coverage, save staff time, and provide many bells & whistles including online clip archives to manage the social media posts, and automated quantitative and qualitative measurement of the posts

Prominent social media monitoring services include Radian6, Alterian M2, Trackur, and Scout Labs. Presently, more than 50 companies vie in the cultural media supervising and measurement space. There is a "wiki" of social media monitoring solutions at http://wiki.kenburbary.com/ that continually updates the maturing number of social media monitoring services. The Yahoo! Directory also contains an across-the-board list of social media monitoring services

Many of the well-established news monitoring services provide integrated social media monitoring. CyberAlert, for instance, in addition to its online news supervising service, provides across-the-board daily coverage of 50+ million blogs; 100,000+ message boards, forums, complaint sites, and Usenet news groups; 200+ video partaking sites like YouTube; and all Twitter postings for the early 24 hours

Social media monitoring services vary considerably in their mission and in their deliverables. In screening the companies, it's vital to match their market niche with your need. It's alive to do your homework in advance and bare down your vendor list before getting through services

Assessing Social Media Monitoring Services

Questions to ask in assessing social media monitoring services:

What's the primary purpose of your service?

Who are your key customers? What internal department is the primary client contact point for your service?

What's your service best at doing? Exactly what social media do you cover? How do you aggregate content? May I add blogs or message boards of special interest to our company?

Do you cover "complaint" sites? Which ones? Do you monitor Twitter?

Do you cover and exactly what content do you harvest from Facebook, MySpace, and Linked-In? Can your search engine perform Boolean queries? What Boolean operators does your search engine use? Is it capable of using regular expressions? How many keywords may I use in my queries?

Does your service include a searchable archive of social media posts? What are its features? Ask for a demo of the archive

How do you differ from (another service you are evaluating)?

Who is your best competitor? Why is your service superior to theirs?

What enhancements do you plan to your service in the next 60 days? Six months? One year?

Many of the services offer a comprehensive demo or, even better, a "test drive" of the service. That's unquestionably the best way to sort through the features and benefits of the various vendors

Summary: Social Media Monitoring

As a new and rapidly evolving media, online consumer discussion and social communities form the "wild west" of monitoring. No solution is cold. But for most every company, some cultural media supervising solution is incumbent. The temptation is to leap into the social media landscape afloat tired. But, the "full service" solution of taking heed, mensurating and engagement may not be the best solution to meet your needs. The most efficacious way to get down the process is to find out your needs and this absolutely should be executed well in advance of getting through vendors. Even with universal specifications in hand, you're far more apropos to contract with an apropos service and not purchase more than you necessitate