The vast number of people using social media is sometimes not the best thing to report on. The chaos of billions of people producing digital traces left and right leaves the Economist dedicating a whole special report on managing information and inspires Gatorade to install a “Social media command center” in its HQ. Absurd as that may sound, most of Fortune 500 companies agree that listening to customer online is important to their business and according to Econsultancy, is something worth investing time and money into.
In this post, I would like to get across how me and my team at Interaction London have been making sense of and simplifying the social media space for our clients in terms of:
- Understanding the monitoring/listening market
- Monitoring the “buzz” online
- Extracting the insights that actually help produce informed narratives
Social Media Monitoring Market
I’d like to make an analytical distinction between two very different functions that the monitoring market delivers to one anyone interested in what folks have to say online.
On one hand, the market has to deliver everything that is being said, liked, shared, etc. Real time. Ubiquitous. Omnipresent. With consequences now. Toyota. BP. Nestle. On the other hand, it has to act as a market research / strategic insight / planning vehicle that helps brands think about their audiences not as an epileptic mass of Twitter users, but rather intention-driven complex individuals. People whose opinion counts. People who are visible online. People who matter. People like you.
There is no clear line between the two functions and objects of monitoring (i.e. you again) can shift from one category to another, but the distinction is critical to claim this:
Monitoring as a Software
Firstly, some monitoring products enable automated data collection, statistical analysis and plug into a fixed analytical formulas such as reach, sentiment and volume of coverage. They are usually develop by technologist obsessed by such sci-fi as natural language or semantic web. To that extent, they treat their position in the market very much just like any software company reselling its proprietary product. These products are not serviced and do not allow for a direct interpretation of the data into marketing communication.
Monitoring as a Service
Secondly, there is a distinct group of monitoring products that build on the monitoring as a software layer and invest heavily into the human capital to interpret the data into something meaningful, such as digital strategy. Where they lack in scalability and competitive pricing, they compensate with legible and interpretative analysis. This is the domain of companies that focus on retention of the symbolic capital associated with a brand (such as creative agencies or strategic/planning departments).
Recommendation
But whether your listening is digital, physical or a combination of the two, what’s most important are the insights you derive from doing it. David Armano
There is a strong case to argue that Monitoring as a Service adds an extra layer that will become increasingly redundant as the interpretative ability of automated tools increases in quality. Where this statement falls short is in the fact that advertising/marketing/PR is a people’s business: Given that brands are symbolic entities, there will always have to be a requirement for someone to interpret what a brand means and stands for in a funny, engaging, sometimes surprising fashion to the public (and vice versa). To this end, my recommendation is to identify a solution that combines the two extremes: Exploit scalability and efficiency of the software solution whilst servicing the insights with a sufficient man power to inform successful marketing campaigns.
Where is that man power based is a different question, but you can hardly see them as someone ‘commanding’ brand’s reputation online.
And any meaningful social media strategy has to be informed by the overall narrative of an integrated marketing framework. It is a good practice to recognize that customers commence their discovery of brands at the most unlikely places and the best one can hope for is to intercept this discovery at a place where the brand can control the message in one way or another.
The customer acquisition model I have been using in my planning sessions aims to map out the range of branded touch points online. It is based on following assumptions:
- Search is the single most powerful force behind content discovery, and by search I mean the broader behaviour of discovering content online (so that includes Google results as well as your Facebook News Stream). From bought media perspective, the branded communication in search can be augmented by the variety of paid-for vehicles that media agencies are simply amazing at selling. The quality of resulting engagement is however virtually non-existent.
- Broadcasting media, blogs and your friends on Facebook are equally important in introducing new content and one could argue that are more effective in creating a more compelling association that the audiences make with the content (symbolic capital, etc.). In earned media terms, this is a field of PR-driven communication with a heavy emphasis on relationship building and investment into people and relevancy rather than media budgets.
- Brand’s own media channels (websites, blogs, Facebook pages, etc) gain audience’s attention only once a user has embarked on the journey of discovery initiated by the previous two categories. The ambition of every communication campaign is to make the beginning of that journey as cost and time effective as possible. Once delivered to the owned media, audiences are then entertained and parsed through the good old acquisition funnel.
Every campaign requires a different mix of all of the media types, but having failed many times, omission of any of the three elements listed above usually leads to decreased quality and volume of engagement. The definition of engagement I leave with you – where do you draw the line between ‘I know this brand’ to ‘I can relate to this brand’?