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Brand monitoring 2.0; Feeling increasingly overwhelmed by the never ending stream of information? Prefer sticking your head in the sand and wait for it all to go away?
The good news is that with the new media outlets, new tools emerge to leverage value from this endless flow of information. Learning how to use such tools can save time, avoid online reputation issues and help identify new business opportunities.
Lets start with the time management issue. Sure, there’s times you just want to browse around, check out some mainstream news or funny videos, but when it comes to specific monitoring activities, focus is the name of the game. Unless you have a clear idea of what you’re looking for, and a strategy for what to do with the data once located, you’ll quickly get distracted.
By identifying keywords that are important for your business, you will be in a position to find conversations about your brand, competitors and industry trends. Next step is to filter out the useful information and decide what to do with it. Oftentimes, brand monitoring data will be forwarded to a colleague in customer support, who will take action, addressing unhappy bloggers or forum participants. Positive mention will be of interest for the person in charge of SEO link building and the PR and marketing department. Other data, such as competitive intelligence and market trends, will be of interest for the R&D department.
Over the last months Imooty has developed a tool facilitating this type of work. Through a social media listening dashboard, users locate information on keywords across different social media sources and save posts to their media library. Users create projects, delegate responsibilities and define milestones, creating a sense of accountability when dealing with online media intelligence.
Want to take the Imooty tool for a test drive? Sign up for a free brand monitoring trial today!
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In a context of online reputation management, we refer to crowdsourcing as social bookmarking or collaborative tagging. So what does that have to do with brands and brand monitoring? Well, these days, pretty much everything. The latest example comes to us from Sears, a large department store chain in the US:
A couple had just bought a freezer from a Sears store in Dripping Springs, Texas. It would be delivered directly to their home free of charge. When the Sears truck arrived, the family dog, Toot, ran out to investigate the new visitor. As the truck was about to a stop, a loud yelp was heard. Toot had been run over and died shortly thereafter.
Understandably, the dog’s mom was upset and went to see the store owner. She wanted to bring closure to the tragic event. The owner apologized, but went on to say that it was not Sears fault. It was the couple had let the dog out in the yard. This did not help the woman to find closure and when she got home, her husband was unhappy about how Sears had treated her.
He called the store, the owner repeated that it was the couples fault, the dog should have moved. He would have been wiser in offering an apology without placing the blame on a distraught customer.
The couple bought a domain name, SearsKilledMyDog.com and created a website telling about their experience. Once live, they forwarded it to their friends and family, and posted it on Facebook. As with any viral story, the response was immediate. Within 24 hours, their website was generating heavy traffic, and the tragic tale was trending as number 1 on Reddit while becoming a Twitter phenomenon via The Consumerist.
At this point Sears customer service entered to execute online reputation management and active damage control. High level executives called the couple personally to apologize and offer restitution for pain and suffering. The couple felt they had been heard and the SearsKilledMyDog.com website was taken down. Next, Sears added their voice to the conversation raging at The Consumerist. They requested to add a response in the article itself;
“We are very sorry about the loss of the dog of a devoted Sears customer. As soon as we heard about this (which was at 5 PM CT on Dec-11-2009), our team acted swiftly to contact the customer who purchased the freezer from our Hometown Store in Dripping Springs, Texas. In fact, Will Powell, our business unit President, spoke to the customer just before 7 PM CT on Dec-11-2009 and extended our apologies and the customer graciously accepted. As a symbol of our deep regret for the accident, we offered to reimburse him for the cost of his dog as well as to refund the original sale.”
After the update, Sears identified the people with most influence who had Tweeted the article and sent them a link with the update. This enabled 3rd parties to post an update to the article via their own accounts, adding online reputation management credibility since such re-tweets would not come from Sears directly.
The conventional definition of crowdsourcing is that it is the completion of tasks that normally would be performed by in-house employees or contractors, and out-sourcing them to a random set of people (that’s the crowd). The Sears story shows how the term applies to online reputation management too. With engagement, sincerity and personal interaction, Sears was able to turn the negative crowdsourcing around to a positive.
Feel like getting started with online reputation management? Sign up for a free Imooty.eu trial today!
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Looking back at 2009, it was decidedly the year to get started with live search media monitoring. If you don’t know what “live search” is, think Twitter.
Never understood what Twitter was all about? Well, then think about this: If I was to go on a little R&R skiing vacation in Bad-Gastein (Austrian Alps), I could do one of two things: Check Google for pages mentioning Bad-Gastein, or search Twitter for the same term.
For the better part of 2009, Google would return a bunch of Bad-Gastein sites optimized for selling travel packages, hotels, spas etc. That’s where live search media monitoring comes into play. Although commercial service providers are relevant for my planning, I’d first of all want to know what the snow conditions were like, preferably from some unbiased source. The hotels, skiing resorts and service providers are unlikely to give me that, which is what makes people so exited about Twitter. It returns real life impressions from people who are there right now!
Google is of course not passively sitting back and has already struck a deal with both Twitter and Facebook which includes search results from them alongside their index and adwords.
This has significant PR implications and companies increasingly need to pay attention and interact with social media users. If a customer service representative is stonewalling customers the word will soon be out on Twitter, which in turn will reveal an unfavorable impression in Google search results. On the flip side, speedy interaction and online reputation management may have the opposite effect.
In other words, now more than ever, it pays to set do live search media monitoring of company and product names. And not just proprietary names, other keywords associated to the products and services should be monitored too. For my Bad Gastein example, it would make sense to monitor, “Skiing vacation in Austria”, “Skiing in Hohe Tauern” and “Austria ski resort guide” too.
For a comprehensive live search media monitoring system, take this opportunity to try out the FREE Imooty.eu trial.
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Interest in Imooty’s online monitoring tool has picked up significantly over the past few weeks. As we launched the BASIC service in October, we were targeting the small and medium sized enterprise segment, however, we were soon approached by large companies looking for a user friendly environment to collect media intelligence.
Over the next few weeks we will test our online monitoring PRO features in a private Beta. The new version is scheduled to launch commercially in March of 2010. Imooty PRO will include a online monitoring team platform, semantic search and a information categorization tool. Please drop us a line if you’d like to participate in the Beta!
Looking back at 2009 we collected a wealth of practical experience from which we will benefit (hopefully) in 2010. In terms of theoretical knowledge, the most valuable read was without a doubt “Getting Real” by 37 Signals, mandatory reading for anyone developing an IT tool…
Want to start with online monitoring and don’t know how? Go to Imooty.eu and register for our free trial!
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An important element of Online Reputation Management is developing a social media policy for your employees. Social media behavior can certainly influence how your brand or company is being perceived.
Traditionally, creating a “policy” focuses on restricting action, i.e. outlining things that cannot be done. However, the whole point with social media is engaging your customer! Therefore, in the interest of promoting engagement, focus on what contributors CAN do.
First, make sure that the idea of community is well understood. The idea is to participate in a network where you can support others that in turn will support you. It should be a place where people will be comfortable with connecting, sharing experiences and asking for advice.
Transparency will play a major role in establishing trust and finding the balance between personal and professional information will be the main challenge. Still, transparency does not mean unrestricted sharing of company trade secrets for example. Employee’s are obliged to protect confidential information.
Also, make sure your employees understand that they will bear full responsibility for what’s being contributed. There’s no implied right to say stupid things under a disguise of “self expression”. Sure, it’s all good to share your opinions online, however, contributors need to consider each audience and ensure that statements will not be misunderstood as narrow minded or discriminating.
Specifically, contributors need to understand that what their social media activities will be part of the company’s overall online reputation management. Their actions will influence how they are being viewed within the organization, as well as how external parties will perceive company culture. Make it clear that their activities will be part of your company’s overall social media monitoring efforts.
Finally, provide value to your community! Many companies seem to have a hard time speaking about anything else than their products and services… Find topics that connect to the bigger picture, such as general industry news, developments and FAQ’s.
Want to try Imooty’s Online Reputation Management tool? Sign up for a 4 week FREE trial at Imooty.eu!
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Online reputation monitoring has become a standard tool in a PR industry constantly adjusting to change. One commonly hears that new tools and practices have everything to do with changes in technology. But is that really true?
Sure, technology has pushed a paradigm shift on traditional media. Long gone are the days when radio, TV and newspaper’s had a monopoly on expressing opinions. However, sudies show that the main change taking place is sociological.
PR professionals are faced with the task of reaching out to a new generation of youngsters that grew up online. Their perception is one of suspicion to anything that smells like “official” opinion or advertising. Forget about conventional press releases, their opinion-makers are bloggers and fellow members in online communities. They are media savvy, value honesty, transparency and engagement.
In order to reach an online community, you have to join in as an exited and engaged participant - welcome to the new PR, a.k.a. community management!
As a PR consultant you will advise community managers (a full time in-house position) on how to conduct online reputation monitoring, participate in community forums discussions and interact with bloggers. Look for a community manager that has:
- ability to reach out to people, “step into the other person’s shoes” and build trust
- deep knowledge of product/service details and problem resolution skills
- an understanding of the organization’s social media goals and ability to communicate strategically to achieve them
In other words, it’s not the geeky knowledge of all the latest social media tools and platforms that makes for a competent community manager. Social media is all about people skills and being able to execute according to strategic goals. More than anything, this means investing in someone who will refrain from responding reactively and with impulse.
Have you started with online reputation monitoring yet? Register for a free trial with Imooty.eu now!
An important element to getting information about your competitors is engaging in media intelligence and market research. Why? Because all companies have a communication strategy based on differentiating their company name and brands in the market!
Therefore, keeping an eye on your competitors investment in media exposure, will be a key component for understanding the market intent.
Media expenditures are the result of a carefully agreed and well thought through decision making process. It can be traced via the marketing and communication departments, all the way back to the company’s board of directors meeting. When analyzed properly, the information will reveal clues about your competitor’s overall market strategy.
Accordingly, media intelligence can be used to find answer to the following questions:
-Which line of business is being pushed the most? By measuring media exposure for the different products / services over time, one can establish the competitors strategy (or lack of one) for each line of business.
-What segments are they targeting, and how? By looking at where the competitors products / services appear, such as in online newspapers, blogs, social media, forums, portals and bookmarking sites, one can assess the investment size that was allocated for each market segment populating those channels.
-What is the emphasis of the communication strategy? Relationship to the brand, experience, building a stronger reputation or call-to-action? If the media campaign is aimed at enriching the relationship / experience with the brand, the intention will be to create a stronger bond with consumers and to grow brand equity. Reputation building on the other hand, will not only focus on the brand, but also include the organization’s relationship with society. Lastly, a dominance of call-to-action exposure will reveal the intention of rapidly gaining market share.
Systematic collection of media intelligence will enrich both short- and long-term knowledge of your competitor’s commercial intentions. Needless to say, it is will be important to compare this knowledge with your own brand monitoring.
Start harvesting your media intelligence with Imooty.eu today!
In a recent survey of over 2000 German media intelligence professionals, respondents answered questions centering on three topics; impact felt from the financial meltdown, gender issues and professional ethics.
Not surprisingly, it is the media intelligence professionals from the automotive and metalworking industry that are hardest hit by financial crisis. Particularly challenging is a rising communication need (45%) combined with a decrease in available resources (30%). The average yearly income has furthermore decreased with €6500 compared to 2007. Challenges are a further focus on added value communication aspects (36%), concentration on legitimation over image related aspects (35%), intensified internal communication (21%) and increased efficiency control (29%).
The media intelligence profession furthermore see an increase in female practitioners. In 2007 53% were men, whereas in 2009 we see a 50/50 split. For professionals under 30, 78% are female and between 30-39, 55%. As the professionals come of age, over 40, we see increasing male dominance. For those over 50 there is a 2:1 ratio between male/female practitioners. On average women earn ca. €22.500 less per year than men (€75.876 vs. €53.301). This discrepancy can in part be attributed to the fact that on average women practitioners are younger than men.
In recent years, corporate transparency has become a top-, front- and center issue for the media intelligence profession and 88% of the respondents agree that it is a condition for communicating trustworthiness of their organization. Only 4% of the professionals work in a department subordinate to another department. Consequently, about half of the professionals see their strategic influence on the media intelligence policy of the company as high or very high (and thereby presumably also on corporate transparency). Still, many of the respondents also criticize senior management’s understanding of the strategic importance of a consistent media intelligence policy.
Check out Imooty’s next generation media monitoring and media intelligence tool at Imooty.eu
The first step step beyond social media monitoring is developing listening skills. Needless to say, companies have a lot to gain from understanding the customers problems. By providing solutions and sharing knowledge, content is likely to be passed on and advocated by consumers.
So what’s the problem?
When you say that you have an open and receptive online presence, it creates an expectation. Specifically, an expectation of being heard. Active social media monitoring and a policy for when/how to respond to feedback, is priority number one for building customer relationships and trust. Do not make the mistake of ignoring a customer who expects being heard.
Most companies hesitate to take the step from social media monitoring to active interaction because of perceived risks. A fear that everything will spin out of control if people start communicating via Twitter. However, there are also risks associated with not participating. The indecisiveness is an expression of sticking with the status quo and keeping with the old hierarchical communication structure. However, adapting to social media is unlikely to undo the company. Mistakes will be made, sure, but that is part of what makes social media appealing.
Companies seem to have a hard time speaking about anything else than their products. To avoid looking pushy, or worse, boring, find topics that connect to the bigger picture. Kodak’s photography blog for example isn’t just about their products.
Also, users increasingly expect websites to be interactive, not just an online version of the company brochure. They’re looking for fresh content, articles, videos, podcasts and links to the latest developments in your industry. Content generation is unlikely to work very well in a top-down structure. If the IT department needs to recode the website every time someone wants to contribute, social interaction will never happen. It is important to have an easy to publish CMS. Once the new PR and communiation policy is in place, everyone should be able to share and contribute.
Taking the step from social media monitoring to participation doesn’t have to be a major undertaking. It doesn’t take hi-tech tools to connect with your customers. Think corporate blog, Twitter and a Facebook page.
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Media intelligence : Analyzing how your company name or brand rates in online reviews, vs. those of your competitors’, most definitely belongs on your media intelligence to-do list.
Or does it?
The New York Times article, “On the Internet, Everyone’s a Critic But They’re Not Very Critical” reports that the average online review rating is 4.3 stars out of 5. That’s of course far away from being even remotely close to the “bell curve”. How come the average distribution of statistical data is so far off? Does media intelligence practices play a role here?
The article seems to indicate that yes, they do. Printer paper, boots and dog food in particular have bloated online reputations and the same can be said for hotels being reviewed on TripAdvisor.com.
However, media intelligence practices, such as a manager’s puffing up the average rating of this own product or service, is not the only factor. Someone is also minding the store. Several independent Amazon reviewers for example, suspect that the online megastore is involved in selective review vetting.
Translation: Negative reviews are simply deleted in order to sell more products. Ed Keller, CEO of the Keller Fay Group, has found that ca. 65% of word-of-mouth reviews are positive, whereas only 8% are negative!
At the end of the day the question then becomes how “good” is a good review. Do you have the strength to give a 4.3 review its real (average) value in your media intelligence matrix?
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