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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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From time to time, we get the question “what’s the risk of not having a social media monitoring tool?” The question reveals a perception that “social media is just an add-on to other media outlets”. It’s not. Social media has a different set of rules and is reshaping entire markets.
With social media, people are engaging and interacting around context, not necessarily personal relationships. Whereas we used to connect around place (neighborhood, community, schools, associations, etc.) we now link to online personas that share our intellectual interest and emotions. For many, traditional media is no longer the main source of information. Increasingly people turn to social media looking for “someone just like like me” and consequently, many blogs and forums discussions are more important in shaping opinions and perceptions than traditional media outlets.
Likewise, PR and marketing campaigns are no longer about one-to-many communication by distributing press releases and pushing “call to action”. Via social media monitoring tools, companies connect and interact with people that have expressed interest in a particular topic.
Still, the strategy of reaching out to people of influence has not changed. PR and marketing efforts still try to connect with “trust agents” that are likely to pass on a particular message to their networks. In effect, successful campaign management is engaged in one-to-one-to-many communications. The PR or marketing message gets forwarded from one-to-one-to-many if it connects with the interests of the person receiving it, AND if it provides value to his/her network.
The main challenge for companies using social media is therefore the blurring between marketing and communication. Marketers want to use it to sell, communicators to build relationships. Of course, social media is very much about being a real member of a community and providing value, rather than just chasing the next sale. That increases the number of people a company has to deal with, requiring more time and investment in building relationships.
The effect of social media monitoring and interaction will have a profound effect on the PR and marketing industry as we know it. PR and marketing efforts is increasingly about connecting with real people and because everyone is involved in a network, it’s not just up to the people working in the PR and marketing departments. A well thought out strategy will leverage the connections of the entire organization, leaving a more profound, valuable and documentable impact than any traditional campaign could ever hope for.
Want to start listening in on social media conversations? Sign up for the free trial of the Imooty social media monitoring tool today.
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Last week, Kristoffer was featured in an interview at Krawattenträger, a blog on social media marketing. Apart from talking about Imooty’s development over the past years, he was asked how Imooty uses social media for marketing purposes. The answer is that we haven’t done much of that (so far). The best ROI for our target audience has proved to be good old direct mail and followups per phone.
Many companies seem to be embarrassed admitting to this. Sure, there are many cases where there’s reason to cringe at opportunity lost by not following a social media marketing strategy, however, it also not for everyone.
First step is obviously finding out where your customers are likely to hang out. If you’re a B2B service, it probably won’t make sense to pursue MySpace users. Secondly, the effort required to convert “fans”, “contacts” or “friends” into paying customers can be considerable so there needs to be someone in charge of community management. Then, the million dollar question, what’s the social media marketing budget? It’ll definitely not be enough registering a profile here and there and wait for magic to occur…
Trying to do too much will inevitably end up with a lot of things being done poorly. Don’t try being everywhere all the time, focus on delivering content that your audience will find meaningful.
To conclude, there’s no sense in rushing into social media marketing just for the sake of it. Research whether it makes sense for your product or service, find out where your prospects are, how they interact and assess what your cost is going to be.
Already do social media marketing and want to assess your ROI? Register with Imooty.eu for a free trial today!
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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!
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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