A Weapon of Mass Discovery: Social Media Monitoring
that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.
To win the battle for customers, brands need to know more than their enemy.
Monitoring has enabled the discovery of surprising insights for our clients, beyond the definitive determination of optimal platforms and competitor analysis. Monitoring reveals, comprehensively, the consumer behaviour, attitudes and demographics of an ever-connected, highly opinionated, always on-the-move customer.
Monitoring is the first tactic I deploy, to filter through the noise and hear the conversations that count rather than counting conversations.
Monitoring is raw qualitative data – brands don’t have to decipher some code, there’s no speculation on my or my team’s part about where your target audience is online – there are no assumptions about what they are saying or how they’re saying.
Instead, we devise strategies that are founded on the realities of real-time insights, leading to the optimal allocation of time and resources to concentrate where they are put to best use.
The Quintessential Minefield
TO ASSUME IS TO #FAIL
Social recruitment is essential ammunition in any employer brand’s arsenal – building brand recognition, connecting with prospects early in their career decision-making journey, and being at the forefront of their mind when it comes to being the employer of choice.
Monitoring surpasses traditional tools such as surveys or focus groups as it’s raw, unadulterated, opinion from the widest sample of qualified conversations in REAL-TIME.
CASE STUDY <Exclusive Content for Ad:Tech Attendees>
MISNOMA #1 The client believed that because they weren’t yet in the social space that their competitors wouldn’t be either. Monitoring revealed the opposite – that their direct competitors were already well established and using sophisticated techniques to tap into the talent pool, build relationships with prospects and influencers.
MISNOMA #2 The client also had a preconceived notion that Facebook was the place their target audience would be most likely to engage – they were keen to integrate fancy Apps and expensive competitions, but monitoring revealed that Twitter was THE hot-bed of conversations amongst an audience that was open to direct conversations with recruiters and employers alike.
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
Benjamin Franklin
The customer – is increasingly realizing they have the power!
You and I as customers have always had expectations and access to some choice, but now we have access to a plethora of options, and now we have a voice – it’s loud and far reaching and I for one, am not afraid to use it if those expectations aren’t met!
Brands need to understand that they can’t stop the conversation from happening, but Monitoring is like equipping your soldiers with night-vision-goggles – it allows you to see great detail in the darkness to avert being ambushed.
Brands can listen and minimise fall-out from “enemy fire” by taking it from a one-sided rant to a two-way conversation.
Turn ranters into ravers!
Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the gun down.”
Malcolm X
Thankfully, the risk mitigation measures we put in place have so far protected our client’s brands against trolling, verbal assaults and instead has restored a degree of control over how their brand is represented and perceived online. If we weren’t proactively listening or have alerts in place, the response time would be much slower and at the mercy of the masses, or worse, the media.
The only certainty in this life is change but …. that change can be directed toward a constructive end.”
Henry A. Wallace
Ultimately we’re accountable to our clients and must deliver a ROI.
We don’t want to win the battle but lose the war.
Monitoring is the key to moving beyond the quantitative metrics of success – yes, the social proof that comes from the quantity of LIKES, REPINS, RETWEETS and SHARES has a quality of its own, but Monitoring allows brands to see first-hand what are sometimes considered the intangible metrics of success:
- positive sentiment around a product/service or the brand itself;
- social behaviour and tracking the online actions of and interactions with the consumer;
- identifying brand advocates and observing the reach of their influence;
In Vietnam, America fixated on how many bombs they dropped and how many enemy they killed because that’s easy to calculate – History may well have taken a different course if they had instead concerned themselves with the hearts & minds of the local population.
By benchmarking our client’s online efforts from the start we track turning-points in sentiment, reconcile events based on cause-and-effect and evaluate the value of each social media initiative:
- Are the chosen platforms working?
- Are there other networks that could be integrated and developed?
- Are the messages reaching the right demographic?
- Is the content resonating with the audience or should the community managers be using a different tone of voice or mix of “social spice”?
The answers to these and other questions we ask, feedback into the broader communications strategy, which has to be malleable and responsive to the ever-evolving world of social.
Social is dynamic!
Monitoring helps keep you informed of changing trends/patterns so you can continually adapt strategies/initiatives to inform your internal stakeholders and better your external communications