Monitoring & Analyzing Social Media

Social media reaches critical mass

“Text messaging, blogging and social networking have reached critical mass, with more than half of adults now relying on at least one of these so-called Web 2.0 platforms for communicating with friends, family, or colleagues on a regular basis, finds the latest installment of an ongoing tracking study from Interpublic’s Universal McCann unit.”

MediaPost

If half of adults are using it, the rest will soon follow- it’s no longer a subset of the web, it’s the primary communications network.

Internet=Information, social media=communication.

Behavioral targeting and social media monitoring

I’m continually amazed that the dialog around behavioral targeting doesn’t include social media monitoring (our territory). If I’m buying a car, I’m increasingly likely to go out into Twitter, blogs, forums, etc., to compare experiences with others who own or are thinking about owning that car. If I’m a brand owner, this kind of conversation monitoring is critical to understanding behavior very early in the buying process. That’s the situation now but it is evolving very rapidly.
We’re seeing evidence that consumers are not using conventional sites and search for information and they’re not allowing surveying of their actual behavior when they do. It is analogous to the movement to either lie to or refuse to participate in political polling, a movement that kills the value of the survey biz. Only monitoring can offer insights in this environment.

This realization is gradually starting to filter out to the marketing community and it is causing that proverbial groundswell effect everyone is talking about. If consumers are talking amongst themselves as a primary means of gathering information for a buying decision then virtually every traditional means of reaching them is broken, possibly forever. The best sign I’ve seen that this is happening is the repeated attempts at conferences and forums for the advertising business to try and figure out how to deliver advertising to social media, a model that can’t work because that world is too granular and too changeable: An influential blog post or Twitter thread can rise in value, affect decisions and fade away before any relevant ad has a chance of getting served there.

Monitoring provides the window and drill-down offers the access but the final challenge we all face is managing our end of the dialog in beneficial ways. That’s the new marketing paradigm IMHO.

The clowd: Seth Godin on the future of social media

Crowd + Cloud = Clowd

“Well, when you take a photo, you can automatically send it to the clowd. The clowd can color correct and adjust the photo based on the million other photos it has seen just like this. [Debbie wonders, isn't it called a "cloud"? I guess I was subconsciously coining a new term--which I so rarely do--this time, combining crowd and cloud into something new. I think I like it, even if it is a bit artificial].

The clowd can figure out that this was the high school graduation (same time, same location), and realize that you were there with fifty of your closest friends, and automatically group the photos together… leaving out the people it’s obvious you don’t like.”

As usual Seth is ahead of the ‘clowd’.

Social Media Measurement vs. Monitoring

I found this on the Barkley PR site and it got me thinking:

“Measurement is not something we do after executing a campaign. It’s part of planning. We craft communications objectives to support your business goals. Built in are specific measurement metrics: audience, timeframe, benchmarks and measurement. All of this happens before the first brainstorm, so we can ensure that each strategy and each tactic helps achieve your objectives.” (italics mine)

I think they’re right on target with this point. In social media, which is rapidly becoming the media for engagement, you have to measure constantly- that’s we prefer the term ‘monitor’. There is no timeline here, it’s an evolving organic network of opinion that needs to be listened to. And the engagement is also constant, which is a big change for many people.

Franke James on Twitter

If you’re old school like me then you’re one of the multitudes who are either just discovering the allure of Twitter or are about to. In case you don’t get the whole thing, check out Franke James’ brilliant take on why Twitter is more than a fad.

And while you’re there don’t miss her equally brilliant illustrated blog posts. They’re amazing.

Social media and education marketing

We’re seeing a lot of interest in social media from educational marketers, not surprising given the age of their target market. There are conversations going on about college choice throughout social media with prospective students comparing notes, parents checking out each others’ experiences, current students talking about the college lifestyle and marketers ranking and promoting schools.

Many of the college marketing people we’ve spoken with are not thinking about monitoring, they are on the fast-track to having it in place and working for them now. And it’s not just promotion, it’s risk management because it doesn’t take long for a negative story or rumor to spread among this audience, true or not. They (students) don’t dip into social media, they live in it. So you have to have a handle on it and delve in when negative stories surface.

On the positive side, monitoring can also identify great stories and enable you to reach out to the individual telling them, add them to your official social media sites use them to position your school positively.

Are Internet sites ‘old’ media? The ‘Control Factor’

Erick at Techcrunch (yes another reference to them but they’ve been doing some insightful stuff about social media) talks about how traditional media has just recently discovered that they can no longer control the message.

This got me thinking about something I’ve been mulling over regarding social or user-generated media vs. ‘traditional’ web media: Are old school web sites becoming similar to the older model of print and broadcast media? This ‘control factor’ might just be the differentiation point. Social media is completely out of control- it cannot be controlled because it is impossible to regulate and it does not want to be controlled. Traditional media, including traditional web media, utilizes control to generate exclusivity. This exclusivity creates desire which appeals to advertisers. If you remove the control the business falls apart. The Craigslist free classified ad model took the control away from the newspapers and they immediately started failing as businesses.

Social media’s lack of a controlling force may mean the end of advertising as we know it. Advertisers can’t risk brand association with an uncontrolled message. To promote something in social media you must create a positive relationship with individuals that outweighs any negative relationships with other individuals. That’s why sentiment measurement is so critical: You have to track whether you’re staying on the positive side and if you’re not you have to change what you’re doing immediately. Advertising and PR pitches won’t help, in fact they will probably worsen the situation. Instead you’re going to have to focus on relationships, lots of relationships…

User-Generated Content (UGC) can be a problem- d’oh!

Sarah from ReadWriteWeb has a great piece about the volatility of UGC and the importance of social media monitoring for brand stakeholders. Obviously for us here at Techrigy this is preaching to the converted, but she is absolutely right- you cannot ‘control’ the conversation nor should you try to. Monitor, analyze, listen, join in and participate. Everyone becomes a customer service person in this new paradigm and once again, as always, the customer (user) is always right (even when they’re wrong!).

What’s on your TwitPitch?

BusinessWeek has a piece on the latest in elevator speeches, those short and sweet business descriptions we all need when we’re standing in an elevator and someone asks what our company does. The article covers the latest form, using Twitter’s 140 character limit to define a so-called TwitPitch- describing who you are, what you do or what your company does.

But using Twitter, let alone pitching on it, is still a big leap for most companies, PR firms, and reporters. In the month since Boyd began Twitpitch, just about 150 messages have been tagged with the “#twitpitch” label, according to a search on Twitter search tool Summize.

“Boyd, who now takes pitches only via Twitter, acknowledges some companies may resist the idea. But he also says some PR people have told him they favor the process. “The real value isn’t how many commas you put into an e-mail. It’s really about how effective you are about getting people who are interested to take a call or a meeting,” he says.”

Twitter becoming more relevant with analysis

I’ve been in a lot of SM2 product demos in the last two weeks, most with PR and marketing professionals. They’ve provided a tremendous amount of input, insight and competitor intelligence in addition to enthusiasm about the depth of SM2’s capabilities (which I’m learning more about in the process as a newbie to the company!).

Today, in a great meeting, we walked an agency pro through her Freemium account and helped her filter results and see how the model works with one of her client brands. At one point we decided to see what Twitter was returning about her brand and the competitors (a food product category) and she said she really didn’t see the value of tracking Twitter. I understand her perspective because I felt the same until I started seeing how people are using Twitter to discuss product experiences. We went in and immediately found multiple Twitter threads about her brand which is a fairly specialized product. There was some pretty positive feedback taking place in real time as in ‘I’m eating breakfast including XYZ and its really good- not what I expected…etc.’

Bringing back that kind of ‘listening in’ value to a client is pretty cool- and very valuable. I could see a whole ad campaign emerging or, on the downside, a chance to make changes before something negative gets out of hand…