Social

Media Monitoring
Social Media Monitoring Analyzing the Unexpected Results of Social Conversations
The purpose of this document is two-fold. Firstly, it is to explore the unexpected shifts in conversation that can occur around an event, campaign or message that is largely out of the control of the original author. Secondly, it is to consider how a company might begin to put some structure around their social media monitoring strategy to prepare for the expected and unexpected social impact to their brand value.

You Can Control When You Publish But Not How Message is Received

The impact of social media on our lives, and on our business has been remarkable. The full extent of how social media adoption and use has changed the way we share information, evaluate products and spread and react to messages still remains to be seen. But what is apparent is that people have access to tools that can potentially give them a larger platform with more leverage than ever before. And how companies articulate and manage their message is no longer under their complete control; they now need to consider how individuals will react and respond. Not knowing how an audience will react to an outreach effort places another layer of expectation on the company because they have to know how to manage both positive and negative consumer engagements. Theres a long list of examples of companies releasing highly-polished products or ad campaigns only to see their targeted creative work go free-wheeling into avenues of discussion and commentary wholly unintended and unexpected. A most recent and impressive example of a storys message expanding and shifting has been the Kony 2012 campaign put out by the Invisible Children group. Not only has the video become widely popular by leveraging social media technologies, but the ungovernable spotlight of inquiry has also shifted to the IC group. People want to know: Who is IC group? Who are the people behind the video? Whats their agenda?

While the IC group may have had the ultimate goal of contributing to Konys capture, viewers of their video had their own objectives. To illustrate the reach and influence of an individual with savvy and access to technology consider the case of Mike Daisey. Mike is widely claimed to have ousted Apples manufacturing practices in China by blending more traditional forms of protest with the

reach of social media. He has performed The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs in many theaters and most recently the script was made available for download from his site. And it has been downloaded. 40,000 times. Could Mike have had the same ever-expanding reach for his one-man show if he relied exclusively on the stage to promote his message? The point of both examples is to illustrate how quickly individuals or small groups of people can shine a light on lesser-known topics. The social commentary resulting from either of these examples would surprise many organizations and leave them scrambling to know how to engage and respond appropriately to hostile or simply curious customers.

How Do You Use Social Media Analytics to Measure Business Value

Of course, there have always been individuals, who have been catalysts for change, whose reach far exceeded their access to power. But its the availability of these technologies that make the occurrence of these events more likely and common. You know that when Encyclopedia Britannica is no longer available in print after 244 years that something fundamental has changed. Beyond the proliferation of technologies that give us unprecedented access to knowledge and enable us to share and collaborate is the challenge they present if a business wants to meaningfully analyze and monitor this social engagement. How do organizations determine a metric of value from all of the data points available? Are the metrics defined today going to scale and provide ongoing insights for a business?

Social Indicators By Industry

One recommendation when creating an analytics strategy is to categorize and interpret the social media conversations around your brand through the lens of what drives value for the business. What would an analytics strategy that focused on the influence of social media conversations on business metrics look like? By Broadcast TV For broadcast TV, it might be trending detail that tracks viewers, who describe their favorite show or watching behavior, within a competitive landscape. Companies would be able to evaluate how their show is performing against the competition and correlate it with other data, like Nielsen ratings.

By Financial Industry A financial industry may focus on customer satisfaction and the impact of pricing policies. Most recently, during the Bank Transfer Day protests many financial institutions were eager to understand not only how pricing changes might influence a customers intention to switch banks but also how their particular brand was perceived.

 By Digital or Creative Agency An agency may monitor a campaign to determine if ad resonated with audiences as intended, like they found it funny or were influenced to make a purchase. During the Super Bowl, Collective Intellect partnered with CNBC to produce the Super Sunday Ad Tracker to rank Super Bowl ads based on key social indicators, like: purchasing language, viewing intention, loyalty, funny, etc. and came up with the Engaged Consumer value, which was used to rank each ad. Volume-based metrics are still an important indicator for understanding the performance of a campaign relative to a competitor and the level of consumer engagement over time. But to truly measure the success of a campaign, its critical to monitor the indicators that may translate into purchasing behavior.

Plan for the Expected and the Unexpected

In each case, the intent of monitoring is to tie social business intelligence to key business metrics. Having a set of critical social indicators that correlate with other business metrics will bring focus to your social media analytics efforts. Additionally, emphasis on driving and measuring business value through the use of social media will ensure that the approach is integrated across the business. After all, your organization is not in business to Tweet but to promote the value of your brand to persuade and encourage consumers to purchase a new product, watch a premier or get answers to their question from your support resources. Unfortunately, as a business you dont always know how the conversations will evolve and when the spotlight will shift from product, to a customer service complaint, to

manufacturing practices. Its important that an organization be able to track how a campaign resonates with consumers. But it may be even more important for an organization to be able to detect emerging trends and issues that may surface unexpectedly and that generate swift and sudden momentum across the social media landscape. Your organization cant nor should it try to control the variety of social response to your message but it should be equipped to analyze those conversations for actionable insight that can be used to inform how an organization respond to consumers. If youd like to find out how to intelligently listen to your social customer, visit the Collective Intellect Web site or contact us.