If You Only Do *One Thing in Social Media
To make up for my overlong absence from the Internets, I’ve hit on a new series of blog posts, 5 in all, that make the case for the top things your company ought to be doing if it’s still babystepping its way into Social Media Marketing.
I’m going to be taking a distinctly tactical approach with this series; partly because I so often discuss strategy on this blog, and partly cuz I’m still pretty fried from getting settled in California…
If you only do one thing in Social Media, it ought to be SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING.
I want to harken back to our work with H&R Block (HRB) in the 2009 tax season to make my case here. When SHIFT got started with HRB, the company was all over the proverbial Conversation Prism: from MySpace to SecondLife, from Twitter to YouTube, and beyond. Some of the content was informational and relevant, some of the engagement was sincere and helpful; but there were also a lot of wasted cycles spent on clever interactive campaigns, etc.
Working with HRB’s Paula Drum (still a client, over at Gettington – hi Paula!), SHIFT dug into some hardcore SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING. Not just about HRB, mind you – because surely we’d see conversations by and about HRB with such obvious approaches – but also with the simple question in mind, “Where do people ask questions about taxes?”
Turned out that there were a ton of tax-wary citizens hanging out in Yahoo! Answers, and, on Amazon.com, within the message boards undergirding TurboTax and HRB’s own TAXCUT software.
I don’t plan to turn this post into a full-on case study, but suffice to say that even after we exited the scene, the good folks at HRB boosted the number of tax pros devoted to Social Media Monitoring and Response by 100x, from the 10 we had to work with in 2009, to 1,000 in 2010.
Point is, the monitoring effort, all by itself, would have been invaluable to HRB marketers. It told them where TO put their resources, and where to STOP putting their resources.
The same will be true of any company. If the brand is willing to do only ONE THING in Social Media, then before “blogging,” before “tweeting,” before ANYTHING else, I recommend plain ol’ listening. Not just because “listening will help the brand better attune its approach to online conversations,” which is the fluff any Social Media Goon will sell you on, but also because it will help the brand figure out where to have those conversations in the first place.
It’s as much about efficiency as it is about engagement.
Top tools I recommend: Sysomos, Radian6
Next time: “If You Only Do *Two Things in Social Media …” Can you guess what I’ll recommend? Are there other Social Media Monitoring Tools that you like using? Let me know in the comments!
Posted on: June 22, 2010 at 12:11 pm By Todd Defren
Subscribe by Email
Great article and comments. A new comer and really robust tool for end-to-end social media analysis is http://www.digitalstakeout.com
Hi Todd!
Paula, here. Thanks for the nice walk down memory lane. 2009 seems so long ago.
I think the important thing for everyone to remember is that social media monitoring is important for every brand. However, what you can learn and the strategies that you take will be different depending upon your brand. H&R Block is an established brand with a lot of customers – meaning a lot of conversations. Additionally, tax time is a time when many people – customer or not – have questions about their taxes. Monitoring the conversation was the beginning, but understanding the dynamic around conversations about taxes was the broader opportunity to provide a positive brand experience to prospective customers as well as helping existing customers.
Gettington.com is a new brand and does not have on-going conversations (yet). But social media and social monitoring is still important, especially to understand where and how to join a conversation.
I understand how crazy moves can be. I’m up to my eyeballs in boxes as well.
Take Care!
Paula Drum
General Manager, Gettington.com
HI Todd,
I frankly don’t agree with your statement “social media monitoring” is the one thing that brand should do.
It can be a waste of time when
#1 brand don’t focus on the right people.
#2 brand monitor … but don’t listen. (i.e there is a huge difference between monitoring a few billions people to spot a signal for your brand and doing deep listening to people that matter). In a true social program, people are limited by the Dunbar number and if the outcome is to build trust and relationship, you can’t do that with more than a few 100′s to a few 1000′s people at a time
#3 your brand is unknown
It may be right for H&R who has already a huge brand recognition and a broad service offering that span many customer segments. It’s clear that your case study is a great one. However,
For many clients, the #1 thing to do is to align their social media $ to their marketing strategy:
- segment : who is important for them
- position: what they want to say, learn and sometimes they have to engage and get feedback
- then monitor, measure and adjust.
So, it’s not a one size fits all and really depends on business goal.
Best.
This is a great series, Todd. If it took a move to California to bring it out, then it was well worth it!
I really like the idea of listening not just for mention of your brand, but rather for mention of your industry or the services you are equipped to provide. While mentions of your brand — positive, negative or neutral — are obviously important to monitor, it’s the people who are talking about your industry and not about you that you really want to make aware of your brand.
Reaching these people where they already spend time and are comfortable interacting is paramount to initiating a conversation with them. It’s difficult to expect them to come to you if you’re unwilling to go to them first.
Awesome post! This is very true. We’ve been told to “engage” so often that we tend to think that the engagement is the point of social media and want to jump right in. We forget what we learned in school. When developping any business plan or strategy, the first step is to figure out the goal (say, engage with folk interested in Toy Story 3), figure out where those people are (monitor and listen first), and then follow through with the plan. We shouldn’t skip the second step just because we’re excited to get started!
And I used ViralHeat right now for monitoring.
social media is productive or obstructive for companies and their employees. Software is being developed and policy and restrictions are being decided everyday by IT managers. The security of company networks are at stake but the potential for innovation using social media is a large enough carrot for the discussion of how to properly utilize the medium continues. Palo Alto networks came up with a whitepaper, http://bit.ly/d2NZRp, which will explore the issues surrounding social media in the workplace. It is important to not only understand the immediate benefits of doing business.
Nice post, also, investing some time on identifying keywords will be well worth it. This process is indeed similar to SEO; just as you want your website to index for words and phrases people use to search for your (type of) products and services, you’ll want to monitor keywords that people use to describe interests that run parallel to what you offer.
For example, if you’re in the business of making designer shirts from orders received through your website, you’ll want to monitor “custom-made shirt”, “tailor-made shirt” and/or “made-to-measure shirt”. Simply monitoring ‘designer shirts’ could also work, but there’s a risk that’ll be too generic.
In this process, you may want to compare ‘your’ keywords to those used in connection with competitors product and services. It can also be a good idea to monitor key industry terminology to pick up the latest trends and identify new directions for where customer interests are headings.
Lastly, a shoutout for http://www.imooty.eu/ as an alternative to Sysomos & Alterian
Hey Todd,
Great post and thanks! for recommending Radian6 as a tool to use.
I think we will see more and more agencies embrace social media monitoring – as C-Suites begin to understand social media and their concepts, they will begin to question. Just as in traditional, it’s:
1. Where’s the reports?
2. How is this working for me?
3. How is this fitting into our brand objectives and strategy?
4. Where is the ROI?
PR now has the opportunity to showcase both quantitative and qualitative results, just by doing something we do on a daily basis – listening to conversation. It’s all about what fits into your brand, not what fits into everyone else’s (similar concept to conversation is specific to you.)
Thanks!
Lauren Fernandez
Community Manager, Radian6
@cubanalaf
Great post Todd!
I totally agree that monitoring can be used as more than just a way to jump into conversations. Just listening to the way your brand is spoken about or even just knowing where it’s being spoken about are also equally important. This is great advice.
Also, thanks for shouting out Sysomos as great tool.
- Sheldon, community manager for Sysomos