Web Business by Ken Burbary

Social Media Listening Still Needs to Grow Up

Social Media participation continues to mature and evolve the ways in which we connect and deepen relationships with one another, and the brands we choose to let in our life and interact with. However, despite all the efforts thus far, our ability to monitor and understand what happens in social media isn’t keeping pace with usage.

eMarketer recently published findings from a InformationWeek Analytics survey of Enterprise professionals about their current Social Media Listening efforts, and the results were disappointing to me.

The most common method of monitoring is to rely on basic notifications, like Google Alerts, as a rudimentary brand monitoring solution. Despite the shortcomings of this method, 44% of respondents aren’t even doing this, the most basic form of social listening.

After this comes outsourcing to a full service vendor or using specialized social media listening tools (like Radian6, SM2, ListenLogic) with internal resources at 16% and 15% respectively. A full 40% of all respondents didn’t know what, if any, approach their company is taking when it comes to social listening. Either the survey respondents aren’t plugged into what’s happening in the company in this area (a possibility), or there is evidence of a problem within the organization (most likely in my experience).

The survey also looked at a company’s process for responding to specific types of online responses by consumers. Unsurprisingly, the number of organizations that have developed specific processes and capabilities to handle online responses like customer complaints on social networks, inappropriate employee comments, comments on official owned-media sites is also very low. Just 14% of companies have defined how to appropriately handle a negative customer comment on their Facebook page(s). Only 12% have done so for Twitter (probably something Kenneth Cole could stand to do given the uproar over their recent tweet).

What does all this mean? Several possibilities:

1. Companies still lack the necessary education and knowledge of how to leverage the wealth of listening solutions to accurately monitor and understand online customer interactions and responses
2. Companies still lack the resources required to properly staff and implement adequate listening capabilities
3. Companies are struggling with “shiny object syndrome”. There is no lack of social listening solutions/providers (full list here at the SMM Wiki). Understanding listening goals/objectives, needs and mapping them to the potential set of listening vendors requires time and effort. It’s much easier to sit through product demonstrations full of social metrics eye candy, and be wowed by their reporting and analytics capabilities rather than do the less glorious but essential planning work.

Fear not though, there is light at the end of the social listening tunnel! Creating a strategic listening plan isn’t impossible, nor difficult if the right steps are taken. Adopt a comprehensive framework to guide your social listening efforts across the company. Several options exist, like the Social Analytics Lifecycle.

The most important point I can emphasize to get social listening to mature within your organization, is to start with specific business processes that listening will support and improve. Almost every organization has sales, marketing, customer support, human resources, etc… Each of these departments can benefit from social listening, if done correctly. Want examples? Check out the 6 Areas of Your Business That Should Be Listening post by Amber Naslund over at the Brass Tack Thinking blog. It will help set you out on the right direction to  get started, but what if you’re already doing “something” and want to optimize or improve it. Then go read Six Steps to Better Social Media Listening by Chuck Hemann at the Analytics is King blog. Finally, THEN go down the tool path if you’re going to take on social listening yourself, or find a full service partner that has the diversity of experience in platforms and top notch analysts that deliver meaningful insights and information (remember data is worthless unless it is transformed into insights through analysis).

What is your organization doing in social listening? What are your most difficult obstacles to overcome?

Social Media Monitoring Wiki Update

When the Social Media Monitoring Tools & Solutions Wiki launched a little more than two and half weeks ago, I wasn’t sure what the response from the social media community would be. To say the least, it has been overwhelming. I’m grateful to all the people that volunteered to expand on the original list, and submitted additions of their own. In a short time, we’ve built up a comprehensive set of world class monitoring tools from companies that span the globe. I’ve already received a deluge of feedback, requests for more information, and ideas to expand on what is already there.

Now, I’m happy to announce that I’ve been able to add some new information based on what was the number 1 most requested addition. I’ve added a new set of information for each tool about whether it is free or a paid commercial solution. You can now easily scan and sort the list by Paid/Free to select a sub group of tools to evaluate.

As of right now, the social media monitoring wiki contains 34 free tools (wow!) that you can use to listen to online conversations with, along with 60 paid commercial tools, ranging from inexpensive and lightweight for smaller tasks, to heavy duty full service platforms. I hope you can use this new information to more informed decisions when evaluating social media monitoring tools.

Next Steps:

There are many other information requests and additions that I am considering (based on your feedback), but the biggest news is about adding sub-pages for each tool, containing specific information about costs, usage, frequency of data updates, real-time vs batch, ease of use and quality of support to name a few. Please continue to submit feedback by emailing: [email protected]

And thank you for the support, it is sincerely appreciated!

The Dirty Little Secret of Social Media Monitoring

Social Media Monitoring (sometimes called social media listening or conversation monitoring) is widely recognized as one of the first social media best practices. It is the first step in getting to know and understand the behavior and needs of an online audience. Most companies that are engaged in this activity have an internal team or outsource the effort to their agency.

There is no shortage of tools/platforms available to monitor your key terms. Companies like Radian6, Techrigy, Nielsen and Cymphony are quite busy these days rolling out new partnerships and product features, all aimed at providing more meaningful data and better ways to use it. It’s the no-brainer call right? Fire up a tool and plug in some terms, and voila, instant answers.

However, I’ve begun to notice inconsistencies in the data that different social media monitoring tools produce. The dirty little secret or so it seems, is they aren’t all working with the same data sources. For this post, I want to discuss some differences between Radian6 and Techrigy SM2. This is not meant as a criticism of either tool, because I think they are both fantastic at what they do, but rather an attempt to highlight an issue, generate a public conversation around it so that everyone using Radian6 or SM2 can benefit.

Some background: While doing a recent set of searches for a brand using the EXACT same keywords and phrases, without using source filters, the results look different. Take a moment to view the charts below for R6 and SM2 results.

Now, ignoring the fact that both tools have some differences in categories, focus on the main sources of online conversation. Blogs, forums and micromedia (Twitter).

You’ll see a  dramatically higher number of blog results for Radian6 compared to SM2 (266 to 91). And for forums, vice versa (SM2 has 396 to Radian6 200).

While I expect to find subtle variations in the results between tools, I DO NOT expect to be put into a position to question which tool is “right” and which is “wrong”. Perhaps that isn’t the way to look at it though. Is the real answer an aggregate of both data sets? If so, how does one easily filter out the unique data versus duplicates?

This may raise additional questions that you need to ask yourself before selecting a monitoring solution.

Which subset, or channel, of social media does a particular tool specialize in?

Does this data mean if you know your audience is spending time on forums, SM2 may be better solution? Perhaps. Perhaps not. I suspect there is more to this than it appears on the surface. Hopefully someone else that is also monitoring can shed some light. With any luck, we can get some folks from both companies to chime in (David Alston, Amber Naslund, Jimmy Rey, Connie Bensen – any takers?)

UPDATED: I’ve been contacted by both Radian6 and Techrigy representatives, and am working with them to identify the source of the problems. After we have resolved the issue and feel confident about the source, I will update again.