When working with clients to structure their social media monitoring programs, most companies tell us they initially track what people say about their brands out of fear. And it is not a fear of unknown insights or even being a laggard, since everyone else is already doing it. Often times, it is a secretly selfish fear, motivated by:
- Brand flaming: Will customers’ negative comments tarnish our brand’s reputation?
- Product flaws: Does our product have issues we don’t know about?
- Executive mandate: Our CEO made it a priority
- Internal misperception: Does our internal brand knowledge match that of the general public?
- Competitive advantage: What if our competitor gets these insights before our company does?
This list goes on. And frankly, that’s okay. Because fear can be a great motivator; mitigating risk is always one of a company’s top priorities when it comes to social technologies.
So what’s not “okay” with this picture?
Company commitment can remain in the wrong place. While fear can inspire an organization to procure a listening platform like Radian6 quickly, it can also limit its ability to fully determine the resources, roles, and overall process required to make this initial investment useful beyond its original intent. When fear colors your judgment, you need an objective plan to benchmark your social media monitoring process against.
Consider exploring these additional criteria as you develop your day-to-day social media monitoring process:
- OBJECTIVES: What are you goals for your social media monitoring process? What do you need it to accomplish?
- WORKFLOW: What does your workflow look like?
- LEAD AND SUPPORT: Who should lead your social media monitoring effort internally? Who should be involved or consulted?
- CRISIS: How will you escalate critical external social media comments or issues?
- RESOURCES: What roles do you need to support your workflow?
- TOPIC: What are the topics or areas you will need to address based on external comments? Where does that information currently exist within your organization? How will you access it? Who will be your subject matter expert?
- CONFIGURATION: What company policies or regulations does the process need to follow? If you’re an organization with multiple brands, where does this process need to be consistent? Where does it need to be customized?
- INTEGRATION: What internal systems does your social media monitoring process need to integrate with?
- EFFICIENCY: What existing internal processes or resources can your effort emulate or learn from?
- SUBSTITUTION: What is your contingency plan? How does your workflow change when a process participant is unavailable or leaves the company?
- ROADMAP: What does this process’s future state entail?
- METRICS: What does success look like for your company’s monitoring effort? How will you measure it? How will you report these insights back to key internal stakeholders?
Here’s the takeaway. If you stay focused on your fears and simply get started, you’ll never extract the insights, make use of them, and scale your efforts. You’ll pay for a tool that is great in theory, but sits unused in practice. You will end up chasing down comments (literally) and frustrated — with a pile of disorganized, outdated themes waiting to be shown to your colleagues. And customers will question why your company is so hesitant to make tangible improvements to your products and services, when they can see the critical suggestions directed toward you everyday.
Protecting your brand is important, but not at the expense of keeping your social media monitoring process at the (dys)functional status quo.
Cynthia,
Good post. One of the big things I would add to the list and suggest brands do prior to initiating a social media listening program (or elevating their program to an enterprise level) is to conduct a full scale internal analysis to identify needs and map them to specific departmental business goals.
The companies that ask themselves the tough questions upfront are the ones that reap the greatest value, insights and benefits from the data. This is easier said than done and one of the reasons we have started a WOMMA sub-committee to assist brands in this area before they go to market for support.
Mike Spataro
Enterprise Strategy
Visible Technologies
@mikespataro
Mike – great point. But I would add that factoring in all the organization’s monitoring needs into the program at once may decrease its likelihood of success long term. From what we’ve seen, building a relevant program requires a methodical approach. Planning how to increase the breadth of your program and training should help business goals become a foundation of whatever process is developed.
Social media monitoring is a tremendous threat to the status quo in every organization, because its very presence makes it hard for companies to ignore real customer feedback. And I understand. Who among us likes to receive “feedback” all the time? I’d much rather get a “csat” rating at the end of the year than hear about every little screwup as it happens, only now it’s RT’s instead of the office watercooler And yet it is important because it’s all of our jobs to get better at what we do every day, not to avoid the reality of customer experiences.
Yet however uncomfortable social media makes us companies, social media also helps us see the real impact that our products and services have on customers, receive sincere appreciation, and meet real customers.
Thanks for the comment, Margaret. It’s always surprising to me how many companies don’t have a standard feedback loop in place to actually use their monitoring insights within their businesses. Understanding the “why” behind these opinions and developing tactics to address them is one way to address the discomfort.
I’m wondering if this goes far enough.
Some brands need to do more than monitoring – but actually commit to going all the way through to connection and participation, and not just from a strictly ‘marketing’ sense.
Social Media gives the chance for brands to humanize themselves – open up, get involved, and speak as equals with their customers. Only envisioning the relationship as a remote one still controlled by the brand is protectionism. And brands will not build credibility to deal with “Brand flaming” if they are not actively involved.
Hi Jay,
Thanks for your perspective. While I agree there needs to be commitments beyond listening, I think companies need to be strategic about what programs they prioritize first.
Just like building a house, you pour the foundation to support everything else you need. Without a strong commitment to understanding customer sentiment, pain points, and overall outlook any social media participation a company attempts — in any capacity, e.g., customer service, HR, marketing — will be difficult to sustain.