When a customer of one of Graham Robb’s clients set up a Facebook page spreading false rumours about the said client, Robb’s internal social media monitoring tools soon kicked in. Quickly alerted to the offending page, Robb and his colleagues at Recognition PR rapidly entered crisis PR mode. Forewarned and forearmed, they were, according to Robb, “ready to field calls if the issue was picked up on by journalists.”
Robb’s firm has a particular niche in PR crisis management, making this ability to spot potentially damaging stories, which are just under the mainstream media radar, invaluable. But what about brand monitoring for B2B marketers in general?
A must-have tool
“I believe it’s a must-have,” says Gifford Morley-Fletcher, director of strategy, inbound marketing at Base One, when asked about social media monitoring. “It’s such an easy thing to do so it would be a mistake not to do it. Most important of all, what you discover by monitoring social media can impact on all of your marketing activities.”
Elaborating on this point, Charley Hayes, social media strategist with Onlinefire says, “Online monitoring enables brands to identify and map online audiences by influence, topic and trend. Monitoring of key conversations brings insight which, in turn, can drive new brand marketing initiatives and PR campaigns. Monitoring facilitates real-time crisis responses and is also a great way to gather competitor intelligence and identify opportunities for conversion.”
Such benefits lead Hayes to conclude that, “social media monitoring is crucial to every brand, regardless of size or industry sector.”
Free monitoring tools
There are – literally – hundreds of social media monitoring tools available in what is a rapidly evolving market place. Many tools are free. Some, such as Social Mention, Google Alerts and HowSociable can be used to track your brand across multiple media platforms. Others focus on a particular media such as blogs (Technorati), message boards (BoardTracker) and Twitter (Tweet Beep).
The number and quality of free tools is increasing all the time. A more robust, in-depth monitoring strategy, however, may require investment in one of the (numerous) paid-for tools. These can bring with them additional features, including: more powerful customisation and calibration options; more robust analytical and reporting capabilities; greater technical and customer support; easier integration into other marketing platforms; more privacy (brands might be hesitant about keying confidential information into a free tool).
Paid-for monitoring tools
The complex nature of social media monitoring makes a direct comparison between tools rather tricky. There are web-based tools such as Scout Labs that allow marketers to monitor – and gain rich analysis around – what customers are saying about their brands, as well as looking at general trends. Radian6 tracks keywords across all social media, monitoring everything from location to sentiment and it can offer real-time data on a dashboard widget. Trackur.com is relatively easy to use and comes with a free 14-day trial. Results from keyword searches come in a list and you can click into these to rate their sentiment; this provides email alerts whenever you get a negative sentiment mention in the press. At the Rolls Royce end of the market are tools such as Nielsen Buzzmetrics. As a hands-off tool, Nielsen does the analysing and provides regular reports about what’s being said about your brand in the social media space.
Comparing different tools
Social media agency FreshMinds Research and sister company FreshNetworks reviewed several leading social media monitoring tools (www.freshnetworks.com/ blog/2010/04/social-media-monitoring-review-2010-test-1-results), benchmarking them on key criteria. Seven tools – BIZ360, Sysomos, Nielsen, Alterian, Brandwatch, Scoutlabs and Radian6 – were used to track online conversations relating to a particular brand over a set timescale.
The research highlighted the difficulty of comparing monitoring tools. For instance, there was an alarming difference in the figures that each one produced when counting conversations relating to the brand, with 11 times difference between the smallest number of conversations (Biz360) and the largest (Radian6). Why was this? It is partly explained by the fact social media monitoring tools classify the location of conversations in different ways – either using the URL, IP address or based on the language being used.
The research also found that some tools take several days before they find an online conversation – a delay known as ‘data latency’. For instance, Brandwatch was the fastest at searching for, and processing, new online data, while some parts of Nielsen Buzzmetrics were the slowest. Yet Brandwatch doesn’t cover as many geographies and conversation types as Nielsen does. Further trade-offs – for instance between depth of analysis provided by the tool and its ease of use – were also highlighted by the research.
James Turner, research director with FreshNetworks, says the overriding messages from the research were: the need for a constant dialogue with tool providers to get the best from tools; clients may need to use multiple tools depending on business objectives; with sentiment analysis there may be a requirement for qualitative research experience; without correctly configured searches, a user may miss the key issues for their brand.
Agency advice on monitoring tools
Agency advice on use of tools is in-keeping with the findings of the FreshMinds research. “I have yet to find one stand-alone monitoring system that accurately captures every online conversation across all social media platforms,” says Hayes.
Ville Väinämö, a digital planner at Publicis Modem, works with a wide variety of clients, each of whom subscribes to a different set of monitoring tools and analytics platforms.
“Generally speaking, there are three important things to consider up-front when choosing a monitoring tool,” he says. “Firstly, how will I use this tool, or what objectives do I (or the client) have for this tool – what functionalities, what level of automation, what level of manual filtering? Secondly, what other tools do I use, or how easily will this tool integrate with the other tools already at my disposal? Thirdly, can I integrate this data source with other data sources (such as website analytics, search data, customer database) so that any insights and strategies are actionable across the business?”
Responding to comments
How brands respond to comments via social media – and, indeed, whether they respond – is an issue even the leading brands are still getting to grips with. Morley-Fletcher points out how, in the case of positive comments there are simple actions that can reinforce any benefits gained, e.g. retweeting a positive comment or adding further knowledge and insight into a positive blog.
In truth, the greater challenges come when dealing with negative or misleading comments about a brand. Talking to a number of people on this issue, it’s possible to deduce some general rules of thumb:
1. Respond in a timely manner;
2. Don’t get involved in an online slanging match (the advice from Graham Robb here is to “put a marker down,” and leave it there);
3. Think very carefully about your tone of language;
4. Be prepared to accept that social media is here to stay and negative comments will come your way.
When it comes to timing, Hayes says, “If the information posted about the brand is misleading or inaccurate, we encourage our clients to respond in a polite and timely manner – within 24 hours from the original comment appearing online. The response should be professional and objective, critiquing the issue as opposed to the commentator.”
As for tone of language, Morley-Fletcher makes an interesting point about the importance of not coming across as arrogant or overly-corporate. “The big challenge is understanding the difference between the language of the corporate world and the blogger,” he says. “The point about social media is that it is not about being able to control the conversation.” He goes on to suggest that putting out a blanket press release won’t wash with the social media community, which is more intimate and personal. “And it is this that makes it so time-consuming,” he adds.
Inhouse or agency?
Whether to monitor inhouse or via an agency is basically a question of resources. Morley-Fletcher’s final comment above is telling. Monitoring a brand via social media can be hugely taxing and, as he points out, taking the decision to respond to comment is not something you can do by halves. Morley-Fletcher suggests that the brands that have the resources should do the monitoring themselves.
In making the decision about whether to outsource, brands also need to think carefully about the skills that will be required. “While the online monitoring itself is usually pretty straightforward to set up, analysing the results can prove very time-intensive,” says Hayes.
