As the control of marketing messages rapidly slips from marketers into the hands of consumers, thanks to social media, many brands now have reason to prick up their ears and listen to online conversations.
Being late to the social party or innocently squatting on social accounts is risky business, as consumers continue to devour brands; often in 140 characters.
On the flip side, consumers are also unleashing positive comments, generating huge reach or social mileage for your brand. Utilising this in the right way could help to highlight new marketing opportunities and find powerful brand ambassadors.
The gap between search and social media is also narrowing. Recent deals between social networking sites and search engines will ensure that these comments, positive or negative, will be easily seen by the masses.
With this in mind marketers are now scrambling to write social media polices and digital marketing strategies to cope with this change.
However, before any of this is done, I suggest you stop and listen. I am sure you have dipped your toe into the social waters, but have you taken the time to listen to what people are saying about your brand or organisation online?
Basic social media monitoring can be done through free services such as Google Blogs, Topsy, Twitter and Facebook search.
There are also commercial monitoring tools in the market that give deeper insights and powerful analysis into social conversations.
These tools, such as Techrigy SM2, allow you to see conversations over a two year historical period, right down to the age, gender and location of the contributor. You can also measure sentiment analysis over time to see if brand references are largely positive or negative, and you can compare this to competitor brands.
Contributor popularity is also shown and is defined based on the platform they are writing from e.g. if on Twitter, how many followers they have. This allows you to see who the influential opinion leaders are.
Analysing the conversations will provide insights into the best digital marketing platforms for your brand or organisation. You might find that a large proportion of the discussions are occurring on YouTube, highlighting an opportunity to set up a bespoke YouTube channel for your brand and videos. Alternatively, you might find that consumers are asking questions in relation to your brand on blogs and forums, which opens up opportunities for you to engage and respond.
I recently worked with a utilities organisation to address customer service complaints that were appearing on their social media monitoring report. We identified that many of these grievances were arising from a lack of adequate information and education, so we created a YouTube channel with videos aimed at updating and informing their customers. Using social media to provide access to this information has decreased the amount of negative feedback we were previously seeing.
The growth of social media means that two thirds of the global internet population now visit social networks (Nielson, Global Faces & Networking Places, 2009). This presents an unmissable opportunity to reach your audience and have a targeted conversation.
Many brands were quick to dive in, but it’s those that stop and listen that turn a Chinese whisper into a powerful marketing opportunity.
Claire 'Coops' Cooper is a Senior Client Services Manager and resident social media expert at digital agency Bullseye. You can also find her on Twitter @ccoops.
