Intelligence through Social Media
Active social media monitoring can keep you in the know about what consumers think of your brand. When done effectively, it allows you to spot fires in the making and work on putting them out before they reach three-alarm status. It also provides great opportunities to connect directly with customers, potential customers and brand enthusiasts in real-time which can breed a great deal of brand loyalty.
But yours isn't the only brand you should monitor.
The widespread use of social media coupled with a good listening strategy makes it very easy to keep an eye on your competitors, and you should be watching them like a hawk. Now, before you write off this tactic as "stalking," allow me to illustrate its effectiveness: Let's say you work for a TV station in a medium-sized market where the top three affiliates are very close in the ratings. If you follow the competitor's interactions with viewers and actively monitor their brand you might be able to glean all kinds of helpful information.
Consider this: That exclusive interview that Station X just landed is no longer exclusive when the interviewee announces to his or her twitter followers that they just did a 20 minute interview with said station and can't wait until it airs next week. If you're lucky, someone will likely inquire further about the topic and the interviewee will spill the beans all over the Twitterverse. They may also spread the word in their blog or via Facebook. After all, an interview with a news reporter is just too juicy and self-aggrandizing for most people to keep it out of their social media status updates.
But this isn't just a tactic for TV stations. Any company or organization can find out what's being said about their competition and use it to their advantage if they simply start listening. If Comcast sees a ton of gripes about Time Warner Cable in a market where they compete directly, they can literally go in for the kill if they can sell their services as superior or offer a better deal and maybe make a conversion in the process.
This is not small potatoes when every customer counts.
I posted a blog last summer about a bad experience I had at a hotel that did not want to honor the deal Orbitz gave me for booking my travel through their site. I heard from a competitor a few hours after my blog post was published encouraging me to use their site in the future. They were clearly monitoring mentions of Orbitz in the social media space. The good thing is Orbitz monitors its own brand and they contacted me first, apologized and gave me $50 off my next booking. But, if Orbitz had not responded, I certainly would have gone to that competitor. And if nothing else, they put themselves on my radar, and that's a good thing for that competitor. There are many ways to use social media for business and they go well beyond what you've grown accustomed to hearing. We'll explore many more in the near future.
So bookmark this blog if you haven't already. We've got a lot to talk about.
Comments
Hi Angela,
Good observation. Definitely, listening is the first step in understanding where your brand is positioned in social media space, and in responding adroitly to unexpected (or undesirable) online mentions.
Significant complexity arises for social media service providers in establishing ROI. Taking your example: did Orbitz get positive ROI from responding to you? If for future transactions, you chose Orbitz in favor of their competitor, perhaps. Or maybe other customers would have read your blog post and figured "Hey Orbitz sounds like they listened to Angela, so if I have a problem, they'll be okay."
But in any case, it is notoriously difficult to convince (especially conservative, established) companies that paying for constant ear-to-the-ground listening is worthwhile when much of what they hear is noise. This is especially the case in B2B space (as opposed to retail) where much of the conversation is behind hidden doors.
Hi Roger: Thanks for your comment. I certainly get your point, and it may be difficult to convince established companies to pay for that service.
That doesn't mean they can't do some of it on their own or just become aware of the fact that it is a different way to think about social media.
Much like that Orbitz competitor got on my radar, my goal is to get some of our ideas on the radar of many through this blog. Thanks again for your thoughts.
I do think that even though there is a lot of noise as Roger pointed out it is well worth the investment to listen for the important nuggets in the midst of that noise.
I recently had an experience where I pointed out on Twitter that I had been given outstanding customer service from a business I had engaged with. Within an hour I had been contacted directly on Twitter from an employee of that company and offered an additional discount coupon. They won my loyalty for a LONG time with that smart move.
It's funny you mentioned Time Warner as an example, because right around the time gripes about their increasing fees started becoming prevalent in local newspapers, TV news stories and online social networks, I noticed increased online discussions about AT&T U-Verse being a good alternative. Then I started noticing U-Verse ads popping up everywhere, a door-to-door salesman come to our house and explained the U-Verse service to us, and the AT&T rep at the mall pitched it to me when I upgraded to a new smart phone. I can't help but wonder if the folks at AT&T were monitering the local (N.C.) chatter about Time Warner and once things really heated up, decided... "Now! It's time to pounce and snatch up those unhappy Time Warner customers!" Know what I mean? I definitely agree with your opinion that brands should monitor online conversations regarding their competitors. Glad to see your blogging hasn't slowed down, despite the career move! Keep up the good work.
Good conversation. Just to clarify @Tracy, I was not saying at all "don't listen" and that listening is not worthwhile.
I was trying to make the point that to sell a "listening" strategy agencies must understand how to connect the dots for clients. That is, they must demonstrate ROI beyond social media being a fun experiment.
Leave a Comment