Monitoring Social Media Networks? 8 benefits you are missing out on if you don’t

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it". (Warren Buffet)

This has never been so true thanks to the social media network – a complex and rapidly evolving communications ecosystem where millions of us turn up to share, discuss, comment, post, pin, tweet… an open arena where organisations promote their company, brand and products and where millions of people are free to generate content and exchange ideas.  
Just like wildfire, positive or negative information about your company, brands and products can spread over the vast social media networks at impressive speeds. 

What implications does this have? How can you make the most of it?

Domino's Pizza ran a campaign in the UK which ran from 9 - 11 a.m. on March 5 2012. The aim was to cut the price of its Pepperoni Pizza by a single penny every time someone tweeted the hashtag #letsdolunch. After a staggering 85,000 tweets in 2 hours, the price dropped from £15.99 to £7.74, and Domino's offered that price from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. that day. Information travelled at stunningly impressive speeds, and needless to say the campaign was incredibly successful.

In McDonald’s case, the social media team undertook a hashtags #McDStories campaign on Twitter. Followed by half a million users on Twitter, it was a chance for people to share their McDonald stories. However this took a turn for the worst as people tweeted their horror stories based on their McDonald’s visits, which generated 1,600 conversations in 2 hours, of which most were negative.  

These examples not only show how quickly information spreads over social media networks it also highlights that companies no longer have full control of their brand messaging.  Customers can now quickly override or completely drive brand messages through the empowerment of social media as per the McDonald’s example.

McDonald’s however, redeemed themselves quickly from this negative attack on their brand.  How?  By tracking and monitoring the activity that they engaged in. By doing so and listening into the conversation, they were able to react to the negative comments and managed to gain control of the situation before this spread uncontrollably through the various networks from Twitter to Facebook and beyond.

The reality, however, is that many companies do not track and monitor and miss the opportunity to listen to what customers say – whether positive or negative. They say criticism can be constructive right? and knowledge is power… 

There are so many channels through which information flows, 

the world has become the largest permanent focus group.

So here are eight ways you can benefit from tracking and monitoring information on social media networks

1. Get a sense of what people think about your brands and products.
2. Deal with negative comments before things get out of hand and reward brand advocates with money off vouchers on their next purchase or a simple "thanks!" for example.  
3. Provide the appropriate communications at the different stages of the buying process.  This could turn prospects into customers (customer reviews, advice, demo videos, discounts codes...).
4. Find ideas for new products or product enhancements.  
5. Use social media as a testing bed, rolling communication strategies out to small markets and then on a larger scale to increase likelihood of success.
6. Pick up "buzz" words that the users can associate with, to strengthen marketing communications strategy around the products.
7. Analyse what activities competitors are undertaking and what and how they communicate to their customers. 
8. Realign your strategy to defend/compete/protect your company against your competitors depending on their activities (e.g. extending or changing offerings to a new market segment or expand into international territories.

After all, it is about knowing your market. 

The social media network provides a key platform to do just this. Its incredible power to spread information quickly and proactively, provides key insights into customers’ minds, in real time.  This, when monitored can enhance brands, increase sales and gives a greater understanding of competitors and the marketplace as a whole. Which leaves us with the question: can businesses really afford not to be reactive anymore?

Nila Hirani [   ]

Nikec Solutions [ www.nikecsolutions.com ]

BuzzNumbers monitors and tracks social media sites to view what is being communicated about your company.  A market leading single view dashboard of all online activity in a full SaaS solution, it has extensive online coverage across Social Media, News, Blogs, Forums allowing you to explore and influence sentiments, conversations and media mentions, search, filter, export and report on all your data. It has patent pending and market leading geographical segmentation of online activity, making it an enhanced reporting and analytics solution for social media in the market today. Visit nikecsolutions.com for more information