Monitor
So you've decided that it's important to participate in the conversation about your brand online. The problem is there are so many places to watch. Depending on the size of your organization, this could easily be a full-time job.
Luckily, there are several tools out there that help (some are free- some cost a lot.)
Free Tools
- The Social media firehose was created by social media guru Kingsley Joseph at Salesforce.com.
- For Twitter, Twitter Search (formerly Summize) and Tweetscan help you monitor keywords in real-time.
- Friendfeed is a good place to identify trends.
- Identify the influential forums in your industry. Is there an online discussion in your industry?
Less Expensive Tools
High end solutions (expensive but impressive. These solutions do much more than just monitor. Visible Technlogies, for example, offers an engagement module where you can respond to posts directly from the interface. Some companies choose a solution like Cymfony that helps them gather competitive intelligence.)Remember that companies can't "join the conversation." Only employees at your company can do that. Jeremiah Owyang and Peter Kim both commented recently about this. Social media allows individuals to communicate with other individuals. You can easily run into trouble if you view social media tools as just another avenue to broadcast content.
Respond
It might make sense for a product manager to leave a comment regarding the product that he or she works with. Maybe a customer service expert should be the one to address issues, rather than PR. The main rule here is: Be Transparent. Whoever chooses to respond - be sure to divulge your relationship with a company. No good can come of pretending to be someone you aren't.
It might help to put together standard responses for certain issues that occur regularly. (If this is the case, make sure you are passing this information along to the appropriate department. For example, if you continually see complaints about your product online, there is a good chance that a large percentage of your customers are experiencing this same issue.) If you are using a standard response, be sure to customize your response to each instance. No one wants to read the same statement over and over again. (Here's an interesting podcast about how Comcast's Frank Eliason does this.)
Leave comments on blogs or forums. Here a few good reasons to leave comments:
- address customer service issues publicly
- refute inaccurate statements about your company or products
- clarify your company's position on an issue
- Recognize other companies or individuals in your space
- Add value to the conversation
What are you doing to monitor and respond to posts involving your brand? I'd love any suggestions.
Next time I'll discuss the other parts to our framework: influence and publish.
How does your company keep track of what is being said online?
