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Rebecca Lombardo, Director of Strategic Services at Tracx, and Eric Berkowitz, SVP, Global Services at Tracx, are the featured guests on this episode. Tracx is a social enterprise platform that helps organizations harness opportunities on the social web by providing brands key insights for business decision making. Tracx is also the sponsor of Social Business Journal Volume 8.
Social Media Monitoring Mistakes to Avoid
Rebecca and Eric join me to discuss highlights from Social Business Journal, Volume 8: The 5 Biggest Mistakes in Social Media Monitoring. To start things off, we look at the differences between owned and earned media.
Owned media is literally content that you “own.” This includes all posts from the company whether they’re on corporate blogs or corporate social profiles. Owned media often has an inherent bias and is a small fraction of the online conversations.
Earned media is everything else and importantly, where over 90% of the online conversation occurs. Eric refers to earned media as “in the wild” because you observe earned media in a natural environment. It’s all of the organic conversations that reference your brand – much of what goes unnoticed if a brand is not listening with an active social listening presence.
Earned media is “in the wild.” You want to observe it in its natural environment and not in a controlled environment.
-Eric Berkowitz, SVP Global Services, Tracx
Another mistake covered in the Journal that we discuss centers on collecting social data without applying it to decision making in the business. Eric says, many organizations look at vanity metrics, like sentiment or reach, as a “barometer of social health.” Businesses need to avoid shallow reporting and review data that is tied to business outcomes.
Tying social data into third party data sets such as sales is helpful. It can be used as a proxy to win more customers, lose fewer customers and assist in product launches. Isolating data can even assist in developing an influencer marketing program by identifying and targeting people. Influence is about the impact of a person in a community, not how many followers they have.
Brands Harnessing Social Data in Their Business
Of course, we also discuss examples of brands harnessing social data for business impact. Rebecca describes a company in the food industry that looked to Tracx to help with due diligence before investing in a new product line. By focusing on earned media, they were able to see which topics people were most interested in. The brand was able to pinpoint one ingredient that was recurring in three different conversations, which influenced their go-to-market strategy for the new product line.
An apparel company noticed through their social media monitoring that sentiment was declining around a trend in a specific location. Because they were actively listening, they were able to intervene and redirect the shipment of that line to another location where it would sell better.
A brand in the software industry used social intelligence to find influencers and then integrated them into a product launch.
An insurance company was able to identify gaps in the market through social data and determined a demand for bike insurance. As a result of this social listening, they created a new insurance offering to address this market segment and it has sold well.
Companies are stepping up their support of existing customers through their social media monitoring. They understand the need to be prepared to react quickly, and many are also realizing the need for social research in product ideation.
Future of Social Media Monitoring and Impact on Business Intelligence
Eric noted the shift in consumer preference toward rich media such as images and videos. To adapt, Tracx is investing in new technology for videos and pictures. He also mentioned that geospatial intelligence is gaining momentum and discussed how brands can learn from this data.
Brands will continue to adapt and gain a better understanding of what their customers need. And, as this happens Rebecca predicts that both B2B and B2C brands will get better at humanizing their communications to deliver a great experience.
Our podcast conversation delivers more in-depth insights from Eric and Rebecca on the five biggest mistakes in social media monitoring and ways to avoid them in order to improve social media monitoring.
In Social Business Journal Volume 8 you’ll also get insights from more than one dozen influencers. This Journal will help you:
Monitor earned and owned media using distinct strategies
Move beyond shallow reporting to more meaningful metrics
Uncover social data related to your business objectives
Use strategies like category trend analysis to make better business decisions
Maximize your social business investments
Featured On This Episode:
Rebecca Lombardo on Twitter and LinkedIn
Eric Berkowitz on LinkedIn
Tracx on Twitter
Tracx website
Download Social Business Journal, Volume 8: The 5 Biggest Mistakes in Social Media Monitoring
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