Just reading Groundswell - winning in a world transformed by social technologies which is written by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research www.groundswell.forrester.com. It is very useful when explaining how brands should listen to social media.
With customers ganging up on you on Facebook, defining you on Wikipedia and talking about your products and services now - without reference to you - the authors argue that it is essential to undertake some kind of brand monitoring.
The reasons they give are that you have to know what your brand stands for and how that is different from what people are talking about.
If you keep listening, you can understand the changes taking place. Discover if your competitor is getting all the talk
Brand monitoring helps you identify influencers in your market, it can act as an early warning system if a crisis is brewing and it can also generate new product and marketing ideas. Maybe there is a blogger out there who has some comments on your packaging and design? Or there are bloggers pointing out why your customer service is letting you down.
When we recommend monitoring services to clients it is always best to ensure that you have someone who is experienced in your market who is able to interpret the results and put them in some kind of context. Technology vendors might not know what the key topics and issues are for your brand so you need to have someone who can help put any online developments in context.
There are also different levels of monitoringto consider. You can go for general buzz monitoring which is an important start or also you can go for more bespoke high end monitoring to focus on say the most influential sites and blogs in your sector and only monitor them. And obviously it is important to act upon what is being said online.
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