The Complexities of Social Media Monitoring for PR Agencies

Posted by: Alex Erasmus

I’ve been doing a lot of research recently on online monitoring case studies. They all talk on about how the monitoring tools reduce the time it takes to track mentions, buzz and sentiment for their brands.

While this is certainly true and useful, I haven’t read many people who mention how the requirements of a tool vary dramatically from client to client.

This is especially important in New Zealand. For some brands, it is interesting to monitor global trends. For example, a coffee company locally can be ahead of the curve by watching trends from the North American market around the pick-up of geo-location services.

On the other hand, for some brands it is near-irrelevant what’s happening abroad. Kiwi supermarkets should be primarily focused on comparative online activity locally, for instance. This is magnified by the duopoly in this market.

To add a further level of complexity, some brands use social media monitoring tools as an internal/external innovation platform. Brands like Nike, Dell and Apple gather ideas from across departments and combine them with online trends to generate new products and services and drive revenue. The number of companies that fit into this category in New Zealand isn’t that high (Fonterra does come to mind), but it’s another example of the differences between companies.

Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t believe it’s essential for all brands to track and respond to every online mention. There is nothing wrong with responding, but it’s simply too time consuming for many New Zealand companies to do this and add extra value for customers. It comes down to a question of resourcing. Speaking of resourcing, here is an interesting run-down of five tools to manage social media for the franchise.

If social media is being used primarily as a customer service channel, then fair enough. But social media can be used for much more than simply transferring customer service from the call centre to the Twittersphere.

In my opinion, it’s better for most companies to get a regular snapshot of public opinion. This way, they can track effectiveness and cut-through of online activity without it impeding on adding value to both the customer and the business’ bottom line.

It also fits in with setting up a long-term social media strategy, punctuated by creative campaigns, rather than isolated activity.

PR is perfectly placed to be the strategic counsel and filter for online monitoring. The client generally only needs/wants to know the top-line data – essentially, is our time being used effectively and providing genuine ROI?

In addition, PR can be used as an extra resource, especially for SMEs.

From my recent research, it’s quite apparent that most agencies abroad are happy just using monitoring tools. Hopefully we can bypass this transition phase and move to targeted measurement and resultant business actions.

Basically, we need to use monitoring tools so that we can measure, but more importantly so that we can act.