Protect Your Brand... Develop Social Media Intelligence!

I have come across several papers and books which discuss the fragility of building a consistent and sustainable brand image. Considering any of the traditional media channels, monitoring the consumers’ understanding and perception of the brand message is crucial. Companies adjust the media channel, tonality, wording or imagery of the brand message to adjust any deviation of the brand image at the consumers’ end. However, this process is valid when a level of control over the message and the media channel used to convey this message is pertinent This is usually more releavnt when considering Newspapers and TV as media channels, but what about Social Media?

Social media has been defined by Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media).

Looking at Blogs, Social websites and Online videos, which not only have provided individuals with an “anything goes” platform, where age, gender and other socioeconomic status are less withstanding; Social media has provided companies the opportunity to be closer to their stakeholders. However, can companies track exchanged information about their brands through the realm of social media? What is the level of control exercised by companies over this information?

Currently, success in managing social media has been suggested to require two elements:
Speed and Action.(http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/publicrelations/prcolumnistrachelmeranus/article202754.html). A company must be able to proactively identify the positive and negative buzz about its brand as well as react fast and focus. Else, the company might be losing on an opportunity to sharpen its brand image or more critically overlooking damage to the brand image- sometimes with severe consequences. It is worth mentioning that the company should be able to “Gauge the sentiment” of these buzz, especially to avoid a potential crisis. Sophisticated tools have been developed to leverage on the language used throughout blogs and social network websites, in order to detect the degree of positive-ness or negative-ness within the flow of exchanged information.

Nonetheless, one of the main challenges is to identify which social network is of greater impact? While most of the suggestions point to the number of fans or followers of a certain social website as key evaluation tool, this measure is still considered pretty basic. However, taking Twitter as an example, individuals who have high frequency of Tweeting are found to be the most influential. Tools such as TweetGrade and TwitterScore provide companies with an indication of the most active participants.

In addition, traditional media monitoring services have been providing companies with tracking results for major online media and blogs. However, companies nowadays can refer to more effective and accurate tracking tools, such as PR Newswire’s Social Media Metrics. By scanning more than 20 million blogs, 5 million forum posts and 30,000 online news sources, social networks and micro-blogs, this comprehensive tool provides companies with data about the scope and frequency of discussions referring to different brands aspects.

Finally, as suggested in the Business Week article “The Overlooked Side of Social Media” (http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/sep2009/ca20090911_598255.htm), social media is not a fad! Any company should be able to use social media efficiently by adopting a three –step strategy aimed at minimizing risks of damaging their brands image. The strategy follows a classic course of “Discovery, Experimentation and Adoption”.
Companies should start by deciding or “discovering” which social medium is best in conveying and building their brands image. This is usually followed by determining the language and tonality by which they should approach their consumers. Experimentation is normally done to touch base with consumers’ reaction. “Tiger Teams” can be assigned to capture consumers’ and other stakeholders’ reaction to companies online presence; then add it to companies learning agendas. Eventually, leadership, provision of expertise and online proactive-ness (a concept stated earlier) should move the companies to the “adoption” phase where effectiveness and efficiency of different social media initiatives are continuously assessed.
The faster companies learn how to manage its social media, the more they get out of it!