With more than $200 billion in spending power and opinion leadership positions in many product segments, Millennials are increasingly using social media to communicate to companies about the products or services they buy. Savvy companies have taken notice, and they have implemented social media marketing strategies that enable them to engage with their customers, prospects, and even competitors on social media.
As important as such direct communications are, there are other social media conversations—those among consumers—that are nearly invisible to companies but are infinitely more insightful and actionable.
On Twitter alone, just 3% of the tweets that mention brands or companies use company identifiers. The other 97% can fly under corporate radar, never to be seen or acted upon.
Companies that mine that hidden world of social media chatter gain invaluable market intelligence into consumer opinion of their brands and competitors. Social media listening also identifies sales prospects, brand advocates, and detractors that never engage directly with the company.
But how is a social media listening process designed and implemented? It's not uncommon for some brands to garner literally hundreds of mentions per hour on social media, so diligence is required to monitor, sort, route, aggregate, and engage messages.
Casting the Net Over Open Water
Considering the vast quantity of content produced each minute on social media, isolating relevant messages is daunting. Fortunately, filtering software can monitor selected channels automatically.
However, such programs are useful only when marketers understand the best approaches to implementing them effectively. Setting too many keywords or vague terms yields chaotic results. Instead, think like a successful fisherman who selects the net with the optimized mesh size to catch the most profitable fish while allowing smaller species to slip through the gaps.
The biggest mistake to avoid is trying to do too much, too fast. Instead of searching for every possible relevant term, stick to company and brand identifiers; then add competing products and industry terms until the software returns enough results to yield intelligence, but not so many that they cannot be processed.
Elimination filters can be as useful as selection filters. For example, it is almost always recommended to automatically eliminate any messages that contain profanity. Over time, other keywords that are indicative of irrelevant messages will come to light and, as soon as they are discovered, should be added to elimination filters.
Triage and Routing
Once relevant messages are identified by social media software, they must be triaged so they can be routed to the most appropriate responder. Before implementing a triage process, however, define message categories that correlate to specific areas of focus.
Categories will vary depending on the goals and the intricacies of the company, its products, and stakeholders. Examples of categories to consider are advocates, detractors, education seekers, support seekers, and sales prospects.
Categorizing and routing messages accurately relies on expertise in the nuances of each social media channel and careful consideration of the psychology and goal of the original writer. That facet is unlikely to be automated any time soon; it can be achieved only by a team of trained professionals. Technically savvy marketers who are intimately familiar with company's products, consumer behavior, and social media communities are necessary to successfully triage messages.
