Why Social Media monitoring is important
January 12, 2010 | Written by Yan Shikhvarger
Sky News was in the news itself on January 7th for mandating that its journalist install and use Tweetdeck for newsgathering purposes. The application is widely used by bloggers and journalists already to stay on top of social media but this is a rare instance of making Tweetdeck usage the formal policy of a news organization and does make sense. How many other news bureaus or communications agencies are doing this?
The reason for doing this is simple: news breaks via social media more and more frequently. Just this week, for example, director of Liverpool Football Club, resigned because of a ridiculous and abusive reply email he sent to a fan. The story was originally a blurb in the ‘sports rumor’ category but then gathered enough steam and attention to make it to virtually every UK front page and forcing the resignation.
Another story that gained momentum with far reaching implications is the Facebook ‘Bra Color’ viral debacle. No one knows the origin of the Facebook idea that encourages women to post their bra color to somehow raise breast cancer awareness. Yet, this prompted many prominent bloggers to bring attention to the phenomenon and question its worth, and furthermore justly questioning the line between marketing and the pink ribbon campaign/real charity/real contributions to breast cancer awareness. As the dominos keep falling, the spotlight shifted to questioning participation of certain companies in promoting or tying their products to Breast Cancer Awareness month/campaign. So it starts with an anonymous campaign and ends up bringing companies like BMW and Eli Lilly into an unwanted spotlight.
Is there a better reason to mandate Social Media monitoring?
Tags: digital business trends
Comments (2)
January 12th, 2010 at 8:39 am Posted by Mark Evans
Yan, As social media becomes a larger part of the social media landscape, the media and businesses of all sizes will have little choice but to monitor activity so they can be aware of the conversations happening.
That said, it is important to keep in mind that monitoring is only one half of the equation; it’s also important to act upon the activity that is discovered.
cheers,
Mark
Mark Evans
Director of Communications
Sysomos.com
January 12th, 2010 at 9:00 am Posted by Joseph Fiore
Yan,
Some great storytelling to convince us on the importance of SM monitoring.
On a reputational scale, a news service out of the SM loop would eventually fall to criticism for lacking a real-time component. The knee-jerk reactions in the football example is an all too familiar story of why its important to monitor mentions, and to do so with relationship building in mind.
The “Bra Colour” viral debacle is one of those examples that works to teach us about the saying “the more you learn the less you know.” In SM, this is the kind of anectodal evidence that clearly proves the “uniqueness” of each situation and why we should avoid using a “one-size-fits-all” approach.
Another one that comes to mind was when Facebook deleted pictures of a woman breast-feeding. They are instances where the need to respond in a sensitive and compassionate manner become crucial to mitigating the unexpected consequences of an unwanted reputation shiner.
Joseph
@RepuTrack
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