Key Reflections from #msm09 – Monitoring Social Media

Tuesday I attended a great conference in London, Monitoring Social Media 09. Amusingly, it was pitched for attention against another social media conference – again in London, the 140 characters conference. Comments abounded live via Twitter about who had the best audience and speakers – we of course, though we had won, even if Stephen Fry was at the other conference!

What was great about the conference was to hear a real range of speakers talking about how social media is being used, and monitored. Speakers included vendors of social media monitoring tools, agencies that use social media with their clients, big name companies talking about practically what they are doing in the social media space, as well as a look at what future trends in social media may be.

Key Reflection One – The tools are only part of the answer

I’d probably outline the discussion on tools into 3 main parts

Free Tools: Great for some initial research, getting an idea of what is being discussed and taking a temperature check. Not so great when you have a lot of discussion on a topic and need to be able to split the data, or if you need to report on it. Can also be highly time consuming to work through and split out total mentions of your keyword or brand, for those which are relevant and allow you take away actionable insight – what we want to do as a result of knowing about that mention.

Paid Tools: A huge growth in paid tools to help companies, and agencies manage social media and report on it effectively. My key take away from this discussion was the fact that they do a great job in an evolving world – the general feel was that they would continue to evolve and improve over the next couple of years to become truly great – increased accuracy, and potentially more agreement between vendors on what key terms such as influence and engagement mean.

People:

One great thing I took away is that people are the key – whether you call yourself a consultant, specialist, expert or guru (and the conference wasn’t that keen on the expert or guru labels!) it is really your analysis and knowledge of social media, combined with your knowledge and relationship with your client and knowledge of their needs, which really makes a difference. Someone summed it up succinctly when talking about reports to the fact that even when they look great – they’re still just a factual number – until you start applying it in the business focus of your client or company.

Key Reflection Two- The Speed of change in the environment

The internet is a powerful tool and one which when companies get it right can be a powerful support for spreading and amplifying their message. Get it wrong, and it is so much more likely that instead of just one or two people knowing, your error could be broadcast and trending on social media sites and even main stream media, very quickly. Listening to your environment constantly and consistently means you are on top of these mentions and can then choose what response to make.

This also means that monitoring across the web using a range of tools means you can start spotting mentions and platforms that aren’t currently hot. Keeping on top of the hot trends means that you are aware where the web and social media is moving – think how hot ecademy and MySpace used to be, and how they have lapsed in popularity with the growth of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Key Reflection Three – Monitoring and ROI are still ongoing conversations.

What was interesting was hearing how many metrics you could use just from social media – number of followers, group members, retweets, engagement, influence to name just a few – and how this was an evolving field. Consensus here was that the language will continue to evolve, and with it more agreement around the use of terms such as influence, and as more companies use social media and roll through an engagement strategy there will be more case studies to show how it has made an impact in the real world. An interesting comment from Paul Alexander, CEO of Beyond Analysis, who talked about the social media metrics as just one of a set of many for the work they do.

Emphasis here is on smart objectives and reviewing how social media is useful, and what strategy you are following in your company to see what you want to measure success against for your business. I like to compare this to the investment and time you put into your web strategy – the difference between working to SEO – a longer term strategy – than PPC which can help you get more immediate results. Social Media is a conversational tool which helps you listen and if you choose, engage over time – like starting an offline conversation, you wouldn’t start that conversation today and expect the immediate results in £’s in the pocket. Return on investment may come through clearer understanding of your market, resulting in reduced changes to product development and market research, or in reduced spend for traditional marketing.

In conclusion, the day proved itself an exciting update on what’s hot and what’s changing in the world of social media monitoring.

If you are interested in social media, Intendance still has a few places open for our 10^th December seminar in Central London 830am-1030am.

Please visit the Social Media Seminar page to find out more and book your place.

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