Ending the blind flight
Amid the social media boom, social media monitoring is gaining importance—Swiss services have been launched.
What Zeynep Sayin, Head of www.books.ch at Orell Füssli Book Retailing Ltd, says is likely to apply to many companies: "Our presence on Facebook has developed into a lively communication platform with our customers within a short space of time. As this is a new platform for us, we are following developments closely and learning from them. Facebook is a testing ground that could develop, but it is not yet a cornerstone of our communication strategy. That is why we have not yet defined any detailed targets." Meanwhile, internationally oriented companies are often further ahead. Marcel Härtlein, Head of Online Properties at KPMG AG Switzerland, reports that there is continuous monitoring for important channels such as Twitter, Xing, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc., and that social media key figures have been defined and integrated into conventional marketing reporting.
As the Werbewoche survey on this topic also showed, there is no silver bullet when it comes to social media monitoring, and there are no clear frontrunners when it comes to the tools used (for a comprehensive overview: http://wiki.kenburbary.com/). Says Christoph Zumbühl, consultant and member of the management board at Ulmann +Partner: "We use Google Analytics to track social media as part of our campaigns. The tool provides a good overview and allows us to draw conclusions." Other free tools were also frequently mentioned in the survey. The often combined use of such free tools is obvious at the beginning of a social media engagement. This allows initial insights to be gained and requirements for solutions to be defined for the next step. For example, KPMG-Härtlein talks about expanding monitoring in the coming months and using a high-end solution such as Radian 6, Sysomos Heartbeat etc. to generate standard reports.
In line with the emerging professionalization of social media monitoring in Switzerland, service providers have launched SMM solutions tailored to the Swiss market since the end of the summer vacations. For example, the market leader in media monitoring, Argus der Presse AG. It has announced that its International Internet Monitoring (IIM) service will not only monitor over 20,000 websites in more than 170 countries, but also over 50,000 Swiss Twitter accounts and publicly accessible Facebook content from German, French and Italian-speaking countries, as well as more than 4,500 Swiss blogs. And the company Netbreeze, which focuses entirely on social media monitoring, has launched the Social Media Report, an SMM product geared towards Swiss SMEs.
Whether free tools, professional solutions or external providers: The effort involved in social media monitoring should by no means be underestimated. The search results must be constantly checked and the search terms constantly adjusted. This is particularly time-consuming in the trilingual Swiss domestic market, especially as the colloquial language that is commonplace on the Internet often has to be taken into account. In addition, the comparatively small Swiss market is not very productive. Anyone searching for well-known Swiss brand names on Twitter, for example, will often only find a few current entries - even with more complete professional tools, the gain in knowledge is unlikely to be significantly greater. If, on the other hand, not only the brand name but also trends are monitored in foreign markets, the opposite is often the case: SMM tools quickly produce a large amount of data that requires in-depth analysis. Depending on which channels are used with which intentions - customer loyalty, customer service or brand awareness, for example - different key performance indicators will need to be defined in each case. Ultimately, the art and the real challenge lies in understanding the individual metrics in the dynamic environment of the company and its markets in such a way that they can contribute to the continuous optimization of business processes.
It is about factors like these:
Enthusiasm: How many blog posts, web comments or mentions on social media sites did a topic trigger?
Dissemination: How quickly does a discussion spread online?
Leader: Who are the opinion leaders for our own topics and how can we reach them?
Frequency: Which topics come up how often in online discussions about a particular brand?
Demographics: Which demographic groups (location, gender, age, etc.) are reached and to what extent do these match the target groups?
Share of attention: What share of attention does your own brand have compared to competitors on a topic across all channels (share of voice)?
Setting: How do consumers react to a topic? Certain analysis tools recognize the emotional mood of statements about a topic, so-called sentiment analysis.
Scope: How many social media posts (blog entries, forum discussions, tweets, etc.) does it take to reach an impact threshold?
Value: What sales contribution does an online conversation about a specific product or brand make?
These and similar assessment criteria are part of the preliminary stages of social media monitoring and analytics, which is currently being echoed in the USA in particular. According to local industry experts, the development of the social media market in Switzerland is two to three years behind schedule. It is therefore only a matter of time before campaigns with a central focus on social media become ubiquitous here too. Then the need for concrete measurement criteria for monitoring and control will increase. Comprehensive SMM solutions will become indispensable in many places and will often be integrated into business processes in the sense of social CRM (see Werbewoche 14/12.8.2011, page 19). As there are no reliable user figures for Twitter and Facebook, it is to be hoped that the insights gained in this way will at least be partially disclosed in the industry. Although good SMM solutions can put an end to flying blind, only those who can compare themselves with others know their own cruising altitude. Christoph J. Walther
