Asking the ‘So What?’ of Social Media Monitoring Reports
Ever been at a party when a person recites some interesting stats?
"Did you know that Washington DC has the largest disproportional number of females to males of all major US cities?" "Did you know that 47% of all ventured-back American startup companies had a founder or co-founder who was born outside the US?"
Sure you have. Most react to such insights with genuine initial interest, but then quickly move onto other topics. The stats serve mainly as entertainment value.
Well, some of the social media monitoring reports come off the same way. Initially, they are interesting tidbits and fun to review, but the takeaways are at times very shallow. The reviewers of such information don't always have the time or the proper structure to dig deeper to find actionable results.
Pretty graphs and reports are only worth the paper that they are printed on unless that information provides actionable insights that lead to moving toward a desired goal. This could mean asking more penetrating questions that once answered lead to such compelling insights. This is a fluid circular process of gathering data, analysis, aligning with marketing goals, filtering out actionable insights, implementation, measurement. Standard reports, therefore, generally fall short as it only gathers data with cursory insights.
That is why when I really want to have a meaningful conversation, it is usually one-on-one or in small groups, and not at a party. For social media reports, ask the "so what?" and make the information come alive and actionable.
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October 16th, 2009 - 13:32
Nice post, Warren! The key is not to monitor all conversations which, as you say, lead to cursory insights, but rather relevant ones. Having an “intentional lens” that guides the set-up of the monitoring helps us move closer toward that meaningful layer of conversations. For example, structuring the monitoring in a way that aligns to specific goals for sales, customer service, PR, brand awareness/affinity, product development, and so on would help companies navigate through the party and into that small,tight circle where meaningful (and actionable) conversations are being held. That’s where the “so what” hopefully raises eyebrows.
October 22nd, 2009 - 12:33
I find that most of the social media reports I see have a loss of functionality, akin to what you would see on a quarterly marcomm report when a CMO is trying to protect a job.
It doesn’t really have anything to do with what is on the pretty chart: it has everything to do about the information that exists in other silos or has been thoughtfully (and sometimes negligently and with bad intention) excluded from the report.
Even if we just compare the standard online metrics: pageviews, time on site, repeat visitors, and conversion…. I typically see a counter-balance effect take place (high traffic = low time on site, high time on site = repeat visitors, etc.)
Most social media monitoring companies seem to say “Hoorah!” when it comes to followers or visits, but they never address that the quality impact may shift something several silos over or a few phases into the process cycle.
October 23rd, 2009 - 10:32
@Wilson: Excellent points. Too often, social media monitoring reports reflect the statistics of the noise without diving deep into finding the signal and providing real insight. As you suggest, alignment of the listening and analysis with corporate goals gets beyond the so what and starts to help define strategy.
@Barry: There is definitely a disconnect between goals and monitoring which results in reporting on the low hanging fruit of meaningless stats. We hope that will change.