Active and real-time Social Media listening is probably one of the most challenging areas of marketing and promotion at the moment.  There seems to be no way to speed up the process or even to minimize the countless hours of manual searching, reading, viewing and listening that is required to build a clear picture of the conversations that are going on at any one time.  To the person performing this task it is an ongoing process, headphones at the ready watching, digesting and taking part in as many conversations as possible to get a feel for the many communities and conversations that could be happening at any one time.

Thankfully there are tools to aid this process but as we are about to examine even these tools have limitations and there is no single tool that can execute all aspects.  We are found having to use different elements from our toolkit to obtain a reportable analysis.  This leads the task to understanding and interpreting these conversations.

The output from our toolkit is as important as the actual analysis itself.  With tools outputting all manner of data in different formats it is important to focus on what you want to report on and how those results are to be presented. The presentation of results can be split into 8 defined groups.

These are:

1. Reach
2. Interactions / Engagements
3. Mentions (of Brand or Product)
4. Positive Sentiment (Favourite, Fans, Hero potential, Brand)
5. Comparing multiple factors against each other
6. Quantity of Type and/or Subject of Conversation
7. Traffic generated
8. Conversions Generated (Direct or Conversions since.…)

Now traditional measurement factors like; hits, views, visits, bounce rates and dwell times are all very robust and accurate measures, but only as a means to an end, not as ends in themselves so by combining these with the social outputs previously mentioned we can now produce meaningful insights like:

1. What is being done by competitors or potential partners?
2. What are they talking about, to whom and in what quantity?
3. What is the share of voice for a client, competitor or particular product?
4. How well is a current campaign doing?
5. How do customers perceive a brand or a product?
6. ROI / Return on Customer – Maximising the value of customers (buying, commenting, complimenting, liking etc…)
7. The number of 1-2-1 conversations and the strength of those connections
8. Effectiveness of a campaign
9. Cost per ‘X’ action

What is most interesting however is when you monitor these points with the mindset to measure brand health and performance.  This will lead one to look at the well known factors of brand measurement of which some overlap previously mentioned topics.

The 16 standard formats are:

1. Unaided brand awareness (for the categories in which the brand competes and perhaps for the customer benefits the brand delivers)
2. Top-of-mind brand associations (your brand’s true position in its customer’s minds)
3. Perceived brand delivery against the most important customer benefits
4. Attitudinal loyalty toward the brand
5. What customers think makes your brand unique (differentiation)
6. Brand price sensitivity (a measure of brand strength)
7. Brand vitality (a measure of brand marketplace momentum)
8. Brand quality perceptions
9. Brand value perceptions
10. Brand accessibility perceptions
11. Emotional connection to the brand
12. Brand values alignment with its customers
13. Brand distribution
14. Brand market share
15. Brand sales
16. Brand profitability

In the next few weeks I will try and delve deeper into a few of these and demonstrate methodology and tools required to both analyse and optimise each aspect.