Is it really necessary for companies to monitor social media in order to interact with their customers? Or is there a better way to observe and report on your client base?
Rick Mans believes this to be so in his blog post entitled, Why Companies Should Not Invest in Online Monitoring, featured on Social Media Today. He writes that “If companies really cared about what was going on, they would have invested in such a social infrastructure that complaints/news about their products and services would come to them in no time.”
He goes even further by stating “…monitoring tools are a poor man’s solution to engage with your audience… when you are in touch with your audience and your audience can find you and you have created a group of loyal people (brand ambassadors / evangelists) around your online presence, you won’t need monitoring tools to discover complaints.”
This runs counterpoint to a contention of the modern business age that all social media must be monitored in order to truly be in touch with all of your customer feedback.
However, I believe the point Mans attempts to make is that if the proper feedback infrastructure is created internally, then the monitoring of online media will only be redundant. Moreover, no news should be breaking in the world of social media that you shouldn’t have been made aware of and are already working towards either finding a solution or a way to profit from it.
In a perfect world this may be so. Even if companies create their own customer feedback rail network, they still must possess the ability to anticipate the response in the social media world in order to best deal directly with their client base. After all, if a customer truly cares enough, they will vent or praise in their preferred online outlet (be that Facebook, Twitter, or some other forum) regardless of whether a company maintains a presence there or not.
Thus, it is imperative that we do both – monitor online media and genuinely listen to and engage with constituents. That is why BurrellesLuce is working even harder to create even more tools to help you listen, manage, and respond to the activities taking place in both traditional and online news, social media, and broadcast. Stay tuned in the coming month(s) as we unveil new ways for you to effectively take charge of your WorkFlow.
In the meantime, what do you think? Is it critical to incorporate online monitoring into the larger engagement funnel or is it merely a show put on by companies? How are you using online monitoring in your public relations and marketing efforts? Please share your thoughts with me and the readers of Fresh Ideas.



end up failing with this initiative. 


Social Media and Negativity: Turn That Frown Upside-down
Thursday, August 19th, 2010by Denise Giacin*
Flickr Image: striatic / hobvias sudoneighm
A couple weeks ago, in my quest to understand this global monster called social media, I wrote a piece on Fresh Ideas called, Social Media: The New Solitaire?. That post generated a lot of chatter over whether or not a company should allow employees to use social media. This week, I want to build off of it and discuss social media in regards to negativity. Is it possible that some corporations are afraid to use social media because of negative backlash and not because they are concerned with employees slacking off?
Sure, utilizing a social media platform for your company does make you more susceptible to negative comments, but shouldn’t the positive outweigh the negative? How about taking this idea a step further… what if you could show your customers how well you handle negativity by using social media to be proactive or to handle an issue if it does arise? Allow me to explain.
Last week I was patiently (okay, rather impatiently) waiting for my brand spanking new Droid X to arrive. I casually tweeted, “repetitively clicking on a shipment tracking number isn’t going to make it get here any faster #FedEx #whatilearnedtoday.”
I didn’t mean for this to come across as negative. Although, I suppose if you’re FedEx you wouldn’t want me complaining about the speed of packages being delivered. To my complete shock I received a tweet back from @FedexLaShelia saying “@denise10283 This is Fed Ex LaShelia. Would you like my help?”
Hey, now this is service! I politely tweeted her back with a big thank you and explained I was just antsy.
BurrellesLuce also has similar social media practices in place. As a company, we will respond to blog, Twitter, and Facebook postings to name a few. We want to know what our customers are saying and choose to take an active role in responding to all inquiries – positive or negative. I can say from personal experience that every inquiry, I’ve responded to, we were able to resolve the issue and I was able to gain some valuable learning experience.
In my opinion, for that reason alone, I can say it is worth it to monitor and actively participate in social media, but you have to do both. Every company would love to hear positive comments (who wouldn’t?) but I believe it’s the relationships you can salvage by paying particular attention to the negative comments that are the most important.
Does your company have a plan in place for dealing with negativity on social media? Do you have any tips you can share?
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*Bio: Prior to joining the BurrellesLuce Client Service team in 2008, Denise worked in the marketing industry for three years. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Connecticut, where she gained experience interning in PR and working for student organizations. By engaging readers on the Fresh Ideas blog Denise hopes to further her understanding of client needs. In her spare time, she is passionate about Team in Training (The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s charity sports training program) and baking cupcakes. Her claim to fame: red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. LinkedIn: dgiacin Twitter: @denise10283 Facebook: BurrellesLuce
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