4 applications of media monitoring for loyal customers and more efficiency

In this whitepaper we will highlight the why and how of media monitoring and show you 4 different applications that will help you achieve more efficiency. Be sure to share this whitepaper with your colleagues to inspire them to achieve a stronger implementation of online and offline media monitoring.

What can media monitoring do for you? By structurally deploying social media you will be able to collect data for your client services, search for buying signals and analyse which factors influence the online reputation of your brand. This will help you to gain valuable insights into messages from customers and noncustomers. For a full overview it is useful to use the five Ws to answer questions such as “who, what, where, when and why”. Context is important here. It is important to understand what needs your target audience has and make sure you deploy these optimally. This is best achieved through good webcare, 1-on-1 communication, content marketing and advertising.

Detecting relevant messages and conversations is an important step in the process of social service and webcare. Monitoring makes it possible for you to analyse what people are saying about your organisation, and detect trends and developments in the industry.

The five W’s aid you to find questions and complaints and to place them in the right context. By structuring this process you will be able to filter out relevant information from the millions of messages that are posted in the media daily. By doing so, you will be left with relevant messages for your organisation which will provide you with the possibility to act upon these messages.

5W: who, what, where, when and why?
Who?
Who is talking about your brand, products and services? Get to know more about your target market through monitoring what they talk about and with who.

What?
What are they saying? News coverage is an important aspect of this. Look further than only mentions, research into the needs and brand preferences of your target group.

Where?
Where are these messages being shared? Through what channels and locations? Data about (geo)location is often not available, however many organisations underestimate the possibilities provided through this.

When?
When do people talk about your organisation? Which days and times are popular? Is this before, during or after a campaign? Are you active online at the same time as your target market?

Why?
Why do we share, complain or ask questions? When receiving questions or complaints, look further than isolated situations and try to detect points of improvement. This will help you to answer the why-question.

Listen with the intention to understand and improve
People often only listen in order to reply. This is also seen in organisations that do online listening.

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” – STEPHEN COVEY, FROM THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE.

The solutions lies in listening with the intention to understand what the (potential) client really means. Only by doing so, you will be able to learn from what went wrong, so you can improve as an organisation. This is what good customer service is! Unfortunately webcare teams are often missing an organised workflow. The service process is often only designed for reactive webcare.

Organisations often focus their social media around branding and service, however, this focus has shifted towards lead generation. The internet is filled with potential clients, who are looking for the right fit for their needs. The foundation for good lead generation can be found in understanding your potential client. To do so, you will need insights into your customers; where they are, what they talk about, with who and at what time. Media monitoring offers solutions to get to know more about these customers, but also to define the buyer journey further.

A number of useful actions for lead generation are for example:

• Measure at what time your potential clients communicate, so you can adjust your content distribution to this.
• Make use of location for targeting your message.
• Detect which influencers are active within your market and analyse what content they share and which possible interfaces they might have with your organisation.

Follow trends, developments and competitors
When monitoring, you should look into more than your own company name, platforms and accounts. It is advisable to follow important terms surrounding your organisation, this will help detect sales opportunities, developments and trends within the market. This will help you to find new stakeholders that are relevant for your organisation.

Monitoring your competitors will also help find your own weaknesses and strengths. Find out how you can differentiate yourself, and find new opportunities in the market. How satisfied are the clients of your competitors? And even a step further: detect contracts that are ending or unanswered questions, to see how you can follow-up on these. Invite potential clients to a meeting and use proactive behaviour to show what you can offer.

A monitoring tool aids you to filter out what messages are important for your organisation through smart searches, made easy. In addition to this, a monitoring tool has the possibility to measure and analyse the results of lead generation. This will help your organisation to optimise service, marketing and products for clients. Enrich your knowledge, analyse results and implement change to enhance your position in the market.

61% of consumers switches organisations when they experience poor service. This was shown in a research conducted by Accenture in 33 countries. Besides this, 68% of these consumers never return after switching. Therefore, lead generation is a part of optimal social services.

Besides being useful for lead generation and service, media monitoring can be used before, during and after an event or crisis for monitoring. In an ideal situation, on and offline media monitoring is strongly integrated and your team is ready to anticipate, react and activate at all times.

Event and crisis monitoring has 3 goals:

1. Crisis communication and management
2. Webcare
3. Marketing

Before your campaign starts, setup real time alerts and keywords. These alerts can differ in their goals. It is possible to set an alert if the volume of messages increases greatly compared to your average volume. This could be a result of famous people talking about your brand or if a situation is looking to get out of hand. In the last case, you will need to spend time in formulating keywords with your brand name and hashtags in combination with words such as; brand, theft, injured, storm, danger etc.

Monitoring news coverage during an event or crisis will provide your organisation with more insights into what is going on. It will never provide you with a complete view, but will give you extra knowledge into the opinion your organisation, employees, sponsors and customers have regarding the event. You will be able to anticipate on risks and crisis through these findings. In addition to this, you will be able to react to questions and comments in real time, both reactive and proactive. Finally, you will be able to get in contact with involved customers which will help you create more impact and reach.

Crisis monitoring and risk analysis
When monitoring a crisis you should start by identifying risks. When an event is coming up, you can usually easily identify which topics will need more attention. These topics might be influenced by; location, program, catering, weather or other aspects of the event. It is advisable to take the time to identify these topics before your event through keywords. This way you are sure you will not miss out on messages and you can react on them as soon as a situation occurs. To avoid an information overload you should prioritize messages and topics. Providing adequate and fast communication will allow your organisation to be a trustworthy source for updates about the situation. Strong preparations really is the best strategy for crisis monitoring.

Reactive and proactive service
Event monitoring can help you to identify questions, remarks and complaints, which will help you to provide reactive and proactive service. A good preparation will provide you with a complete overview of what is messages are surrounding your organisation. Make sure you are able to help out with questions before, during and after the event.

Engage visitors and their network
When you start promoting your event on social media you are not only improving branding, but also engaging visitors and sponsors. For example; short interviews could be used as teasers for the event, but also as a source of inspiration.

During the event you can make use of live narrowcasting to display online messages from visitors. This will help you to stimulate the use of social media and visibility of your event content.

From preparation and real time service to evaluation
Whilst preparation and strong keywords are important for crisis communication and service, evaluating is also an added value. This will help you analyse your work afterwards, helping you to identify possible patterns in messages. Besides learning and improvement points you will be provided with an over overview of what partners and sponsors were involved in the event.

After our own #OBIevent we analysed how the news coverage developed throughout the day. Besides this we found out who was most active, and by analysing the sentiment we could discover how the content of the day was received. Finally, we had a critical look at the input of engagement, in which KPIs such as; service level and response speed could be improved.

The (online) reputation of an organisation is influenced by a number of different factors:

• Is the organisation customer focused?
• How does the organisation communicate?
• What is the quality of the services and products offered?
• How well is the organisation involved in social responsibility?

How can you discover which factor will influence your reputation the most? How can you respond to this as a brand?

The reputation of your brand is also influenced by information that can be found anywhere on the internet. Any potential customer is able to get ahold of this online information, which could influence the way they view your organisation. Therefore it is extremely important to have a grip on this information.

Knowledge is Power!
Though organisations have become more comfortable with social media data and analysing this, the next step towards reputation management is often still seen as difficult. For most organisations the challenge mainly lies within the interpretation of the data and how to translate the data into actionable insights.

Many organisations are looking for actions to take to improve their reputation. We would all like to find a the simplest solution for this. The most important aspect is to link the right subjects with each other. The following tips provide you with insights into (partly automated) structural reputation management analysis.

Tip 1: look further than volumes
An increase in message volumes is often influenced by a number of factors. For example; one person could repeatedly share his/her message, an online contest or if your organisation is continuously mentioned in other situations.

In addition to this, problems that can influence your reputation don’t necessarily need to have a large volume. Therefore, always broaden your search into source types (newspapers, RTV) and sources (high impact sources such as: industry blogs, Reddit etc.).

Tip 2: Measure your core values
You have decided on core values within your corporate communication strategy. Make an analysis of what topics might arise according to these core values. Analyse the sentiment around your core values to see if these can be improved.

Tip 3: Monitor press release after sending them
Creating and spreading press releases is an important task for communication professionals and it is has a large impact on the reputation of an organisation. Often press releases are not monitored well enough. Whilst this provides strong insights into which media channels pick up what topics, which subjects ‘score’ te the highest and which press releases influence your sentiment on social media.

Tip 4: Look at the number of proactive versus reactive messages
Another important guideline is proactive versus reactive messages. Structurally analysing this provides insights into what messages you have been able to somewhat influence.

“Media monitoring is crucial for any type of organisation. It constantly provides real-time insights into news coverage around your brand, industry and competitors. This allows you to have control and influence on your organisations reputation.” – ALEXANDER DE RUITER, CEO OF OBI4WAN

Tip 5: Broaden your market knowledge
What issues are there? (Social) media monitoring is not only for your organisation. When your communication professionals have good insights into which issues have influence in your market, your organisation will be able to play into this.

Tip 6: Monitor important stakeholders
It is important to have detected the most important stakeholders for your organisation. Can you group these, or find certain trends?

One of the most important lessons from reputation management is that people want to be heard. Be open for feedback, to help you react to as many questions and remarks as possible. Be sure to reply quickly, especially on social media, always stay friendly. Due to disappointment or unmet expectations people often want to leave their remarks. Replying with understanding and a clear view often changes this around and will result in a more positive reputation, loyal clients and efficiency!

61% of consumers reads the reviews before making a decision in the buyer journey. This is shown in a study conducted by Econsultancy!