Social media monitoring is as sticky and expansive as the green substance that fell from the sky in Dr. Seuss' Bartholomew and the Oobleck. From the initial trickle of Tweets to everyone's personal blog, a phenomenon--for which there is no toggle switch--has been unleashed.
Razorfish website declares:
TV streams to your phone. Newspapers deliver stories to your toolbar. Encyclopeidas ask you to be their editor. Our old analog friends are behaving a little strangely online. And one thing is undeniable: Consumers are in control.
Monitoring Social Media? Get to Know the Influencers
Consumers have always influenced one another about brands, products, and services. Ten years ago, when his book The Tipping Point was released, Malcolm Gladwell introduced us to the notion that people who are influencers tend to fall into three categories. Connectors: Those who influence based on the number of people they know socially. Mavens: Those who influence through their ability to accumulate, interpret, and share information . And Salesmen: Those who influence others because they are charismatic and persuasive negotiators.
The average Tweeter or Facebook friend may, in a given interactive "conversation" function in any or all of these roles. By virtue of the number of acquaintances and friends a single consumer can access online, they can play at being a connector. Bloggers and Wikipedia contributors tend to excel at maven-like behavior, casting their version of the world out into the ether with few apologies for knowledge gaps or inaccuracies. A FourSquare mayor becomes the person on the street whose Knowledge is gained directly and, therefore, is seen as more impartial than a marketer's portrayal of a product or service.
Bringing Inbound Marketing Scribes and Social Media Research Together
The pages of marketing and advertising are being rewritten minute-by-minute, tweet-by-tweet. And in social media, everyone is a scribe. What is a market researcher to do? Limber up those thumbs and participate. As customers and brands interact directly, marketers must figure out how to engage directly - and sustain engagement through a long relationship. Relationships, as we all know, flourish in an atmosphere of mutual respect and regard. This tenet is as true for digital, virtual, interactive relationships as it is for real-time, face-to-face relationships. Advertisers, marketers, researchers are all learning how to have productive conversations with customers. And they increasingly understand that user-generated content is like gold. For more details about how social media can support the work of the market researcher, read my About.com articles Step-by-Step to Consumer Conversations That Last and Inbound Marketing - Are Your Media Users in Control?
