Social Media Monitoring
We (iKMS) just concluded an evening learning event. The topic was Social Media Monitoring. I had proposed the topic because it had been grabbing the headlines of late. From the overthrowing of political regimes in North Africa and the Middle East to the overturning of an embarrassing song that would otherwise have been part of Singapore’s national day celebration, social media has played an unequivocal role. It is a force to be ignored at one’s own peril, and I dare say that considerable efforts have been channeled into understanding if not harnessing its power.
Within organisational boundaries many practical questions remain to be answered, with regards to monitoring customer sentiments in social media: From this evening’s session the following examples surfaced:
- Whose responsibility is it? KM’s? Business Intelligence’s? Public Relations’?
How to analyse? Where to start? How long to do it for?
How to deal with negative sentiments? Can a tide of negativism be reversed?
How to allocate attention? Why tackle one tweet or blog post and not another?
How to deal with the scepticism of pre-Internet supervisors?
What, then, of traditional media?
Thanks to Kelvin Quee the presenter and the other participants, I left the event knowing far less than before it started.
2 Comments so far
- Gerald Meinert
Interesting topic, especially when you look at it from the KM perspective, perhaps you find the following experiement helpful:
A Social Media Story (+ the what - the why is to come any day)
http://geraldmeinert.blogspot.com/2011/07/social-media-story-day1.html
regards
gerald
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Edgar, sounds like some good discussion was had by all. We have the same sort of challenges here in Australia and many organisations are now becoming aware that they can no longer ignore them.
I recently did a presentation to HR, OD and KM practitioners in Qld about the learnings we have had in the development of our Social Media Field Guide and not only were those sort of questions asked but also many around the governance and barriers relating to the inhouse issues with Social Media.
I thought there might be a difference internationally, around what organisations may face in different cultures on this topic. My recent experience when working with World Vision and their Global team on the possibilities of Social Media for their communities, helped me understand that although there are cultural differences the problems are inherently very similar.
When looking at the questions that you have included above i can only give you the old chestnut - there is no silver bullet.
What we do have now though is learnings from other organisations and their experiences with these and similar problems. I find getting these case studies and examples in the room with a group of intelligent people enables us to explore some great approaches that can be applied in a very practical way back in the workplace.
None of these questions can be answered simply but i will begin the conversation here around a one of them.
Whose responsibility is it? - in short i think there is the opportunity for any of these functions to take up a leadership role in the social media journey. I am concerned if a part of the business “owns” Social Media due to the control issues that can arise.
Given the very “social” nature of this challenge, the planning seems to work best when it is developed consistent with that in a collaborative way. Having IT, KM, PR, BI HR and all the other acronyms in the room together takes them all on the journey at the same time. Not only does the organisation get a richer broader perspective in the development of the strategy and plans, but the people who are involved have worked on the governance, barriers and Business needs together. This means that they are more likely to get out of each others way in implementation vs the alternative of assumptions and control.
Anyway have gone on quite long enough, cant wait to come to Singapore in Sept and have these conversations face to face.
Posted on July 17, 2011 at 03:03 PM | Comment permalink