It is often misunderstood that managing social media is easy for brands. I mean, we all do Facebook. So what can be the big deal about managing a brand presence on Social Media.

Well, for one, going from a comfortable, many times edited broadcast mode communication, to a real time, interactive space, where responses go out on the fly, is a huge bridge to cross. That is where the challenge begins. And then, it can get bigger!

Let’s look at this example, where perhaps, on behalf of the brand, someone with lack of understanding, lack of language skills, or both, decided to respond to comments on a Facebook post:

The disaster that can happen is for all to see.

Maybe English was not the primary language for the person replying. And she did not get the word ‘shameful’. What if it was a one-time unfortunate accident. But by the fact that this screen shot has gone around the world, many times over, the damage to the brand has been done. And badly.

Let’s look at another example. This was in fact, a well-intentioned effort, from a global leader and a household name, McDonald’s.

They’re been very active on social media, have done interesting activations, and have engaged their fans.

So it was not surprising that they initiated a hashtag #McDStories, where they hoped and expected that customers may share fun stories linked with McDonald’s.

But the campaign backfired and how.

Check out the detailed story which shows how the #McDStories hashtag became instead a bashtag. While there may have been consumers who had genuine, interesting McDonald’s stories to share, there were others who used the opportunity to bring out the horror stories of their McDonald’s experiences, from unhealthy food, to poor working conditions, and everything else in between.

Clearly a well intentioned effort that went horribly wrong.

There have been other cases where brands have had trouble, while engaging with consumers on social media. A case closer to home in India was about Cafe Coffee Day, when a fairly active social media brand had a trending hashtag in the form of #ccdsucks.

All of these cases show that:

1. Social media is clearly a double-edged sword for brands.

2. There is extreme participation of consumers around brands. Good and bad experiences can get quickly amplified. Whether the brands like it or not.

3. Brands need to have a sense of preparation, for things that could go wrong. While a #CCDSucks or a #McDStories cannot be necessarily foreseen, a fundamental awareness that things can go wrong, and a broad strategic approach for such situations, is something that brands need to have in place. Typically, before an incident occurs.

4. Often the understanding to manage such crisis is not internal, within organizations. This is due to a lack of experience in real time interactive spaces, and the eagerness to be “in control” always. The latter eagerness can often get brands to take impulsive steps that may not be the wisest ones after all! The Vodafone case when the brand tried to sue a consumer who was complaining about their services on social media, is an example of this.

Simple pointers for brands at this point are:

1. Your consumers are present and talking on social media. Whether the brand is present there or not. So just because there are challenges, to not be present on social media, is not even an option for brands.

2. Brands need to prepare themselves well. They cannot trivialize social media and relegate it to a lower level, in the corporate hierarchy. Senior management must participate in decisions related to social media.

3. Being prepared for eventualities helps in not being totally surprised.

4. Adequate budgets need to be apportioned. Just because Facebook or Twitter are free to use does not mean that brand budgets for social media should be peanuts!

5. And brands should really engage with agencies or consultants who “get” the medium. There are cheap ad film makers, but brands still go for the best in the business. Because stakes are high. The same kind of thought must prevail while making choices in selection of a social media agency!

With all that, social media’s an exciting space. One just needs to work harder, on a 24×7 basis!

Wikileaks in the world and RadiaGate in India have suddenly exposed the world to a new set of possibilities. And a new set of vulnerabilities.

Conversations, be it on phone or in other electronic formats, and which one assumed to have been private and secure, can actually become very public and embarrassing for the people involved! While the legality of the public appearance of Wikileaks and RadiaGate conversations may be open to judgement, another form of conversations that are clearly legal and yet equally potentially damaging are the kind that are happening in various spaces of Social Media. For a brand or an individual, there is as much damage to fear in Wikileaks or RadiaGate mentions, as it is in damaging Social Media conversations!

Considering a certain parallel between these situations then, I would like to share some learnings from a RadiaGate situation, which can in turn be useful, in tackling Online Reputation Management challenges, for brands, via Social Media.

The bigger story of Nira Radia’s taped conversations, the 2G telecom scam, the role played by corporates and politicians, and many more of those issues, will take a long time to become clear. This post is not about RadiaGate or its fall out, per se.

What this post strives to attempt, is to relate the early response from Ratan Tata, in RadiaGate and map it to a possible ORM challenge for a brand, and see what learnings we can take from the same.

So here is what happened, in this context:

Several telephonic conversations involving lobbyist Nira Radia were tapped, and many of these conversations made their way to the public space, via links posted on the Outlook magazine website.

Nira Radia happened to be officially appointed by the Tatas, as their PR representative, and would have been looking after many corporate matters related to the Tatas. As a part of such management, the Chairman of Tatas. Mr. Ratan Tata, would also have need to talk to Nira Radia, sometimes. Now since the phones of Nira Radia were tapped, and those tapped conversations went public, what also went public, were some of her conversations with her client, Ratan Tata.

Considering the stature of Ratan Tata, this was extremely embarrassing, to say the least. Similar small bits of conversations that Mukesh Ambani (another client of Nira Radia) had with Nira, also went public, likewise.

Well, Ratan Tata was angry. As anyone in his place would. But unlike many others, Ratan Tata chose to go public with his feelings, condemning the leaks. It took everyone by surprise, as first of all, Ratan Tata is not one to go to the media ever so often, and secondly, on account of his direct involvement in some of the leaked conversations! Both, the extent and the manner of his response, surprised everyone.

Whether he should have gone public in this manner, with his thoughts or not, could there have been other, better options are all a matter of conjecture.

But visualize the same kind of dirt flying on the Social Media space, instead of publicly accessible tapes. Then, from an ORM point of view, would this have been a right thing to do? What could have been the best means to handle a crisis of this kind?

Recognize first, that there was indeed a crisis. The goodwill of the Tata name had got shaken. It was made to appear that Tatas, like any other group, also use lobbying, to get favors for themselves. And because you hold a person and a group in such high esteem, therefore, it hurts even more. For the hero to have fallen, and seem like an ordinary mortal after all.

It was in the backdrop of such feelings that the public harboured, did Ratan Tata’s protests came. Here then, are some views on this, from and ORM perspective:

1. If as a company or a large brand, you are attacked by far smaller entities – the bloggerati and all – the last thing you want to start doing, is to show how powerful you are. If you come out like an elephant willing to trample them all away, it can only backfire. As the first reactions to Ratan Tata’s strong response showed. In spite of the great respect that the country has for Ratan Tata and the Tata name, when Ratan Tata himself chose to come out and show anger, it appeared as if reality had stung him. That his group had also tried to manipulate (in their own way) for spectrum etc. appeared to question the lofty standards of the Tata group.

Besides everything else, when Ratan Tata takes the fight to the open, it indeed becomes an open fight! And people like MP Rajeev Chandrashekar chose to also take him on, in public, and suddenly it appeared to a lot of dirty linen out for everyone to see!

2. So if one does not come out strongly, does that mean that one takes negative press (and negative social media) lying down? Surely not. There IS a need to act. And act fast too.

In the recently concluded Click Asia Summit, after my talk, I was asked this question. Whether in the totally unpredictable world of Social Media, a company can at all plan its footsteps?! Could the Tata group have “planned” for a situation like RadiaGate?

No, you cannot PLAN for an exact situation. In this very open world of electronic information, Wikileaks and RadiaGate WILL happen. You just don’t know what the next one will be like. And what damage it will cause. So while you cannot plan the exact nature of response, you CAN prepare a protocol and be ready. And not have to be randomly impulsive, and potentially put your foot into your mouth!

Companies need to have a plan, and genuine training to the team, to deal with these new media related challenges that can come any day! A key starting point is to have a Media Monitoring plan in place, especially a Social Media Monitoring one!

3. As a part of the plan, empower the frontline team to respond! I remember the live coverage of 26/11 and the various authorities in whose face, media was prepared to stick a mike. And how they had no clue what to really say. There was no coordinated response, neither was there a preparation at most places, about the ways to deal with situations of this kind. Where 26/11 was television, worst is the case with social media, where any kind of negative news can come, for your brand, and can potentially snowball. Before a Ratan Tata intervened, there would have been lots of questions posed to the frontline folks in Tata Communications. Were they equipped to give any kind of response at all?

4. Play in the same field. So, if someone has put a strong message against you in an online forum, and you choose to go and call a press conference in response. That does not work. No can do. The biggest conversations – at least in open forums – about Ratan Tata and Barkha Dutt and Nira Radia were all happening on Social Media. Ratan Tata, writing a letter in mainline press, or doing a press conference, was fine. But he let the tongues continue to wag on Social Media.

It was important to respond in this space also. Whether it was by posting a YouTube video and then have a team responding back to other queries, or whatever.

5. Strengthen your team with external forces! Yes, you can shout yourself hoarse with your side of the story, and there will always be people who will doubt it. And the more you say, the more questions will be raised, and the more risk of being perceived as guilty! However, can you get force multipliers in terms of external support? Consolidate third party opinions that agree with yours, and give your point of view, that much more credence. Instead of just Ratan Tata fighting the lone battle on behalf of the Tata group, including taking on Rajeev Chandrashekar and the Congress government, could there have been other credible sources who could have been brought in, to strengthen the Tata story? And give it better credibility?

Same approach works in Social Media as well!

6. This is the time when all your earlier good work comes to help. Yes, all those testimonials and your credentials that you have been building up. This is the time to go out and leverage those. Used in a subtle way, the testimonials and credentials now need to give additional credibility to your view point, and make people question the allegations against your brand. Tata might have done it in some measure and could have done a lot more. And you can do it too, in the possible face of any negative mentions against you, on Social Media.

In summary, I would emphasize that there will be more Wikileaks and more RadiaGates. There will also be more of the Dominos cases or the Nestle Greenpeace attacks. This is the new world, the world of new media as well.

It is not about hoping (praying??) that it does not happen to you. But about being aware of the possibility first, and then about having preparation for such eventualities.

Yes, we can learn from what Ratan Tata did right, and also from what he did not do so right.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

The statement is valid in all walks of life, and at this time, it seems relevant in the space of Social Media as well.

Okay, need to rewind and start at the beginning.

In our business of being a Social Media agency, we meet a lot of clients. Many of them are large brands with significant marketing budgets and advertising spends. Several of them initiate the discussion on Social Media from their end, while few discussions are initiated from our end as well.

At this point in time, most brands are convinced about looking at Social Media. Few are still hesitant, and few have made good inroads to be confident to place large bets. But most of them are in the middle of the road. They are approaching Social Media very gingerly.

Let us look at some typical scenarios:

1.    Brand is going for a new campaign, in mainline media: an expensive TVC, supported by print, perhaps OOH too. When we hear of these developments, we propose significant strategies around the campaign. Possibly including doing a teaser on social media, then taking the longer versions of the TVC on to social media (why be constrained with 15-30 seconds, when you are not paying by the second on YouTube – build a larger story board!), putting some behind-the-scenes clips (especially where celebrity brand ambassadors are involved), etc. We could even ask users on Social Media, to carry the storyboard further, maybe even propose a sequel for the advertisement.

Few brands have been venturing out with some of these strategies. Many just go ahead and create a Facebook page around the campaign (which is also abandoned, once the campaign is off-air), and many do nothing at all, on Social Media.

2.    Brand wants to get onto social media independent of any other campaign: convinced that this is a place not to be ignored, a brand wants to get there. Where smart ideas of potential high impact are shared, may of them like those, but want to get started with ‘just a facebook presence first’.

3.    And there are some brands who are set to go to Social Media, but are still hesitant, whether to go ‘as the brand’ or do some surrogate work. Since they fear that as soon as they step into the space, on their own name, they will be inundated with large number of complaints.

All of these are examples of brands playing it safe. Lets look at each of the cases.

If the brand has a new campaign out, in mainline media, it’s a great opportunity to leverage this with a decent Social Media extension. Crores are being spent on the TVC – on its creation, and then on the media itself. At a fraction of that cost, the brand can get users on Social Media, engaged with the brand, by smart placement of the campaign story.

Why then, does the brand hesitate? It is inherently a fear of the unknown. The brand is not sure what they are getting into. Will the users rip apart the campaign? What if it creates negative response? What if questions are asked that we cannot easily respond to?

The fact is that these questions are asked anyway. Advertising is one of the biggest discussed topics on Social Media. If a brand is confident about the campaign, then there should not be hesitation in facing the consumer in a direct interaction over it. And in doing so, give yourself the opportunity of creating good mileage on account of the same.

Coming to the case of creating a social media presence, why opt for the safe and boring ‘only facebook page’ presence? The creation of the Old Spice man, with the large number of videos and the interaction, was clearly a brave act. What if it was rejected? But it was not. And went on to become a stupendous success. Would Old Spice have achieved even a fraction of that visibility if it had stayed with a ‘safe and simple’ Facebook page?? As I said at the outset, ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’.

And the brands that hesitate still, in putting their name out in the front, for fear of getting user flak, well, they are also losing an opportunity here.

If the service is demanding flak, the flak is coming, no matter if they are present on social media or not. Their presence, a confirmation of their ‘listening’ to the customer, their responses back to the customers, will generate a positive feel about the brand. Not being present is to let the users have a free hand, to allow the odd complaint to potentially snowball as users keep adding fuel to the fire, with no one giving the brand’s point of view.

I reckon we have reached the point where Social Media is now accepted by most brands as being real, but most of them still have a sense of apprehension about going all out, into that space.

And what distinguishes the few who have taken the bigger calls, and have been successful in so doing, is a sense of dare.

Be it P&G internationally or a Just Dial or Star Plus in India, it is indeed that bravado that differentiates these winners, from the many also-rans.

So dear brand owner, in social media, there is nothing to fear but fear itself! And as Seth Godin put it, “If you waiting for a case study in your business vertical, it is already too late to jump in”.

Go for it! Social Media is indeed, here and now!!

There are still many out there who do not understand or appreciate the concept of Social Media Monitoring. For their benefit, just a quick introduction to the idea first.

Conversations are happening on Social Media.

A blog that talks about say, telecom issues.

Comments on that blog, from various people, about the blog, but more pertinently, about their preferences or prejudices, amongst brands, for example.

Or a discussion on a message board, about hosting service providers.

And several posts to the thread, indicating active participation, besides the much larger number, who just look and go away.

Or consider a Twitter stream about Digital Cameras:

Any such discussion can significantly impact your brand, your sales. Say, by driving away customers, on account of some negative conversations, or pushing business to your competitors on account of some flattering postings in their favor, etc.

In order that these events do not catch you by surprise, you are better off to do what is referred to as “Social Media Monitoring”. That process where you keep track of the social media conversations, related to your business. Typically done with a mix of software tools and some manual data clean up, this activity is emerging as an acknowledged and regular business process for many companies now.

And now that many companies are getting into such Social Media Monitoring efforts, we see behavior and response from people, based on their stage of evolution with Social Media monitoring. And what are some of these stages, then?

1. The discovery stage: typically from a company (or person) that has just started doing Social Media Monitoring. There is huge fascination usually, in discovering a host of mentions of their brand in Social Media. It’s almost incredible to them. Most of them did not imagine that people could be so animatedly talking about their brand. Here, the brands do not particularly go about investigating the details of what context the conversations are happening in. The discovery itself is the reward, at this point. That they are in the conversation horizon of people is a reason to feel satisfied.

2. The first stage of investigation: this is when the company goes beyond the fascination of discovery and probes a little deeper into the nature of conversation. And this is usually followed by a few rude shocks. When it is found that many of the conversations are critical about the brand. Yes, people share good experiences with fewer people, but bad customer experiences are broadcast to many. Also that, most people who “write” into the social media space have a kind of ‘activist’ profile. And they pick up the smallest of your mistakes and amplify the same via Social Media channels. This is when companies often get upset, ask for opinions about how to “shut these guys up”, or “is there a legal recourse to stop such postings”, etc.

3. The stage of understanding: here is where now, the company really gets serious about looking at the data that is coming out, and converting it into actionable pieces. Conversations can be about a variety of things related to a company’s brand. From quality issues, to customer service, to price, to product details, to wish-list for new services, to competitor comparison etc. Each of these needs a different handling, perhaps from different people in an organization. So now is the stage when a company starts tagging the conversations and distributing these to the right teams and people, and also starts figuring out a response mechanism, which is consistent across the organization, because finally, to the outside world, it is that “one company” only.

4. The final stage (as of now – this space is changing!): this is when the company has now got a real good picture of the social media conversations and their impact. That many a times, the mention of their brand is inconsequential and needs to be ignored. Sometimes there is a negative mention, but it is on account of some personal reasons and can be settled offline. Or that there is conversation that they are quite familiar with, and in fact, stems out of their own press releases, for example. But then to pick those few, which are from the real ‘influencers in the space’ and which give them new and very relevant information, and which they need to act upon, is the ultimate objective. This is the “smart” way of monitoring social media, and putting it to use. It takes a lot of effort to separate the wheat from the chaff, but this is indeed, the real thing.

I am sure, there will be even more sophistication that is evolving, but the above stages largely capture the experiences of most companies, currently dabbling into the space of Social Media Monitoring.

Questions, other thoughts, experiences? Please feel free to share below.

The title of this post might sound like it’s from a Dale Carnegie book. And sure it makes all the sense to listen well, in life. But here, I refer to the concept of listening in to the Social Media buzz. And the ample opportunity that it provides, to any brand, any company, any individual, today.

In our presentation (our own Social Media 101), we emphasize that the first opportunity for businesses on Social Media, is the opportunity to “listen”. It is an opportunity akin to eavesdropping the homes of your consumers, legitimately too

Listening enables you to get insights about your brand that you may not be aware of.

Listening can give you new product ideas, as you hear about the consumer’s wish list.

And many benefits of the kind.

And yet, as we speak about this, at events and to prospects, we have been asked questions like:

“Is it really worth it?”

“What do we do after listening?”

“Will it not be just too much conversation to manage and digest?”

“Are there such conversations happening, really?”

And after voicing such doubts, marketers return back to look at their advertising budgets, and decide to spend some more, just to make up for their diminishing returns on the earlier budgets! The low-resistance option. The option where you can buy yourself one month, or maybe three, to figure out why sales are down.

While all the time, the reality is there in front of the eyes, but the choice is made to ignore the reality, as it might just demand a lot more work.

Like a lot more analysis. “Those four conversations that were extremely negative about the product quality – how do they extrapolate to the larger quality challenge?” for example.

Or to figure out the real impact of a tweet recommending a competing product, from someone who has 5000 followers. What is the real “reach” of that message, and can it cause damage to your market share??

Say you find a thread of a complaint against one of your salesperson at one of your outlets. Do you ignore it and wish it will disappear or be forgotten? Or is it a PR crisis about to blow in your face?

All of these are tough questions, really. And there are many more of the kind.

It is easier to get them off your mind, and sit with your Excel spreadsheets, and figure out more media buy and more budget allocations. And hope that, in doing all of that, there is salvation. And a recovery of sales and of market share.

The fact is that you cannot wish away reality.

That the game is changing. And changing rapidly.

Increasing amount of purchase decisions – be they products or services, be they B2B or B2C – are being influenced, if not actually being made, via Social Media.

“Which phone should I buy?”, “Can you recommend me a good lawyer?”, “What’s your opinion of brand xyz?”, etc. are questions that you see all day long on Social Media.

Likewise, it just needs a few tweets or a particularly critical blog post, or a ‘caught in action’ video to pull a brand reputation down. One which had been built at great cost and one which will take even more cost to recover!

There IS real virtue in listening. Listening to the Social Media buzz. Listening to conversations about your brand, your company, your vertical, your competition.

Yes, these will take effort. To go over. To classify. To figure out the genuine from the junk. It will need time to understand the game, to come up with methods and strategies for this new reality. But you need to start somewhere. And the more you put off that start, the more difficult it will get to catch up.

To answer a simple question that someone asked us, “do such conversations happen, really?”. Okay – what kind of conversation can you expect to see on social media?

Those kind that you’d have with a friend over a drink.

Those issues that you discuss at a Parents-Teachers meeting.

The watercooler ones.

The chat that you have with your golfing mate, as you walk on them greens.

That chatter that is typical at a party, or at a dinner with friends.

The calls that you make to seek advice – on anything!

In short, any conversation that was natural to do offline, will now find its way on to the Social Media space. So go figure! Does your brand get discussed offline at all? Then, you can be sure to find such conversations on the social media space.

And then you can find some more.

“Because in my offline network, I might have not had the necessary expertise for say, those exclusive, high-end speakers that I was considering to purchase, or that piece of European art that fascinated me, or about a particular University in Ottawa that my child was planning to go to.”

Where the offline network stops, the online one is still accessible and alive.

And then to answer the other questions, “Will there not be too much data? How do I find it? How do I manage 1000s of conversations that come up?”

Well, this is where tools and service providers come to help.

Take for example, the SM2 Techrigy social media monitoring tool. Available in a Freemium model, it is something that you can immediately experiment with, and it can give you interesting insights in next to no time. Put in a set of keywords / phrases, tweak it with some conditions (language, geography etc.), and it starts pushing back to you, conversations from blogs, message boards, forums, video sites, social networking sites, twitter, etc. etc. that match your conditional requirements.

AND it does more. It gives you a basic sentiment track on all the conversations, it identifies the ‘influencers’ from the set of conversations, it enables an actionable workflow where you can assign the conversation to a team member. And many other such interesting features.

And in case you do not have internal team resources to manage this, or you want a higher level of value addition, there are service providers who can offer you that. In fact, our company provides services of the kind, where we do a manual read of all the conversations, do a more accurate sentiment tagging, and further tag the conversations around your areas of focus, such as quality issues, price issues, competition, product features, etc. That way, when you see a report, it is immediately actionable, no matter the quantity of posts that have been generated around your brand.

A few case studies of such social media monitoring work have been showcased earlier, on this blog.

In conclusion, I must share a job post that thrilled me no end, earlier this week. Even as we have been working hard to convince clients about the benefits of “listening to the social media”, we were happy to see Kodak announce a position of Chief Listener! That is amazing foresight, and acceptance and understanding of the new ways of doing business.

Whether you appoint a Chief Listener or decide to outsource your listening effort, do make a beginning. You will not regret, I assure you!

So are you already there ‘listening away’? Or what are your views / plans on the same? Would love to hear from you.

Disclosure: Social PR Outsourcing Pvt. Ltd., the parent company of Social Wavelength, is an authorised reseller for the SM2 Techrigy tool, for India.

Executive Summary: Is Social Media Monitoring just an academic exercise, or can it lead to concrete benefits to the Brand? We conducted a Monitoring exercise to find out. The chosen domain was iPod and iPhone speakers and docks. To know more about what we found, read on. (Hint: It was the latter)

The method used for conducting this Social Media Monitoring exercise was essentially similar to the previous exercises carried out by us (Online Travel Sector in India and Hybrid Cars – Whats the Social Media Buzz). The study differed however, in that we completely focused on deriving points of action from it. We specifically chose this particular market  (iPhone and iPod docks) to conduct the exercise, because it was very close to another market/domain (iPods and iPhones themselves) which have a very high level of noise. We would have to ensure, therefore, that the search was very well defined, so that the number of irrelevant results retrieved would be kept in check. The entire exercise involved:

1. Identifying the appropriate search terms to enter into the Social Media Monitoring tool, so as to reduce the number of irrelevant results retrieved. (We restricted the searches to retrieve four days worth of data, June 12th to June 15th)
2. Running the searches, and allowing the Software to perform a first level classification of the results.
3. Our Social Media Executives cleaning up the results, to remove all the irrelevant ones.
4. Higher level, intelligent classification, categorization by our Executives.
5. Analyzing these results to extract points of action, and identifying influencers.

Our learning:

If I was a company about to launch an iPod Dock/Speaker system, what would be the features I would ensure that my product had? Apart from the obvious feature, viz. Good Audio output, our monitoring exercise revealed two features which were highly appreciated:

1. Compatibility with different generations of iPhones/iPods: What may seem to be an obvious enough feature, was not present in some models (eg. Bose SoundDock Portable). Conversely, whenever a mention was made of a dock which had this feature, it was highly praised (eg. GenevaSound Medium).
2. Ability to charge your device while music is being played: This feature, as well, wherever present was highly praised (eg. Harmon Kardon Go + Play). Yet, not all systems seem to have this feature.

On Social Media, Issues resurface, constant vigilance is required. The Bose SoundDock Portable, mentioned above, had a problem. Days after the 3G iPhone was released on 11th July 2008, people started talking about issues with the SoundDock Portable. While charging the iPhone 3G, the dock made a popping/clucking sound, every 5 minutes. This was reported on a particular thread on the Apple Support forums. We saw users helping each other, recounting  their interactions with Bose’s support  (which incidentally, did not reply in the thread). The problem was solvable, requiring the users to send the dock to Bose, who would modify it and send it back. As it happens, three new posts was posted on the the same thread, on 15th June 2009 (which is why the tool picked it up).  These people had the same issue, one year later, and still had to help each other solve it.

Action Required:

We identified results, which merited response as ‘Action Required’ results. They were further classified into ‘Action Required: First Level Response’ and ‘Action Required: Escalate to Customer Service’. Within these four days, we found three results on which we determined action would be required, in terms of escalating those three results to Customer Service. They were all related to the Bose SoundDock and problems associated with the same. The first Action Required result was about Bose SoundDock not being able to charge a users iPod Touch. The second and third results were from the apple support forums, with users talking about the popping/clucking sounds being made by the SoundDock Portable.

Influencer Identification:

From among the various sources where iPod docks were spoken about, Social Media Monitoring also helps us identify the influencers, viz. sources with the widest reach. While the largest number of reviews of various iPod docking systems were on the blog Smart Reviews Online, the popularity rating for this particular blog was 2 (out of a maximum possible rating of 10). On the other hand, the blog Geek.com, which did not always talk about iPod docks, had a popularity rating of 10 (highest rating possible). The only talk about iPod docks on geek.com in this time frame was about the passPORT home dock enables the Soundock to charge iPods while playing them. Another big influencer, with a popularity rating of 10 (source with highest reach or popularity) was, unsurprisingly Apple’s support forums, which had a single thread active, with only three posts during this time frame. It became clear, that frequency of posting (which may lead to a particular blog/channel being seen as influential) may not really be the most popular source.

The above study is an illustration of how monitoring Social Media can very clearly be used to derive well defined and specific action steps. It also helps in identifying which are the most influential sources of information about your product or brand.

The categorization done by our analysts, opens up opportunities for some interesting insights. First let us look at what is the ratio of relevant to irrelevant results from the one’s extracted by the tool:

How do users percieve your brand? What are the thoughts, words they associate with your company? We can analyze the themes being touched upon on Social Media, when people are talking about your brand. In this example, we did this themes analysis on the entire set of relevant results, viz. across brands.

In the tag cloud shown above, larger the size of the word/tag, more closely it is associated with the brand (in this case across brands). The above cloud, for example reveals that the word ‘System’ is very closely associated with speakers/docks, something which should be considered while thinking of a branding strategy for your next product. The word ‘dock’ is individually bigger than ‘speaker’, however, the word ‘speakers’ also figures prominently in the tag cloud.

Now that we know the themes being touched, we want to see which domains have the maximum volume of conversations about iPod Docks and Speakers (a reminder, we are doing this study for the four day period from 12th June to 15th June. It can easily be conducted for longer durations, and on an ongoing basis). The most popular domains, which spoke about iPod speakers, were as per the following image:

If we look at the above graph carefully, we see that there are two posts on Craigslist. Which means there is probably a resales market for iPod docks. We classified these posts concerning resale, and now we can see, which brand has the most resale related posts  for the given duration:

These resale related posts were not restricted to Craigslist alone. Done on an ongoing basis, this can help identify the size of the resale market for a particular brand, or even a particular product.

In previous Social Media Monitoring exercises, we have seen some basic data analysis, including Ratio of Tone within brand, Tone analysis related to product etc. As we can see in this post, much more complex and insightful analysis is possible.

Your questions/comments are invited. What other insights would you like to be able to draw from Social Media?

If you wish to download the White Paper for this study (PDF), you can visit the Resources Page on our website.

Executive Summary:

People ARE talking about your Brand on Social Media. This much you know. Should you be tracking the conversations and interactions? Can actionable insights be delivered to you by monitoring Social Media for your brand (and that of your competitors)? In order to answer these, and other questions, about tracking the activity of your brand on this new media, we conducted a monitoring exercise for Hybrid/Electric cars. What follows is a detailed report of the same.

Contents:

• The Idea
• The Methodology
• Our Findings
  • Relevant/Irrelevant Ratio
  • Competitor Comparison related insights
  • Ratio of Tone, within brand
  • Product Related, by Tone
  • Price Related, by Tone
  • Buying Stage/Lead Generation
• Conclusions drawn/Learning
• Notes/Appendices

The Idea:

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We have previously performed Social Media Monitoring exercises on the Indian Elections 2009 as well as on the Online Travel Sector in India. We now shifted our focus to the worldwide Hybrid Car market. Our aim was to see if it is possible to get insights about a market, by monitoring the Social Media buzz around the same.

The Methodology:

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1. We used the industry leading Social Media Monitoring tool SM2 by the people over at Techrigy for the first stage of the process, viz. Capturing the data from across Social Media.

2. Since the study was to be about Hybrid/Electric Cars (as against elections), we decided to query the vast space using some well known brand names in the Hybrid/Electric cars market.
3. We used the SM2 to retrieve results over a 4 day period (12^th June ’09 to 15^th June 09). This period gave us a total of 2822 results. SM2 did a great job of first level Categorization of the results.
4. Then, our team of Social Media Analysts swung into action. Using SM2, we first created a set of categories, which we believed would deliver insights into the monitoring effort.
5. We then analyzed each result, individually, categorizing it as appropriate. Humans, understanding Humans, as we like to say. We then sliced and diced the results, to get some interesting insights.
6. What did we find? Over to the next section.

Our Findings:

Relevant/Irrelevant ratio: (Back To Top)

Even with a very specific query, a large number of results, which had no bearing on the subject were recovered. During the human cleanup phase, these were categorized as irrelevant (What was classified as irrelevant?). These irrelevant results, are not considered while drawing further insights.

Of the total volume of 2822 results, the number of irrelevant results is 1837, the remaining being relevant. In terms of percentage, 65% were irrelevant, whereas 35%, relevant.

Types on insights available:

Competitor Comparison Related: (Back To Top)

If two or more brands of Hybrid/Electric cars have been compared, we marked the result as ‘Competitor Comparison Related’, while also tagging the result according to the tone it uses for each of the companies being compared. 37 relevant results were marked as ‘Competitor Comparison Related’.

Example: Is the Prius too mighty to take down?: (this was marked as being Neutral for both Honda and Toyota, as well as Price Related).

Summary: Among the results tagged as ‘Competitor Comparison’, the recurring comparison was the one between the Toyota Prius (entering its 3rd generation) and the first generation Honda Insight. While the sales of the Insight are said to below expectations and the Prius sales have also fallen, among the two, the 3rd generation Prius emerges ahead of the Insight. Examples: (1, 2).

Ratio of tone, within brand: (Back To Top) 

A brand has some chatter about it. But within this chatter, how much is positive/negative/neutral? How does the percentage of positive/negative/neutral results for a brand stack up against the same percentage for another brand?

Tone For GM: 78% Neutral Mentions, 13% Positive Mentions, 8%Negative Mentions

Summary: The Negative results for GM followed the announcement that GM canceled most of its Hybrid lineup, including the Malibu Hybrid 2010. Largely, the positive results were those which spoke the upcoming Buick having a Hybrid Powertrain.

Tone For Toyota: 78% Neutral Mentions, 19% Positive Mentions, 2%Negative Mentions

Summary: Negative results for Toyota came in the form of Tesla motors CEO saying that the Prius is not a true hybrid. Other negative results were about the Prius not being able to cross the 50 MPG average of fuel efficiency. Positive results for Toyota came from talk around the Prius, which people seem to be happy about, as well as reviews of the Toyota Civic hybrid.

Tone For Ford: 72% Neutral Mentions, 26% Positive Mentions, <1%Negative Mentions

Summary: The one negative result about Ford concerns how Toyota is beating Ford and GM, by employing lean business practices, allowing them to come up with innovate faster and cheaper as in the     case of the Prius. The largest number of positive results for Ford were around Senator McCain planning to buy a Ford Fusion Hybrid.

Product Related, by tone: (Back To Top)

When someone is talking about the features of your product (in this case, a Hybrid car), what tone does she use?

Take Toyota, for example. If a brand manager at Toyota wanted to find out, if someone has spoken on Social Media about the brand using a negative tone, this can be done. We can see all results with a negative tone, about its product (viz. The car itself, as against price, availability etc.). The following result matches the criteria:

Why is the Toyota Prius such a bore:

This result is ideal for posting a response to, and could have been escalated to the relevant department.

Summary: By far, the largest number of results for all brands are Product related. The Product related category is where correct Categorization can yield great results, as seen in the above example. The topics being discussed are by and large:

• People discussing news and events related to the brands (1, 2)
• Features of existing Products (1, 2)
• Upcoming releases (1, 2)

Price Related, by tone: (Back To Top)

39 results have been Categorized as ‘Price related’. Example: Honda Insight a Flop?

(This has been categorized into Honda: Tone Negative, Price Related)

Summary: Most price related results were about the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight. The Honda Insight is priced at $2000 less than the Prius, and in response, Toyota has slashed the price of its car by $1000. Despite the lower cost, the Honda Insight is likely to miss its sales target.

Buying Stage/Lead Generation: (Back To Top)

As we saw in the case of travel websites, listening to Social Media can be used as a method of lead generation as well.

An example of a result Categorized as ‘Buying: Early Stage’:

Summary: In the Buying Stage: Early category, people spoke about cars which they were considering as possible purchases. In the Buying Stage: Late category, most of the noise was around Senator McCain’s decision to buy a Ford Fusion.

Conclusions Drawn/Learning:

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About the Hybrid Cars Market, and related chatter on Social Media:

1. In terms of Social Media Volume the largest brands are Toyota, GM, Ford and Honda
2. The most discussed cars are Prius, Insight, Fusion and Civic
3. Smaller brands are also being spoken about on Social Media, with much lower volume.
4. The most discussed topics surrounding these brands and cars are the products themselves (features etc.), upcoming releases, price related issues, comparisons and news related to the brands/cars. There was also discussion related to the fact that despite the 24 hour production schedule of Toyota, there still exists a waiting period for the Prius.

About the Social Media Monitoring Exercise:

1. For any Brand/Company interested in knowing about the Social Media chatter surrounding them, this kind of a Social Media Monitoring exercise can deliver great value as well as actionable insights.

2. Such an exercise entails

• A Social Media monitoring tool, which can extract relevant data from across Social Media properties, based on the query that is set up.
• Setting up a Query, in such a manner that all possible relevant results are captured, while at the same time minimizing the incidence of irrelevant results being caught.
• Setting up of appropriate categories which will allow for better analysis of the data gathered. Both the above (query and category set up) are iterative in nature, with ongoing tweaking required.
• Beyond this, a layer of human intervention is absolutely necessary. The results retrieved by the tool need to be cleaned, by humans.
• To these cleaned results, appropriate rigorous categorization of the results must be done.These Categorized-by-Humans results can then be sliced and diced to derive actionable insights.

Your questions/comments are invited, of course.

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Notes and Appendices:

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NOTE: The above report is an analysis of the Social Media buzz around the subject of Hybrid Vehicles. None of the above statements represent any personal views of ours, on the subject.

NOTE: The numbers mentioned above, say for GM, are only of those results in which the brand name ‘GM’ (or ‘General Motors’ and its variations thereof) was mentioned. The same is the case with the other results as well.

What was classified as irrelevant? (Back To Top)

Two kinds of results were classified as irrelevant:

1. Results which were not related to Hybrid/Electric Cars: Many results talk about the different brands mentioned in the query and use the words ‘Hybrid’ and ‘Electric’ in a context other than the one relevant to the search. Example.

2. Results related to Hybrid/Electric Cars, which are irrelevant to people interested in monitoring the brand: Some results like link farms (blogs with only links pointing to other pages), many wiki talk pages (where the brand/product reference is not edited). Example.

[Edits: Tweaked the Title and the above notes]

[Edits 2: Changed graph style, formatting, added menu]

If you wish to download the White Paper for this study (PDF), you can visit the Resources Page on our website.

Two things have prompted this post.
There was some chatter, I think on Twitter, or perhaps on some blog, about how long one has been on “social media”. There were responses that mentioned periods like few months, 1 year, and going upto 3 years or so, on the outside. I did not participate in that chatter / discussion, because I felt funny. Have I been on Social Media for last 2-3 years, or last 12 years?? I know I would have raised a lot of eyebrows if I had mentioned 12 years there! So let me put up the facts here and allow you to decide. By the way, most of those people in that discussion must have still been in school 12 years back

The other reason that prompted this post was the slide that we put in our corporate pitch. We write there that:

Social Wavelength is a startup venture, incorporated in April 2009.

Social Wavelength though, has been many years in the making!

This is an effort then, to explain the idea of the “many years in the making” that we mention.

So here it is. Way back in 1997, when there were just a handful of websites in India, my first entrepreneurial venture, Homeindia.com, was one of those sites. And although later on, from 1998 onwards, it moved towards the e-retail space that was to be it’s focus thereafter (and continues to be, as on date, although the business is run by it’s new owners after we divested our stake in 2007), in those early days of 1997, Homeindia.com had a different focus. Here is a screenshot, without images, that I was able to pick up from archive.org:

In 1997, the government of India, under Finance Minister, Mr. P. Chidambaram, had announced this Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme (VDIS) that enabled unaccounted income (from tax point of view) to be converted to accounted money. There were a lot of questions that people had, in this context. We had enabled a Bulletin Board on Homeindia.com, that time. While we had empaneled some experts to respond to people’s queries, but in addition to the experts, it was also open to any user, to respond to another user’s queries.

Over the few weeks when this scheme ran, there was large amount of interaction, and it became a veritable case of “user generated content” and a “community” of sorts, although those terms were not really fashionable those days!!

So did we run a Social Media application in those Web 1.0 days, in 1997? I think we did. What do you say?

In fact, over the next 9 years that we ran Homeindia.com, there were many other applications that we built and launched, which had high engagement with the users.

But to go back to the original two questions, I do believe that I have been engaging in ‘Social Media’ for a long, long time. And also on account of that 11+ years of hands-on experience in running these consumer facing online businesses, I have reason to state that Social Wavelength has been many years in the making!

Do you agree? As usual, welcome comments and feedback.

** For information of readers, I co-founded Homeindia.com in 1997-98. After the initial efforts in areas like VDIS, the site quickly regrouped to focus on offering services to customers outside India, including Non-resident Indians and others. Homeindia.com had the honor of being awarded “India’s Most Useful Website”, and subsequently took the onus of being “India’s Most Reliable Online Store”. I divested my stake in Homeindia.com in 2007. **

- Sanjay Mehta

Having done an exhaustive Social Media Analysis of the the Indian Elections 2009, we shifted focus to the Travel sector in India. The focus of this monitoring exercise was to extract information and learning which might be useful to Travel Agencies as well as Travel Portals based in India. We wanted to explore Social Media Monitoring as a method of generating leads and identifying prospective clients. We also wanted to see whether it can be used as a feedback mechanism by players in this sector. For the purpose of this exercise, we restricted the search to the 5 day period of 1^st June to 5^th June 2009 (which is towards the waning end of the travel/holiday season).

Objectives:

1. Extract data related to Travel sector in India using Social Media Monitoring tools

2. Using human intervention, validate whether the search results are relevant/useful for travel agencies of travel portals.

3. Categorize the data in a manner which will make it easier to consume/easier to base decisions on.

4. Derive conclusions/learning, if any.

Process:

For performing the initial search, we used industry leading Social Media Monitoring tools. We set up queries for looking up some of the travel websites/portals from India (cleartrip, makemytrip etc.). Apart from this, we set up searches which focused on generic travel related words and phrases (‘travel’, ‘vacation’, ‘journey’, ‘trip’ etc.).

We then came up with a categorization strategy, with the focus being categories which we thought might be useful to the various Travel Agencies (online or offline) as well as Travel Portals.

As mentioned previously, we restricted the search only for items (content created) between the 1^st and 5^th of June 2009.

Our Content Analysts then looked at the data retrieved by the monitoring tool. The activities performed by the Content Analysts included:

1. Identifying relevant and non relevant items from within the returned search results, and classifying them as such.

2. Categorizing content on the basis of the source of the content.

3. Categorizing all the content pieces according to the categorization strategy mentioned previously.

4. After human intervention, doing a before-after comparison on the data.

5. Extracting conclusions from this higher quality data.

Results and Findings:

In the time frame of 1^st June to 5^th June, the total number of results picked up by the tool was 672. The first finding, of course is the number of relevant and irrelevant results. Fully 86.75 % of the results were deemed irrelevant, from the Point of view of value to travel agencies and portals. The remaining 13.25% of results were deemed to be relevant.

From the relevant results, we drilled down further, by the categories we had set up. The results are tabulated below:

Category	Number (percentage) of relevant results
Planning Stage of travel
Early	1 (1.1%)
Mid	1 (1.1%)
Planned (late)	1 (1.1%)
Promotions	10 (11%)
Prospects
India Travel	3 (3.3%)
International Travel	0 (0%)
Travel Reason*
Business	0 (0%)
Pleasure	1 (1.1%)
Religious	2 (2.2%)
Unknown	1 (1.1%)

*Travel can be for multiple reasons

Here are the snippets of the posts/tweets which were classified in different planning stages (early, mid and planned):

Finally, we did an analysis of how much is the chatter around various Online Travel brands in the Social Media space. Here are the results of that analysis:

Conclusions Drawn and Learnings:

1. The percentage of relevant results in the total number of results retrieved in 13.25%. Using search results (even from industry leading tools) without a layer of human intervention will not be very efficient, or even very accurate.
2. Realistic leads (at various stages of planning) can be generated from Social Media. While the percentage may seen small, it must be kept in mind that the search was restricted to a 5 day period, from 1^st June to 5^th June (which is towards the end of the holiday season.)
3. There is a large difference between the amount of chatter around the larger Indian travel portals in the social media space.

Comments are of course, invited.

If you wish to download the White Paper for this study (PDF), you can visit the Resources Page on our website.