who needs surveys when you can scan social media?scm who needs surveys when you can scan social...
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Who needs surveys When you can scan social media?seeing what people are saying about your organization on social media provides a window into your audience’s perceptions. however, those perceptions might be skewed just as much as if the window you’re looking through is clouded or cracked.
angela sinickas
the pros and cons of social
media scanning
angela sinickas, aBc, iaBc Fellow, is president of sinickas communications, inc., an international communication consultancy specializing in helping corporations achieve business results through targeted diagnostics and practical solutions. For more information visit: www.sinicom.com
Have you ever wished you could be a fly on the wall to listen in on conversations your key stakeholders are having on important company-related topics? Or that you could plug your headphones into the rumor mill?
Well, if you’ve initiated any social media at your company, you can virtually do that. You can instantly know how your audience is responding to important issues facing your organization. Think of it almost like non-stop focus groups, without the difficulty of scheduling people or the cost of hiring an objective consultant to facilitate the discussion.
However, your scanning findings do need to be interpreted carefully before your leadership decides how to act on what they’re hearing.
advantages of sm scanningThe best thing about tapping into what people are saying about you on social media is that it is free. Just by doing an online search or following specific blogs and discussion forums, you can tell what people are thinking and doing without having to spend any time or money.
By doing a content analysis of comments, you can tell not only what they’re saying, but also the approximate balance between positive and negative reactions. Depending on the topic and the forum, you could even pose follow-up questions to probe people’s attitudes more deeply.
Some social media, such as RSS feeds and tags, even serve a similar purpose to surveys. If you simply look at online usage reports, you know how many people landed on a particular online page. However, you don’t know if they found what they were looking for, or if they valued the information they viewed or listened to. With RSS feeds and tagging, your audience is, in fact, rating that content highly enough that either they want to keep getting more, or they want to make sure their colleagues and friends benefit from that information.
drawbacks to sm scanningThe major drawback to relying exclusively on social media monitoring for all your research needs is that the people you’re hearing from are probably not reflective of your entire audience.
First, the people commenting online will not fully include any audience subgroups that have less than constant online access. Even more important, though, is that that people who are commenting on certain topics are more likely to have a strong vested interest in those topics – either as proponents or by being threatened by them – than the majority of your total audience
who might not be choosing to follow developments on that topic, let alone engaging in them.
In essence, your findings would be as skewed as if you conducted focus groups only with people who volunteered for them. You’ll learn some interesting insights that apply to part of your audience, but you won’t know if they represent serious trends or if they are true only of the people with a high interest in the topic. Employees are especially hesitant to be candid since they might have something to lose if management becomes annoyed with their viewpoints. It could be dangerous to assume that all employees are welcoming a major change based on the favorable comments of just a few people trying to curry favor with management.
Surveys are conducted by polling a random sample of the audience and ensuring that the responses come back still in a representative balance of the entire population. Surveys are also conducted ensuring a sufficient number of respondents in the random sample so that results can be projected to the entire group you’re researching within a relatively small margin of error. Neither of these criteria is fulfilled when you scan social media.
how to use sm scanningAny company that makes major business decisions based on non-representative, self-selected focus group participants (or by scanning social media comments) would be foolish. However, any company that ignores the qualitative feedback from focus groups or social media scanning would also be foolish.
The best blend is to look at social media monitoring as a way to identify emerging trends, and then add questions to existing surveys to see how prevalent those perceptions are. Also, if any of these emerging trends represents a potential crisis, this allows you a little time to do some planning before the crisis erupts in a damaging way.
While monitoring comments on social media is not a replacement for other research techniques, it does represent an amazing early warning system.
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Social Media It's Time To Replace Net Promoter Score
Posted by Jeffrey Fleischman on September 13th, 2012 at 12:54 pm
I know it will create a variety of reactions, some visceral, that I advocate Net Promoter Score (NPS) be replacedas the primary measure of a brand’s health. Although the underlying principles of NPS are still valid, it shouldbe subordinate to the broader and more discernible customer perspective that is provided by social media. Whileone framework will not fit across all companies or industries, the incorporation of social media data and metricsis a natural progression. It makes sense to reevaluate NPS because digital interaction has emerged as theprimary engagement medium and is the best gauge of brand advocacy and health.
Before I get into why I’m advocating this position, let’s recap what NPS is and how it is utilized. Developed in2003, NPS has become one of the most widely used metrics to gauge customer sentiment about a brand. TheNPS methodology is used as a predictor of purchase or recommendation for a product or service. It is based onone question: How likely is it that you recommend a company to a friend or colleague? Answers are rated on ascale of 0-10 and divided into three groups: Promoters (9-10), Passives (7-8), and Detractors (0-6). Its simplicityhas made it an attractive measurement for companies to implement and track over time but it also a reason why
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we need to change it.
The monitoring of brand sentiment is quite different today than in the pre-social media era when NPS wasintroduced. Today we’re enveloped and influence by what others are saying, doing, and thinking about productsor services. Brand engagement has become social, visible, and measureable in ways not possible in 2003. Acommon mistake brands make when it comes to social media is that they often confuse activity for advocacy. Likes, Followers, Fans, and such are broad measurements and don't provide much insight to customersentiment. We need a “Doppler Radar” equivalent that indicates how brand health is tracking, the path it’sheaded, and most importantly when/why it changes direction.
Here are the main reasons why social metrics can fill this void:
Better Insight: What people say isn’t necessarily what they do. NPS provides consumer sentiment butdoes it really convey loyalty or likelihood to purchase over time? Social media metrics can be used togauge brand health across several dimensions such as ratings, recommendations, and qualitativecomments. If brand opinion changes, social media can spot a trend earlier and with better transparency asto the underlying causes.
1.
“Brand Elasticity”: A telling test among brand advocates is whether they would purchase a product ifsocial media buzz is negative or if a competitor’s product is priced lower. Unlike envious exceptions suchas Apple, most products exhibit price elasticity, which means changes in price have a relatively largeeffect on sales. Likewise brand elasticity tests whether social media influence changes the propensity topurchase a product or service.
2.
Social Economy: Not only can social media increase engagement and loyalty, it can drive sales. American Express has shown that a well-crafted, integrated social strategy increases engagement, brandloyalty, and drives sales. American Express' Smart Offer API has enabled merchants to provide specialoffers and discounts to American Express’ cardmembers. A recent Twitter campaign in which acardmember tweets to get an offer generated over US $12.8MM in spend volume in it’s first two months. Admittedly discounted prices helped but American Express made enrollment easy and providedworthwhile offers that were immediately redeemable.
3.
Ultimately, the true measure of brand affirmation can best be measured not by the likelihood to purchase but byan actual purchase. Social media provides both a platform to gauge brand sentiment and, as in the case ofAmerican Express, an ecommerce engine. Social media is also something bigger – an ecosystem in which brandsentiment can be built up or torn down. Individuals have utilized social media to force unresponsive companiesto respond but not before their intransigence inflicted considerable brand damage. David Carrel’s initial attemptto get United Airlines to repay him for his guitar they broke was unsuccessful, which led to his creating a songand video. United Breaks Guitars became a YouTube sensation with over 10 million views and garneredsignificant press coverage and an offer of reimbursement for David. More recently, Matt Fisher leveraged socialmedia to raise awareness against Progressive Insurance by exposing how the company defended his sister’skiller in court to avoid paying out her policy.
There is a viral aspect to social media that undoubtedly influences a consumer’s perception of a brand and theirlikelihood to purchase a product or service. In fact individuals are influenced by what is shared via social media,peer ratings, and product reviews. When asked, 88% of respondents stated they trust the opinions andrecommendations from peers vs. 14% if they came from a company. Brand sentiment is influenced by what weread on the web, tweet, and share – one doesn’t need to purchase a product or a service to be influenced. NPSworked well and its principles are still valid today, however, social media should take its place as the primarysource for measuring brand sentiment.
Jeffrey Fleischman is the CEO of Blue Panda Interactive
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Sentiment Analysis Can Help Find the Idea inThat Pile of DataPublished: May 09, 2011
Web analytics have unleashed a monster. I believe strongly in outcome metrics, crystal-clearmeasurement and analysis for improvement. It is critical for the operational aspects of marketing.
But as I sat at the Argyle CMO Forum in New York City back in January, I felt a tinge of regret asmarketers indicated that measurement was at the top of the priority list but, at the same time,admitted they were under "an avalanche of data."
The leader of United's Mileage Plus program rattled off all the key metrics for his business --program participants, miles redeemed, and the effective currency rate of mileage. Metrics? He had a river of them.Loyalty? Not sure he had much.
Mr. United Loyalty didn't mention the word "customer" once.
In the margins of my handy conference agenda I wrote: "STILL ABOUT THE BIG IDEA." And the big idea formarketing is to connect customers with a company.
On the other hand, the Q&A couldn't go on long enough with Kerry Holland Tillman from Heineken, as she explained thestrategy behind the "Most Interesting Man in the World" campaign for the company's Dos Equis brand. As you know, thetagline in the commercial is: "I don't always drink beer, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis." Management was initially up
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RSS feed of comments
in arms about a beer spokesperson admitting he doesn't always drink beer. Yet this approach was one that created anauthentic connection with the audience. It was smart. It was bold. But how in the world would you have justified it withnumbers?
Here's one way to commit to measurement while honoring your spirit, your customers, and the big idea: Measure whatyour customers say about you when they're talking to each other.
Some technology vendors call this social-media monitoring (guilty!). That's a terrible term. You're not monitoring media,you're listening to your customers. And what can you find out?
Are your customers more positive about you than they were last month? Are they asking more of the kinds of questionsthat mean they're considering purchases? Or switching to a different brand? What other topics do they talk about whenthey talk about you? Are there abbreviations or slang associated with your brand? And which of those topics do theyreally care about?
I know the objections to sentiment analysis and natural-language processing. This kind of measurement isn't preciseenough. Sometimes people are sarcastic. The words people use change all the time. There are ambiguities too: "Read thebook" is a positive comment for a literary review but a negative comment for a movie review.
Technology will bring you to the data but you have to drink it, absorb it and do something valuable with it. Give itcontext. Sentiment data is repeatedly tested and benchmarked against human agreement, but make no mistake, there is nosubstitute for your own insights.
But the big idea isn't about the difference between 75% and 81% on a sentiment graph. The big idea is about spotting atrend faster than everyone else, and then finding meaning in it.
And when you can see a trend line going up, then look in real time and see the customer conversations that are drivingthat trend that's more powerful than raw numbers. It might give you a big idea -- or help you sell one you already have.
Show me an idea that has been projected, measured, processed, flowcharted, spread sheeted, analyzed, and stripped of itscustomer context, and I'll show you a small idea.
You don't get to skirt sound measurement, but you can ask for a new dimension. A human dimension. Spirit.
ABOUT THE AUTHORKaty Keim is the CMO of Lithium Technologies.
Request a Reprint of this article.
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10 Sentiment Analysis Issues to Be Aware OfBy Nancy Lazarus on May 9, 2012 10:35 PM
Sentiment analysis’ popularity has grown exponentially in recent years and it is now being
used to track customer reactions, monitor competitor positions, anticipate election outcomes,
forecast investment trends, and predict box office revenues. Speakers at the Sentiment Analysis
Symposium on Tuesday in New York included corporate users as well as suppliers in the field, all
providing different perspectives on this complex topic.
Chris Frank, VP at American Express, emphasized the need to focus on the learning obtained
from sentiment analysis, since, to date, more resources have been devoted to listening. Wayne St.
Amand, marketing VP at Crimson Hexagon added that it’s critical to understand social intelligence,
including the drivers of sentiment that help explain the underlying reasons behind comments.
Despite the amount of time devoted to listening and coding sentiment, accuracy
is still an issue. Speakers from Attensity, Toluna, Lexalytics, and the American Red
Cross explained the complexities of properly coding sentiment using automated and manual
methods. So whether you’re monitoring social media in-house or using a specialized vendor to track
your clients’ brands, below are ten issues to pay particular attention to.
Sarcasm: is one of the most difficult sentiments for automated tracking to interpret properly.
Example: “It was awesome for the week that it worked.”
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Navel gazing: is when social media tracking turns up items related to your own promotional
efforts, and should be filtered out.
Neutral sentiment: is similar to the concept of swing voters, and Frank recommended dividing
it into specific themes to uncover more detailed opinions.
Relative sentiment: is not a classic negative, but can be a negative nonetheless. Example: “I
bought an iPhone” is good for Apple, but not for Nokia.
Compound or multidimensional sentiment: contain positives and negatives in the
same phrase. Example: “I love Mad Men, but hate the misleading episode trailers.”
Conditional sentiment: includes actions that may happen in the future. Example: the customer
isn’t angry now but says he will be if the company doesn’t call him back.
Positive feelings can be unrelated to the core issue. For example, many comments about
actors focus on their personal lives, not their acting skills.
Negative sentiment is not necessarily bad: This relates to the classic PR dilemma regarding
negative publicity. Example: Sarah Palin’s appearance on the Today show generated many negative
comments but still drove ratings increases.
Ambiguous negative words: Their context needs to be thoroughly understood and tagged
accordingly. Example: “That backflip was so sick” is really a positive statement.
Beware of Google translate syndrome: Western and Asian sentiment differ greatly, as
do the meanings of their emoticons, so they need to be interpreted correctly.
The Wall Street Journal’s weekend Review section uses NetBase data to track Twitter and Facebook
sentiment around timely topics. (see image above) Last week, they analyzed the public’s reaction to
the recent high sale price for the famous Munch painting, “The Scream.” While the sale price
prompted mixed views, the extreme sentiment expressed in the painting itself was universal.
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