5 Steps to a Better Social Media Monitoring Plan
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 | 29 Comments
Tags: conversational listening, engage online, Listening, Social Media, social media engagement, Social Media Monitoring, social media monitoring workflow, social media strategy, social media tracking, two way listening
Posted in: Listening, Social Media, Social Media Monitoring
We don’t need to tell you that you need to be listening in social media, right? But perhaps you need a bit of help building out a listening program that’s sustainable, actionable, and actually helps you meet your business needs. Here’s a set of steps to take and questions to answer to round out your listening notions into a strategy you can execute on.
1. Decide On Focus Areas.
- Are you listening just for your brand specifically?
- What specific keywords and phrases are most important to you, and why?
- What are your assumptions and expectations for what social media monitoring can help you learn or do?
- Do you need to do competitive or industry analysis as well at this point?
- What areas of the business can benefit most from understanding commentary and conversation on the social web?
- Do you have particular initiatives or campaigns that you will track independently?
2. Articulate Your Goals & Measurements.
- What are you hoping to accomplish with your social media monitoring program? Be specific, i.e. “we want to identify emerging customer service issues in social media and route them to our offline channels.”
- By when?
- What do you know now as a baseline or status quo in that area?
- What constitutes success or forward progress toward your goal(s)?
- What measurements can you track and measure to illustrate progress?
- How do they relate to things you’re measuring in other business areas like customer service, marketing, product development?
3. Consider Resources
- Who is going to be doing the social media monitoring?
- What kind of training will they need? Tools?
- Do you have front-line people dedicated to listening efforts, or are you working it into various job descriptions?
- If you’re breaking it out into different roles, which topics/areas is each person responsible for monitoring?
- How many hours can you dedicate to listening efforts per week? Per month?
- What level of time and effort spent will indicate to you that you need more or fewer resources?
4. Map Information Flow
- Who needs to know what you’re finding through your social media monitoring?
- How will you document your listening and monitoring procedures and workflow?
- How will you get the listening insights to the appropriate team members?
- What are you expecting other team members to do with that information once they have it?
- How will you allow them to provide feedback to refine your listening efforts?
5. Illustrate Results & Next Steps
- What key information will you report? When should the first report happen after you start your listening program?
- To whom?
- How often?
- Who will review the results and be responsible for drawing conclusions based on the analysis?
- How will you dictate action steps based on the results?
You probably have your own subtleties and specifics as you map out your listening strategy, but the point is to have a solid roadmap that tells you what you want from listening, how you’ll deploy the people and tools to make it happen, and how you’ll gather and act on the information you find.
What have you learned from your listening efforts? Share your insights with us in the comments.
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29 Responses to “5 Steps to a Better Social Media Monitoring Plan”
Amber Naslund on January 13th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Damian – we get asked a lot, too. In fact, we’re in the process of documenting our *own* process, and I’m hoping to be able to share that in the near future as something to help companies map theirs. We hear that need, trust me, just takes a little time to pull together very clear, well illustrated examples. We’re on it. 
Damian Rintelmann on January 13th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
I know exactly what you mean. I’ve put together a few examples but every time the question comes up I end up revising further. Look forward to it!
Josh on January 13th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Thanks for this post!
We are right in the thick of thinking through a couple topics for our listening effort. It is really easy to side tracked and think about it the wrong way. This will be very helpful for us to keep on track and attack the problem in a more effective way.
Josh
Amber Naslund on January 14th, 2010 at 11:04 am
Glad it was helpful, Josh! Let us know how we can help with your listening plan as it evolves.
Amanda Crater on January 13th, 2010 at 5:31 pm
Great post, thanks for sharing!
@AmandaCrater
Nick on January 13th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Really interesting post, I’ve being looking at all available tools for social monitoring and this post has helped to confirm a few thoughts on the subject. You can never ask to many questions sometimes. Thanks for sharing your expertise on this.
Amber Naslund on January 14th, 2010 at 11:06 am
The questions are really where the gold is. Because there’s no “one size fits all” strategy for anything of value, digging for the right intent, resources, capabilities, and plans for assimilating all that information is really what crystallizes the plan. Thanks for your comment!
Roberto Araujo on January 14th, 2010 at 6:18 am
This is exactly what I needed in order to start monitoring a future client. Thanks a lot Amber!
Amber Naslund on January 14th, 2010 at 11:06 am
So glad it was helpful, Roberto. Let us know how that goes!
Davina K. Brewer on January 14th, 2010 at 11:00 am
Amber, I love that your outline is mostly questions. It’s not all absolutes and boilerplate and “rules”; it’s unique to every entity and purpose, which starts with a plan. Questions won’t dictate the plan’s strategy, the answers will. Thanks.
Amber Naslund on January 14th, 2010 at 11:07 am
Hi Davina, you’ve got it right. There are, perhaps, some guidelines that can offer consistency, but every business is different and requires different considerations for their unique situation. The answers to the questions are what help bring those into focus.
Ryan Schoenefeld on January 14th, 2010 at 11:03 am
Thanks for the insightful information Amber; it is always challenging to determine and measure the successfulness of social media networking. It helps to learn and gain knowledge from individuals who seem to be accomplishing it correctly, and have set up a foundation to measure the seemingly new approach.
Amber Naslund on January 14th, 2010 at 11:08 am
Thanks, Ryan. There really are ways to measure success in social media, but it all starts with having clear goals and objectives to begin with, which is where many companies stumble. Once you know where you’re headed, it’s much easier to track your progress in that direction. Thanks for the comment.
Janie Graziani on January 14th, 2010 at 12:55 pm
What a lot of really great questions. Thanks so much for the post, Amber! Do you have any tips for setting realistic expectations in terms of what monitoring can help a company with? Don’t want to be too “pie in the sky” when setting goals.
Amber Naslund on January 14th, 2010 at 8:47 pm
Hi Janie, great question. And I think that might be a great topic for a follow up post instead of trying to cover it all here in the comments. Consider it noted.
Norma Huibregtse on January 14th, 2010 at 8:00 pm
Great information. I think you’ve outlined a great strategy for any company wanting to connect with their target market.
Amber Naslund on January 14th, 2010 at 8:47 pm
Hi Norma, glad you found it helpful.
Richard Demory on January 20th, 2010 at 9:41 pm
Great post, thanks. We're only starting listening in social media. This is much helpful.
dooleymr on January 28th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Great post…thank you for the thought-provoking questions. To build on your point, I think the themes you highlight can be used in any stage you're in…whether you're building your social media understanding or presence. Timing, Audience, Objective, Resources/Technology, Metrics/Reporting.
Sanjay Mehta on February 12th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
There is clearly a cost attached to listening. Of course, benefits too. But putting the large number of hours in the effort, is a cost for many companies.
Ignoring the conversations may be at your own peril.
So what is the way out?
Social Media Monitoring is an eminently outsourceable activity. If you can outsource the listening part, at a fraction of the cost you'd pay in the US, and then use the insights to create excellent outreach strategies, it may be the perfect solution.
We are based in India, and work with few US companies, in exactly this manner.
- Sanjay Mehta
Social Wavelength.
Janice Arnoldi on February 19th, 2010 at 2:39 am
Thanks for the post Amber.
We're working with small businesses who are just getting their minds around social media. I like point 5 – Consider Your Resources. Many feel overwhelmed by all the tools and I think it's critical that small businesses don't jump headlong into setting up more tools than they have time for.
SEO Guide on February 20th, 2010 at 3:07 am
Hey I discovered your page by mistake on msn while looking for something completely different but I am very glad that I did, You have just captured yourself another subscriber.
iridiumInteractive on March 12th, 2010 at 5:26 am
Very helpful writeup for social media monitoring which is not an easy ask on its own. Thanks for sharing this.
Chuck Walters on January 29th, 2010 at 10:30 pm
Amber,
Very impressed with what I hear from your company and you….can't even believe you have grown to be such a mover and shaker in the business world. Wish you continued success.
Uncle Chuckie
Damian Rintelmann on January 13th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Amber, as always great post. Would love to see some examples of listening and monitoring procedures and workflow. Do you have any solid examples that you can share? This is always one of the biggest questions that I receive.