Welcome to week #4 in the Strategic
Communication and Emerging Media graduate course. First off I must come clean and admit that though
I have heard of the phrases A Prairie
Home Companion and Lake Wobegon, I was woefully unfamiliar with the
particulars until I came across that gem
of a tune “Unfriended”. Through my
research I learned that Lake Wobegon is a fictional town created by Garrison
Keillor to provide the setting for his long-running radio broadcast, A Prairie Home Companion. The satirical song he performs about being unfriended
on a social networking site ties in with this week’s theme which is - Social Media
and Its Role in Communication Strategies.
More specifically, we were asked, “how do you keep up with what is being
said about your organization…?”
First, let’s look at how we can integrate
social media into our communication strategies.
There can be no doubt that social media has changed how people communicate
and react, and as a result, professionals must incorporate some form of social
media planning into their strategies. Even if the organization has decided not to
actively participate in social media, that is NOT really a choice. Like Aristotle said, “Nature abhors a
vacuum”, and so it would seem does social media. Either that vacuum gets filled with your organization’s
objectives, or the audience/competitors fill it. Make no mistake, there is no choice. From last week’s blog on mobile marketing
strategy I’d like to reuse the content provided for strategy development. In this week’s blog we’re looking at social
media integrated into communication strategy.
So basically we, as communication professionals, are still “bringing in
to focus, through situational analysis, the objectives, target audiences,
strategy and tactics to provide a clearer view of what an effective
communication plan looks like.” For
integrating a social media strategy into an overall communication plan I’d
suggest adding a connector from the final step back to the initial step and
calling it a circular process rather than linear steps or stages. For a more detailed explanation of the
original strategy steps please see last week’s blog post entitled, "“You Used to Call
Me on My Cell Phone” – Just Like Drake Said." For this week I’m using quick visuals to illustrate the circular stages
of social media strategy.
Proposed
circular process for a social media strategy:
1 and 6) Situational analysis: listen (monitor) and evaluate.
2) Define your objectives
3) Target Audience
4) Develop Strategy
5) Deploy Tactics
A unique and distinctive characteristic of
social media is its ability to foster rapid, real-time and inexpensive two-way
communication between organizations and audiences. Through this two-way channel
social media can be used not only to disseminate content and tactics but also
to gather important intelligence. Social
media can serve as a research tool to find out what information is being shared
and to identify conversation topics and people. Monitoring conversations on
social media provides the opportunity to identify what people are saying about
your organization or specific topics of interest. This ability can help identify
gaps in messaging and aid in understanding what it is that people care about,
which in turn will help to plan content and align messages with target audiences. The monitoring piece affords communication
professionals the chance to respond appropriately, thereby demonstrating the organization
is paying attention, which in turn helps build the ever important aspects of credibility
and trust.
Let’s focus specifically on monitoring
services, after all, they clearly make up 1/3 of the process of integrating
social media into our overall communication plan. Monitoring of social media through software
services can help keep tabs on the interests and feelings of existing customers/audiences
but they can also help us discover new opportunities, expand influence and
measure the success of communication plans in real time. The best of these social
media monitoring services also add social response software so influence can be
expanded and reputation can be strengthened.
All of this being said because one thing has become quite clear, the integration
of a social media strategy into a communication plan with provisions for
monitoring are critical to the success of today’s communication efforts.
So we’re ready to add social media
monitoring to our strategic communication toolbox. It can be quite difficult to stay up-to-date
with the numerous social media platforms, and it can be even harder to decide
on which monitoring service fits your organization’s needs. Let’s look at some services that are leading
the way at mastering the art of social media monitoring. These are the top three social media
monitoring services as directly reported by Top
Ten Reviews (www.toptenreviews.com). Top Ten
Reviews is touted as “distilling authoritative research and testing into
content that enables consumers and businesses to buy with confidence”. For the sake of “word count” in this week’s
blog, here are their Top 3 social media monitoring services for 2017:
#3)
Oracle Social Cloud (Monitoring Rating 8.13/10)
"Oracle
Social Media Engagement and Monitoring Cloud has excellent monitoring, analysis
and engagement tools. With the ability to translate multiple languages, it's an
especially good choice for businesses interested in foreign markets.
Oracle is a large company with social media
monitoring and engagement packages priced for medium businesses who are looking
for a better way to get their finger on the pulse of the internet. Its Social
Engagement and Monitoring Cloud program provides comprehensive listening and
analysis, plus a full range of back office and social engagement features.
Combined with a full suite of support options that include professional forums,
this service has earned our Top Ten Reviews Bronze Award.
Oracle
Social Media Engagement and Monitoring Cloud listens to over 40 million sites a
day in 31 languages across the globe. These include blogs and news sites as
well as social media networks, video and image sites. It can also access the
Twitter Firehose, giving you any information gathered by this huge social
network."
#2)
Visible Technologies (Monitoring Rating 9.38/10)
"Visible
Technologies' social media monitoring software is an excellent choice for
medium- and enterprise-level businesses that want to make social media
marketing a priority.
Visible
Technologies earns our Top Ten Reviews Silver Award because it provides social
media monitoring and engagement services that are accurate, comprehensive and
easy to use. It offers unlimited access to mentions, streams of data and users.
Thus, it's an excellent option for medium and large businesses that are making
social media marketing and research a priority.
With
this service, you get unlimited access to its data streams. It monitors social
media and mainstream news sites across the world, including 250 million blogs,
6 million forums, video channels and review sites."
#1)
Sysomos (Monitoring Rating (9.75/10)
"Sysomos
is comprehensive social media monitoring and response software with excellent
global reach.
If
your company has a global reach, then Sysomos social media monitoring software
can help you keep a pulse on how people view your company, who the key
influences are for your products and how well your campaigns are faring in
particular areas. However, even if your business has a local focus, this
easy-to-use and comprehensive package makes it an excellent choice. Its many
features and dedicated customer service make Sysomos the Top Ten Reviews Gold Award
winner.
Sysomos
monitors 25 different platforms, including the big players like Facebook,
Twitter and Tumblr, but also video sites and more. Further, it tracks news and
blog sites. This software is as worldwide as the internet, understanding 186
languages, plus slang and intent."
There
you have the top three heavy-hitters of social media monitoring in 2017. These all require resource allocation to
varying degrees. Bottom-line, they’re
going to cost you. In closing this week
I’d like to take a moment to share a couple of monitoring services that are
free and easy for anybody to use.
Because let’s face it, if we have a personal and/or professional
presence online we should be monitoring that two-way communication. Here are a couple of services that
I have found offer the most user-friendly startup/maintenance for monitoring coverage across multiple
platforms:
HootSuite
Monitoring services across Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, and LinkedIn.
TweetDeck
Monitoring services across Twitter,
Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Strategically
Yours,
Autumn
WORKS
CITED:
Arceneaux,
N. and Weiss, A. (2009). “Seems Stupid Until You Try It: Press
Coverage of Twitter
(2006-9)”. Retrieved on 31 January 2017 from http://mc7290.bgsu.wikispaces.net/fileview/Arceneaux_Noah.pdf
Becker,
R. (2013). “Social Media for Strategic Communication”. Retrieved on 1 February 2017 from
Brook, R. (2010).
“How to Develop a Social Media Content Strategy”. Retrieved on 2 February 2017
Editorial Staff. (2017). “The Best Social Media Monitoring of
2017”. Retrieved on 2 February 2017
from http://www.toptenreviews.com/services/internet/best-social-media-monitoring/alterian-sm2-review/.
Technical
Paper (2010). “Social Media Strategy
Development”. Retrieved on 31 January
2017 from
Lichterman, J. (2014).
“Who’s Behind That Tweet? Here’s
How 7 News Orgs Manage Their Twitter
and Facebook Accounts”. Retrieved on 1 February 2017 from http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/05/whos-behind-that-tweet-heres-how-7-news-orgs-manage-their-twitter-and-facebook-accounts.
Mielach, D. (2013).
“Facebook Unfriending Has Real-Life Consequences”. Retrieved on 31 January
Schubring, J. (2010).
“12 Social Media Monitoring Tools Reviewed”. Retrieved on 2 February 2017
Technical
Paper (2010). “Social Media Strategy
Development”. Retrieved on 31 January
2017 from
Wasserman, T. (2013). “Steal These 3 Social Marketing
Tricks from Top Brands”. Retrieved on 31
January 2017 from http://mashable.com/2013/02/22/social-media-marketing-strategy/#RJ8UQ1SoFPqV.
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