Listening 101: Tips to Integrate Social Media into your day-to-day media monitoring

Listening 101
Tips to integrate social media
into your day-to-day media monitoring
dna13.com white paperTake a flying leap
With Web 2.0 here to stay, many companies - small and large - are still coming to grips with how to take the first critical steps towards active participation in the world of consumer-driven media.
The prospect of implementing a social media strategy for your company may seem daunting, but it's not as difficult as you think. In fact, taking your place in the Web 2.0 universe can be as simple as . listening.
Millions of conversationsWeb 2.0 is not a concept anymore; it's reality. A power shift has taken place. Traditional print and television media no longer have exclusive control over how and when your message is delivered. Consumer communities using web-based social media tools are talking about your brand reputation. The evidence speaks for itself - very loudly.
Social networking sites are growing exponentially. Facebook has more than 300 million active users globally, with each user having an average of 130 friends1 . Earlier this year, YouTube reached 147 million users in the U.S., and the average number of videos viewed per person reached 1012. Microblogging sites like Twitter have anywhere from 3.5 million to 17 million users, depending on which site you look at, and nobody's even counting how many blogs exist globally anymore, but there are well over 100 million. To add to all of that, there are countless discussion forums, where people are offering opinions on just about anything they read, see or hear.
Combine all of this with traditional media - the daily newspaper, network television, and radio - and you have a dizzying number of channels where conversations impacting your brand reputation are almost certainly taking place.
As your company's PR professional, you're responsible for keeping the proverbial 'ear to the ground' on what's being said about you. Given today's reality, are you covering all your bases? Are you ready if today's simple 'tweet' becomes tomorrow's news headline? If not, what's stopping you?
»Not enough time or resources?
»Can't get buy-in from senior management?
»Don't know how or where to begin?
Shhh. listenIt is critical for your company to be plugged into the conversations taking place about your brand.
Stumbling accidentally onto a conversation about your company can make your blood run cold. If the conversation is positive, you heave a sigh of relief. If it isn't, you can spiral into full-on panic mode.
1 http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics2 http://youtubereport2009.com/youtube-reache-100-million-us-viewers/
2 Listening 101: Tips to integrate social media into your day-to-day media monitoringThe bottom line for every PR practitioner is control. You plan carefully for every good headline and every potential disaster. You plant your message, 67% of executive and manage it through to its natural conclusion. But how do you do it in marketers consider today's Web 2.0 environment without taking your organization too far themselves beginners outside its comfort zone - impacting time, resources, and brand control? when it comes to using The answer is simple: take the first step - start by listening. social media for
When you listen, you learn: marketing purposes.
»Your brand is out there and people are talking about it Marketing Executives Networking Group, Nov 2008»Your competitor is already in the game, or if not, people are talking about them too
»Some of your employees are already representing you online, and you didn't know it
»There is a whole new world of opportunity for engaging with and responding to your customers
Listening toolsListening is something good communicators, PR experts and marketers always do before proposing a course of action. Traditionally, strategies start with interviews, focus groups, a review of customer-focused literature, a SWOT analysis or other research that gets a pulse on their company's reputation.
Listening in on the social media universe is no different.
You can make a low-risk and low-investment start by using free web-based tools to tap into who's discussing your brand and why. Using a combination of free and paid tools can become overwhelming due to the volume of data and the numerous locations in which it's being stored. The end result (media m... [download for more]