Should Brands Monitor the Social Networks?

When people don't understand something, it is easy to dismiss it as so much hype or a fad that will fade quickly. If we look back at the beginning of any number of innovations, many people had a similar reaction as to the utility of the innovation. For example, with PCs the comment was that they were a fad and people would soon come to their senses and return to the power of the mainframe. There were similar reactions to voice mail, email, the Internet and now social and New Media.

What people need to understand is that social media is an important source of information for a company, even if some of the comments are negative. In fact, the negative comments tend to validate the positive comments. Consumers need to be able to trust information about a brand--and with social media, trust is a very important factor in the relationship between a company / brand and their customers. In addition, customers should be able to trust that a company will be responsive - quickly - to mistakes and problems. A recent example of this is Motrin's ad that upset a number of Moms. Companies need to show they understand and accept valid criticism and respond quickly to the complaints.

Monitoring only does not work. Human intervention is still necessary. Conversations and the sentiments in those conversations can be nuanced and complex. And if a company is not monitoring, things can get out of control very quickly and become a PR disaster.

Moreover, a particular benefit to monitoring the ongoing conversation about your brand can provide important insights about your brand and the consumers using your brand. With a little effort put towards a good social media strategy, companies can focus on building their funnel, augment customer service, gain valuable insights for product development, get more and better information faster, and create new skill sets within the organization that can be turned around quickly in an emergency.

Finally, companies that wait for industry best practices and enterprise-level solutions to appear, will have missed an opportunity to learn, experiment and make mistakes along with others who are willing to enter early. By waiting, companies risk making their beginner's mistakes more public at a time when people will be less forgiving of mistakes.