Monitoring conversation, Measuring Buzz, and skipping Search

My colleagues and I are social media analysts.

I think that the purpose of this position should be explained so that our clients can take better advantage of our skills.

Social media monitoring is not Google. It is not search.

Social media is conversation.

The way in which people, online or offline, discuss ideas is not the similar to the way in which people search for information. Search is personal. Social is, well, social.

Searchers look for official reports regarding the “efficacy” of a drug. Patients and people talk about how our pain medication “works”. The concept, efficacy, is implied in the conversation.  The word, “efficacy”, itself is never mentioned in a social exchange.  A searcher, a Googler, would use “efficacy” and “aspirin”, in a search. A social media analyst would investigate online conversation using a series of terms like “aspirin”, “pain medication”, “headache”, “works”, “useful”, “relief”, “relieves”, etc. Social media analysts specialise in the investigation of discussion and conversation, not in search.

This can get complicated, especially in the European sphere of social media. Consider, as our Italian analyst notes, the gender of an Italian adjective. If something is good, then good can be buono or buona, dependent upon if the good thing is a feminine or masculine noun. Then, if the noun is plural, an “s” can be added to either adjective form.

German, our Austrian analyst observes, complicates conversation through demanding that words change their format dependent upon their position in the sentence.  Our French-speaking analyst adds that there’s also the issue of blogger/forum slang. She points to a USA MTV show now broadcast in France and Belgium that uses what might be “verlan” or Arabic French slang in its title. Slang in France has caused even the purist French authorities to reconsider the encroachment English and Arabic are having on the French language.

All this conversational nuance must be considered in creating a successful social media project to monitor and measure topics of interest to you or your client. The position of the analyst is also helpful in determining things like

• the location of certain types of buzz (the British “Bobbies” are located in London, the “Garda” in Dublin, and the NYPD in New York…or the movies),
• the level of education embedded in the buzz demographic (kids discuss a “runny nose” and doctors blog about “excessive mucus”), and
• the popularity of the blogger (how many people are quoting Perez Hilton in the social media gossip sphere?).

So before buying into the social media software with the complete confidence a semi-pro Googler, think about the information that you are looking to capture out of the online conversation.

Then consider a conversation with a social media analyst.

3 Comments »

1. 

   Great post – we are a Social Media Monitoring and Engagement consultancy in the UK. We talk with clients about listening (social media monitoring) and engaging. The engagement piece is the area people find difficult to grasp as they still want to control and push messages (advertorials) at people rather than be part of a conversation.

   Comment by Matthew Brazil — September 15, 2008 @ 10:05 am

2. 

   Social media, as what I’ve understood in your post is what one needs in understanding a certain behavior. Like a company needs to understand the certain behavior of their target market for their certain product. I am impressed at your job. You must really have great skills. :)

   Comment by Stella — October 13, 2008 @ 10:21 pm

3. 

   Really I feel that Google Buzz’s submission was a little premature, especially with the privacy issues. I also think that Google’s most likely going down the same path that Windows experienced around the time of Windows 98. There products and releases appear to be less and less thought out and I also feel that rushed to attempt to be a first to market, and or compete with its competitors releases. The breach of privacy was something that did not require was a very simple issue to figure out, a very simple review session would have identified such issues. Do you think Google may have received too much credit last year?

   Comment by Veronique Elridge — February 22, 2010 @ 12:07 am

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment