I am in charge of social media marketing at a mid-sized ad agency in NYC. Very cool job, actually. I am tasked with learning the ins-and-outs of all the tools, apps, platforms, aggregators and snake oils in the realm of utilizing social media/networking to spread the word about our clients’ products (or simply find innovative ways to better service clients’ consumers for them using social media).
One of the most frequently asked questions I get: “What do you use for monitoring and tracking social media?”
I am not going to give you that answer just yet… but I will shed a little light on some of my findings in meeting with 90% of the sales reps from the available social monitoring services out there (no easy task!).
1. There are are a couple all-inclusive, totally kick-ass providers. They will cost you min. $3K per month for simple reports.
2. There is a heap of clones with basic functionality that make up the rest of the pack: Some paid and some free.
3. Without shelling out for a company who can provide humans (aka “analysts”) to pour over our data: You are in for a hell of a lot of work if you want to provide truly accurate results on the most basic of reports.
4. Without proper set-up and filtering on day one… you will create a lot of extra work for yourself (and skew data as you figure out how to pare back/filter the data correctly).
5. If your brand or a competitor you are attemping to analyze is a common word or proper noun (“Barbie” or “Ross” or “Target”)… you are in deep doo-doo. Be prepared for an afternoon of fun.
6. Very few can actually accurately scrape Facebook data.
I am having flashbacks to the late 90s: Start-ups clamoring for market share in murky waters with companies of all shapes and sizes dipping their toes in. Experts are RARE. Warm bodies with experience in the field are rare or non-existent. Standards are evolving. Rules are sort of happening. Companies are wildily adjusting rates/fees a demand/budgets are materializing. There a many, many conferences full of scared sheep and “gurus” alike. Guys with funny glasses and sneakers leading the charge (or at least not seen as slackers).
If you lived through the dot-com bubble/burst with me. You know what I mean.
On the positive side: Technology, which is making the social monitoring revolution move quickly, is eons ahead of 1997. Everyone is on broadband now. There are no CD-ROMs involved. Web-based demos are saving us all time. Online research into these tools is much more readily available.
On that note… I am working on a report card of the industry… should be out in June. Soup-to-nuts analysis of the top 20-or-so tools with grades and pricing. Stay tuned.
The Lord of Marketing 