Whenever I attend a conference or event on social media there seems to be a frequent occurrence. Someone in the room gets excited, begins to sweat a little, wipes their forehead, and then begins to babble on about much each additional fan or follower is worth. Apparently : SO MUCH MONEY. You know the deal, this aphinony is followed by a loosley constructed PowerPoint deck that mathematically distills the magical chunk change that each new follower creates. And ooooo eeeee it’s so big! You’d be a fool not to go out and spend 100k on generic- key word here being generic- facebook “friend me” ads.

While I understand a bevy of fans can be a powerful route of corporate communication ( much like an email list), but standard economics tells us there is a point where the return is less than the expense of execution. Furthermore, I struggle to see how one can effectively place a dollar value on a single a fan or follower. It’s not that fans aren’t important, it’s just that social media drive to purchase of a single fan is incredibly hard to measure and to arrive at any number forces analysts to make a series of broad generalizations. These generalizations can cause several major problems:

1. Generalizations hide important subgroups: The problem with generalizations is that they mask fanatics and laggards. So you attribute X additional revenue dollars to a facebook campaign with Y number of fans. Your fanatic population may make up for 70% of that increased revenue attributed to Facebook- it does not makes sense to evenly distribute the attribution to the overall fan base.
2. New Fans may not be as valuable as old fans: Those users who first friend a brand page on Facebook or follow a brand Twitter account are often advocates and potentially higher purchasers. The later waves of fans often are driven to fan based on advertising, promotional activities, or etc. While it’s likely some of the new followers may also be fans of a brand, it’s not guaranteed that their purchase rate is the same as old fans. In some cases, the opposite may even be true, that news fans actually generate higher revenue than old.
3. It’s difficult to attribute all Social Media revenue: Not all revenue earned by Facebook can be back-tracked to the social media site. A user may see a promotion or product on the Facebook page, and go out of the world that is Facebook and hand type the website address to purchase. This user would appear as a standard web purchaser, rather than a social media driven purchaser. Thus, the revenue attributed to the site will always be greater than measured.
4. Traditional media suffers from the same problems: If you run a TV ad it is difficult to say, this ad alone made me X revenue. There are always external indicators that can drive up revenue and create metric bias.

While ROI metrics will always be an important of an business initiative, I do not yet to see the value of attaching a dollar amount to a single fan. In fact as I write about this I am further resolved in my thinking that companies should look at social media not solely as a revenue driven dollar sign, but as a brand building and cost- saving initiative. I also realize as much as I want it to be, data will never be perfect. Le sigh. Such are the Sunday troubles of one Anna OBrien, social media geek and general statistics addict.

However as awesome as this campaign is, there are some issues. If I search for the Sundrop ad on YouTube, I can only find this version.

It seems the campaign creators didn’t think to upload such a clever ad to youtube. (However they did contact the video uploader as I see the video now has links to the campaign and “fair use” disclaimer which screams corporate legal team.) A little deeper digging shows their video has been uploaded to Vimeo.com through a branded channel. Huh? And the channel also has several how to videos to explain how to use their site. Double huh? Many of the videos have a whopping 1 view!

Don’t get me wrong, I love Vimeo, but for a crowd-sourced campaign and how to videos, it seems the odd choice. There’s no seo benefits ( actually there are subtle losses) and it fails to capture the mass audience well.  The site itself caters to visually beautiful and artistic films and rarely is considered as the starting point for someone to upload the same vlogs and flip cam home movies that clutter YouTube. Vimeo can also havelonger load times ( due to the high resolution content), which could be the difference between someone watching or ignoring an online video. Additionally the search capabilities in Vimeo are weaker, so if someone actually heads to vimeo to search out the video- they may not find it. For example, if I search “sundrop” I get zero brand results; results only appear for the exact profile spelling “sun drop.”

On average 2 billion videos are watched on Youtube a day versus Vimeo’s ~160 million (assuming videos viewed correlates to the number of videos uploaded). The results make sense, ~4 million views on a non-brand owned YouTube channel vs.  47,000 on the Vimeo channel.  Also, I should mention that the contest landing page is pulling and auto-playing the Vimeo commercial. That means potentially everyone who has watched it on Vimeo, watched it from the  landing page.

At the end of the day, the Sun Drop campaign is getting attention. That’s a good thing. However, they don’t have any idea of the details of how the video is spreading. That’s a bad thing. The lesson? If you’re a brand, choose the right video channel to reach your fans.   And even if you’re not going to run a  campaign through YouTube, take the 5 seconds to upload it there as well anyway. It doesn’t cost you anything and you have no excuse not to.

I appreciate the outlook that social media should be run in house. I think in a perfect world, with unlimited resources and headcount, no internal politics and lots of tech savvy staff- maybe it is the ultimate answer. However, I personally have never come across any company living in this scenario. It seems there is a lot of chatter about what works in Utopia and not about what really works in the real world. I want to like this article by Econsultancy because I think they got it mostly right, but I have to slight them for the controversial title. It’s too absolute.

I have spent time in both roles ( agency and brand) and I can tell you there isn’t one perfect mix of agency and brand. You’ll notice that recently many former leaders of social media at brands  have recently moved onto agencies. There’s a reason. While, dialogue and customer engagement should live within the brand, that activity makes up a very small portion of building a social media program. You have to build the strategy. Resources must be organized and allocated to maximize results. Consumers have to be heard and their thoughts synthesized into actionable and tactical nuggets. Pages need to be built. Systems need to be acquired. And on and on… It’s a lot of ongoing work and much of it get shifted to an agency. Here are the reasons why:

Slow Production:
Social media is a fast moving channel; we’ve all had that beat into our brain at every and any social media conference we’ve attended.  Brands move slow. With small teams, there is no way a internal social media group could produce the work an agency of 45 could in the same amount of time. If a brand wants a quick turn around, they’re going to hire an agency.

Lack of Resources:
Engaging an agency works best with how large companies are structured. Many companies are limited in their head count, but have a sizable budget for agency spend- something you often overlooked in this argument. Only in social media utopia can a brand retain the type of headcount it would take to run a proper internal social media group. This is not a definite rule, but more often than not the case.

Lack of  In-house Skills:
Most internal social media teams are small with limited skills. Even if a team member has significant social media experience, they still are one person.  Additionally, outsourcing allows a brand’s employees to work where they thrive. Many social media team leaders are excellent project managers- with significant experience working through red tape and directing agency partners to get desired results.

Creatures of habit:
Brands are use to outsourcing work. It’s how the company is organized. So naturally, it’s easier to outsource that to hire. Often companies outsource work and the agency hire sits on site. It’s almost a hybrid between company and agency. That employee gets to soak up the brand;s culture, but is in many ways protected from some of the internal drama. There’s another reason this works out in the teams favor- it allows for acquisition of more internal budget. If you’ve worked in a brand you know that often budget= power.

Agencies  are going to remain a lasting part of the brand social media puzzle; they are in many ways faster, less biased by internal politics, and better equipped to deliver quick any high quality results. There’s less red tape, more focus on collaboration, and generally more comfort with the subject matter at a macro level. That said, an agency should be a partner to social success, not a social media overlord. That means empowering the brand to make decisions and drive the road map. This, unfortunately,  is not easy for most agencies to do.

Now this “sparkle manifesto” can be applied directly to what’s happening in Social Media right now. Currently we’re suffering from glitter overload.  Every brand is launching a new game, viral video, foursquare badge, Facebook meme, and etc.  There’s just so much glitter everywhere that consumers’ eyes are being singed out by the reflection.  As clever as these campaigns may be, they are limited. The content is only relevant for a limited amount of time, to a limited audience, with a limited purpose. What happens in when the badges disappear, the game come down, and the videos are done? For a lot of brands it means they’re left naked. They’ve gotten so caught up in the glitter that they forgot to invest in the basics.

One of the old adages I use all the time is,  “Social Media is not campaign based, but a campaign can be Social Media based.” In short, you have to keep the conversation going- it’s not a hit and run channel.  I see a lot of brands spending a lot on big bold “viral Social Media” campaigns that have little to no engagement component to them. Many of the day-to-day social activities are left undeveloped.  Strip back the interesting guerrilla marketing effort and there’s no actual consumer dialogue. Perhaps I am wrong, but I thought that was one of the main components of a true Social Media program.

Maybe I am being a selfish consumer here, but instead of trying to be the next big thing, I’d prefer a company that listens to it’s customers. Bonus, if they take time to write clever responses. Double bonus if their business changes as a result of the conversations that they’ve had.  Instead of doling out diamonds like they’re pennies, is it too much to ask companies to focus on building up the basics? Commit to engagement. Share exciting and relevant content. Create a rock solid and informative listening program. Evolve your business practices. Don’t just spam me with sparkle. I hope companies can evolve their thinking beyond the campaign and build real conversations that will endure.

NB: A little well placed sparkle never hurt anyone- just make sure you have a killer dress to wear it with.

Dear Anna,

I work for a social media company.  I will claim I met you at some event you registered for, and never attended. I will them blab about how awesome my company is- how it solves world hunger, cures aids, and makes you fart rainbows and smiles faces. I will try to help you understand social media, because obviously you- working for a large brand- knows nothing about it. Because I am so awesome and social media savvy I will educate you for the next four paragraphs with random jargon and cheesy terms like “sexy”, “mega” and “epic”. I will assume you have no social media strategy, no brain, and that you think my email is God’s answer to your many nights of praying & begging for social media intelligence. Not once will I mention how it will work specifically for your business, because obviously whatever I am selling will fulfill every need you have. It’s just so awesome! I will then end this email by splattering random famous social media names and sites, using the words “influence”, “ROI” Or “true measure” no less than 4 times and reiterate how effing awesome I am (exclamation points!!!!!).

New-age email closing phrase,

Company who would like to pitch you.

Really? You think that’s going to make interested in your company, let alone me take the time to respond to you? Hell no! If anything it’s forced me to permanently tattoo your name in the “do not do business with” file folder in my brain. In some cases, the emails I have been so bad I’ve even encouraged others to avoid doing business with them. I’ve seen all kinds of email hot messes. My personal favorite? One company had the nerve to do a mass email to several brands and forgot to BCC the recipients! Fail. Let me tell you how to actually get me to respond.

1.  Don’t lead with your business, lead with you: What your company does is important. Let me tell you what’s more important- that I like you. I have to know then when I call you at 5 pm on Friday with a massive issue that a) you can help b) you won’t be jerkwad supreme about it. And how do I find out if we get along? Meeting you. So, your goal of any first email shouldn’t be going in for the kill, but rather a casual invitation to -what I like to call- a vendor first date. Something away from the office that’s casual, not too private, and I don’t have to slip out the window to get away if it tanks.  Great examples are conference invites, drinks, industry events, etc.  (Note: this list does not include a “webinar”)

2. Do you research: When you write your email, do not send me a form email. YOU WILL NOT GET A RESPONSE. Do you see how I used the caps-lock there? It’s because sh*t’s getting serious here. Form letters are lazy and shows that you weren’t willing to do enough research to write an email that would actually resonate. Furthermore, Social Media is the complete antithesis of a form email. So if you’re trying to sell me on the fact you get social with a form email; I can assume you don’t and move the hell on. See how that works? Is it so effing hard to Google my name and title and learn a little bit about me? It’s not like there’s a shortage of data out there folks.  And if you did your research and found I was tweeting/ blogging about a problem you can solve- that’s a great way to get my attention.

3. Show don’t tell: When you talk about your business, do not tell me I am going to love it. Guess what? That’s my decision. Instead use whatever space you have to talk about your business, to talk about key differentiators. Other companies likely have similar capabilities, but I want you kn0w what makes you shiny and new. Proof is in the pudding; so don’t talk to me if you aren’t going to give me a proper demo. And by demo I do not mean a power point with a couple screen shots of your tool/ software, I mean a real life play space I can mess around with and form an educated opinion about your product. If I can’t test drive the car, I am not buying.

After writing this I can only hope that, maybe just maybe, someone will find this post and actually write me an email that I’ll want to respond to.

Speaking of magic, this post’s subject is very near and dear to my heart: viral video. But, what makes a video “go viral?” Left and right people mouth off on the awesomeness that is viral video and I’m sure- if you’re a brand- that marketers have tried to sell you ideas to “go viral.” Making a video viral is actually very very simple. More than the marketing, the spread of the video depends on – *shock!*- the video itself. It has to be interesting. More than interesting, it has to engage. A viral video is one you can watch over and over again and still giggle, question, or end up shocked. More importantly, it has to be good enough to make users want to pass the love on. It’s like a blockbuster movie trapped into a frame of a few minutes. The more emotion it drives, the better place it will hold in viewers hearts.

So as a peace offering (in attempts to cover up the fact I have no blogged as often as I should have) here’s a list of my top 10 favorite brand Youtube videos. Maybe they’ll inspire you. Surely they’ll make you laugh. Most importantly they’ll make you want to buy their products AND tell your friends about it. Double whammy win! And that’s just it- if you want to make some movie magic you’ll see you have to make something truly incredible. Or just make it pants wetting hilarious. Funny always works.

1. Coca Cola | Happiness Machine- Here Coke delivers  something special with a surprising vending machine that serves up more than refreshing CocaCola; it serves up smiles.

2. Tipp-Ex | Man Shoots a Bear- In an effort to not ruin this video’s special twist, I’ll just say that this is the most engaging video content I have ever seen.

3. Sienna | Swagger Wagon- Mini vans are cool again, or at least this video from Toyota makes me think they are. That’s a big deal, a really big deal.

4. Old Spice | Re: Everyone- What better than the Old Spice commercials? Having a custom Old spice commercial made just for you. Genius.

5. Blendtec | Will it blend?- This brand has been cranking out videos for 3 years and people still clamor to see will it blend? Lucky for Blendtec, the answer is always yes.

6. OraBrush | Smell Your own breath- Ever wonder how to tell if your breath smells? Fear no more, this YouTube video from Orabrush teaches you just that,

7. BMW | S1000 RR. Dinner for RR.- Magic tricks aren’t just for kids. BMW takes a trick we are all familiar with and make it bigger, better, and puts some gas behind it. The result is both fun to watch and a selling point.

8. Air New Zealand | Bare essentials of safety- Sometimes taking something completely normal and adding a clever twist can make a video a social success. Air New Zealand takes cleverness to the next level.

9. Lotte | Fit Gum- This video is not in English and make no sense, but that hasn’t prevented me from showing it to everyone I know. Their videos aren’t just catchy, they’re down right addicting.

10. MiXta | Mixta y Mixto, una historia de amor- This fabulous video shows the progression of the relationship between a sandwich and Mixta. It’s clever and more than effectively humanizes the product

Honorable Mention: Loreal Spain | ClipDub Oficial Pasarela Cibeles 2010- I had to add this Loreal Paris Spanish channel video as an honorable mention. Why? Because It’s my blog and I can do what I want

But the more I watch the reality TV the more I begin to see the true “reality” in it. Yes, people are staged or coached into doing certain things. Yes, money seems to not be a barrier for doing anything [unless it's built into some type of crazy plot twist]. Yes, the whole world- from the wardrobe to the circumstances- are fabricated. However, even with all of these “fake” influences, there are still very real components. Take for example The Jersey Shore. Here 7 people who have virtually no income, who still live at home at the age of 25, with extreme tanning, fist pumping, & hair poofing tendencies live in one house together. Even though the cast is carefully selected to have a bitch, a tough girl, a victim, and crazy one…. that’s not what I see. Instead I focus on the endearing quality that the cast finds ways to have fun even in the worst of situation. Perhaps the true magic of the cast is not that are a perfectly orchestrated public catastrophe [which they are], but rather that even with everything working against them they still maintain their celebration attitude. And why do they do that, because at the end of the day that’s who they are! It’s something that simply can’t be hidden by all the commotion.

How does this apply to social media? Well in many ways interactions between digital users are heavily orchestrated. There are character limits that control length. Internal emotions cause us to perhaps present ourselves slightly differently then we would in person. There are less barriers to interaction. Much like alcohol and endless money act as catalysts for our Guido loving ladies, social sites remove barriers and act as the catalyst to our interactions with each other, albeit digitally. Even with all of this pushing us to interact, connect, & some might even say “live” in what in our fabricated world, we still who we are- no matter how much that might be masked by the circumstances and opportunities our online lives present us.

Recently I chatted with my co-worker about his career. I’ll admit, I was driving him to explore social media more. His response? “For something to work there needs to be BOTH soldiers and generals. Generals know the strategy and the space, soldiers push forward on those orders overcoming obstacles with out looking back to question. Anna, I’m right now I’m a soldier.” This analogy forced me to stop and think. Not everybody needs to be a “thought leader” to make a difference. Plus,  if we were all thought leaders nothing would ever get done. Ever. Social media takes up too much time.

And, if your entire work force is spending their work day tweeting, facebooking and etc (even if it is about work stuff), where would they have time to do their job? Who would be the faithful soldier fighting the good fight for progress? They’d be too busy debating the ins and out of social media within their industry & strategizing to actually create  the necessary inroads into the businesses, services, and the other areas social media will inevitably continue support.  And the bonds soldiers, such as my coworker, are building are critical. Without those inroads  social media could become a stand alone item, rather than an integrated portion of how we look at the communications landscape.

So lets hear it for the soldiers of social media. Sure they may not have a bajillion followers on twitter. They may not roll out with Chris Brogan & B. Solis on the weekend eating bacon and washing it down with champagne. And- shock- they may not even have a personal Facebook page. But at the end of the day, they fight the good fight, push things forward, and get way less credit then they deserve.  They may not be social media gurus, but the understand its importance enough to fight wholeheartedly for it and never look back.  That, frankly,  is a dedication to progress that is too rarely rewarded in our industry.

In genetics a meme, comparable as an mental representation of a physical gene, is defined as “an idea, belief, pattern of behavior” which is “hosted” in the mind of one or more parties.  A meme can replicate itself as necessary to travel from mind to mind; therefore what would otherwise be interpreted as an individual manipulating or influencing another is seen, according to memetics, is a meme reproducing itself (Lesovec et al, 2009). As with genetics, a meme’s virility, that is, its ability to be easily spread from one individual to another, maybe be a result of its benefiting the host.  (Brodie, 1996). Social media provides an interesting application of memetics. Historically, memetics ignores the truth of ideas and focuses on the spread of mental thought. As we have discussed earlier, this is often the case with information dissemination on the social web: ideas (or news) comes first, the truth second.

While the meme concept does seem to explain virility of thought, it fails to explain why certain thoughts are stickier than others. Additionally, memetics fails to leverage the strength of the host as a possible indicator in the ability for a meme to travel more successfully.  Theodore Vail’s research on telephones in 1908 led to a nebulas definition of what is now called the “network effect” (Ussi, 1996), that is to say the effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other people. Although network effect focuses mainly on product and technology adoption, it is easily adapted to define thought adoption as well. Vail’s research serves as a nice companion to memetics as it introduces the variable of network strength, in the potential mass adoption of a thought. This combination of memetic and network theory might rightly be called the “social network effect,” or the effect one person’s publicly-expressed thought has on the value or adoption of that thought by another person. Given the nature of the channel, the social network effect drives both virility of thought (memetics) and leverages community for thought dispersion (network effect).

In today’s “social” world, several core SN sites make up the majority of the average American’s online community networks, namely: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn (dBizMBA, 2010).  In addition to foundation there are myriad other sites that provide niche communities with a way to interact. Sometimes these interactions center on a common passion: Dogster connects dog lovers from around the world, while Flixter provides a forum for moviegoers to share reviews. Others social community sites serve a specific utility: PlanCast allows users to share plans and activities, while FourSquare provides a GPS check-in platform where users are rewarded for updating their location in real time. Regardless of site focus or content, once an individual joins a social network they are first prompted to identify themselves. Once an online identity has been created, the second step of any SN is to connect that identity with others within the network. These relationships may be labeled in a variety of different ways, the most popular being “friends” (Facebook) and “followers” (Twitter). Additionally, connections can be one way- in which a user can elect to view another’s updates and posts without necessarily sharing their own content. To protect privacy, connections can also be bi-directional, where both parties must accept the “relationship” before content can be shared between the two. These digital associations knit together to create a web of content dispersion popularly called the “social graph” (Zuckerberg, 2007).

Through these SNS connections, users are often exposed to content to which they would otherwise not be privy. User A may share a story, which User B reads and re-posts, sharing it with all of User B’s friends and followers, including User C. Now User C is exposed to User A’s content, with whom he has no relationship. If User C likes User A’s content enough, he or she may elect to created a connection with User A, becoming User A’s friend or follower. Thus a bond is created between two complete strangers solely based on the quality of shared content.  In this environment, content dispersion can provide a means through which strangers can begin to build bonds with each other due to ideological alignment exposed by their mutual social interactions (Haythornthwaite, 2005; Boyd, 2007). Thus, one’s circle or influence online far exceeds, in network size, that of previous generations. Connections between users within the social graph can be unpredictably varied, and information quickly and easily travels across a myriad of social properties causing proliferation of thought (Boyd, 2007). Leveraging the increased number of connections, regardless of their strength, means information travels at a much faster rate.

27.3 million tweets (Watters, 2010; Hird, 2010) and 500 million pieces of content on Facebook (Facebook, 2010) are shared daily. Outside of these active updates, a great number of users participate in this content dispersion passively: rather than sharing content they absorb what is shared by others. Currently SNs and blogs consume nearly 25% of people’s time online (one in every four-and-half minutes online). The average visitor spends 66% more time on these sites than they did a year ago—6 hours in April 2010 versus 3 hours and 31 minutes last year (Nielsen, 2010). As a result, information travels at surprisingly quick speed through the social graph, with the most shocking of news taking only minutes to disseminate (Vieweg et al, 2010; Starbird et al 2010).

Way back when(March 2009) , Mashable gave us this theoretical equation: Influence = (Personal Brand * Knowledge * Trust2).

While it’s a good thinking theoretically, practically- it’s stupid. Trust makes a massive part of this equation and  is generally immeasurable. You can “approximate” trust through other metrics, but then are you really measuring trust or something else such as mass appeal or return visits? I visit Perez Hilton’s site often, but it’s definitely not because I trust him.  Just like Mr. Perez, quasi-related metrics are ALWAYS biased.   Plus most of the metrics proposed in this article are more measurements of a brand value than anything else. Likely because trust and knowledge are nearly impossible to measure since they are entirely relative. This is a theoretical equation, but not one that actually works in practice. It’s excellent example of the biggest flaw in the space currently- too much thinking in ideals, too little thinking about how to make  practical  application feasible. I could argue this further, but that’s NOT the point of this post.

The point is, people are confused. They’re baffled by how they match up everything. They know that in a world of millions of messages they have to pick and choose who they respond to- simply because it’s impossible to address every piece of online content.  Thus was born the term “ influencers” which became a proxy for pretty much every possible engagement population in social media. “Make sure we alert influencers of our campaign. Take care to address influencers needs.  What are influencers saying about our brand?” The list goes one and one with one common theme, the word “influencers”. Barf. Double barf.

Here’s the thing,  when you see some one’s social media profile and activity where available; you’re missing one thing. Context. All you can see is who they are online and whom they digitally interact with on a single social site. The full picture of online social activity is not currently measurable. That activity on one site is  a very small part of the picture. I am sure many of us have singel site relationships that are further supported by other online & even offline  engagement.  For example,  say I have a friend Alice, who I see quite often. We may share messages occasionally online, but it’s far less then I share online with other people. However, I would consider Alice one of my best friends even though it may not be discernible on open access social sites ( twitter, blogs, etc). However,  I am pretty certain if I ever needed some one to go to bat for me, Alice would be there regardless of how strong our “public” online relationship is.

Now lets pretend I am a nobody on social media (that’s not hard to pretend -I kind of am ) and Alice is a uber elite social media guru. And to drive this story forward let’s say I am refused service at McDonald’s because I want to order a happy meal & I am not a child. Remember this is all hypothetical. If I get pissed off and write a blog post on my experience and & it’s valid issue, Alice might go to bat for me and spread the message. So while up until this point  I am not measurably “influential”- all the sudden, without warning, the story spreads.  Why? Because there was no way to predict digitally I was connected to Alice or further more that she would go to bat for me.  Proof that, in general, online conversation is not predictable (yet).

So here’s my take on influencers. The concept is a load of rubbish- at least in the way people currently think about it. I think the term generally leads us to black and white perceptions of customers and friends and so forth. You’re either  and influencer and valuable to my [insert marketing terminology such as campaign, brand awareness, promotion] or you’re not. And lets be honest the world (and the internet) is rarely black and white. Instead I think the question we should be asking  instead of “how do I isolate influencers?” is  “how do we monitor what conversations matter & which are just noise? “

My thoughts:

1. Know your community

Learn who the biggest voices are in your target areas. Explore the landscape and understand the strengths and weaknesses in how conversations travel within your niche. Don’t just learn about it, be an expert.

2. Keep your ear to the ground

Simple street smarts-watch your back. It’s not a novel concept, but one many companies large and small forget to do it. Who can blame them? It’s easy to get caught up in reporting  and forget that one of listening’s biggest strengths is the ability to spot a storm before it forms.

3. Adapt, grow, & learn the hard way

Brands are going to make mistakes, and the first reaction is always going to be to freak out, As result, especially after a crisis, companies try to monitor every single brand mention. That’s not sustainable. The fact is, and I say this all the time, monitoring has and element of trial and error to it. The idea is to focus on growth and admit up front that there will bumps along the way. Key phrase here- you marketers will love this- hockey stick approach.

I’ll be the first to admit that there is more to this story than is in this blog post. The space, in general, is not evolved.   And yes, there is that tricky feat of operationalizing this thinking to work for thousands, perhaps millions of conversations. I’ve got some good ideas on how to do this, but I’m keeping my mouth shut. Let’s call it “competitive advantage”.