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01.25.10 Protecting Your Customer Reputation With Monitoring Software  By Jim Berkowitz CRM Mastery recently rolled out a Social CRM Technology Directory that includes more then 60 products within 5 categories. One of the technology categories included in the (free with registration) directory is Brand Monitoring. The following comments are from a variety of sources: Brand monitoring has become an essential task for any individual or corporation. Years ago, when people talked about our brands, it was behind our backs and we almost never found out about it. Today, most of these dialogues are right in front of our own eyes and the number of locations where our brands may be cited is astronomical! We must remember that conversations are being held on the web with or without our consent. That means we can choose whether to be observers, participants or outcasts. Before you select observer or outcast, remember that these conversations can have a negative impact on your brand. Also, when conversations start on the web, like a forest fire, they travel very fast and wreak havoc along the way; what might start out as a mere tweet, may turn into a blog post and then make national news. Forrester Research shows that 75% of adult Internet users in the U.S. participate in social technology. More people are talking about your brand, products and services online than ever before. Listening to your customers is a critical first step in deploying an effective social media strategy and successfully managing your brand online. Listening to social conversations helps you get acquainted with online consumers, monitor their perceptions about your brand and competitors, spot potential issues, and can help identify authentic brand influencers and advocates. After you've listened to your customers, it's time to learn from their opinions and feedback. Social conversations offer a rich-repository of customer information that can be tapped numerous ways to benefit your organization such as targeting the most relevant and influential audiences for word-of-mouth campaigns and online media buys, and harvesting actionable consumer insight for market research.
Once you have listened to and learned from your customers, you're ready to join the conversation. Participating in online conversations can drive sales and brand awareness, sell or message online campaigns virally, increase customer satisfaction and deflect calls, as well as manage engagement with influencers and consumers. Managing and protecting your brand and executive reputations online is critical to the overall health of your business, especially as the lines between search and social blur. Protecting your online reputation enables you to identify and address negative issues, promote positive information about your company, as well as prevent, manage and repair crises. Brand monitoring tools can scan pretty much every single Social Media website in existence and can provide you with real-time data. Brand monitoring typically offers tools that provides customers with the tools to measure, monitor, understand and engage with the social media landscape. The social media platform space is already overcrowded and changing rapidly; it's going to be a roller coaster ride over the next 12-18 months. So while features and functions comparison should obviously be a critical component of anyone's selection criteria, it's potentially more important, especially as an enterprise buyer, to weight things such as company positioning, market presence, capitalization, long-term viability, merger and acquisition activity and completeness of vision and product road map. Comments About the Author: Jim Berkowitz is a seasoned executive with more than 30 years of professional services and project management experience related to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Financial Management (Accounting & ERP) software solutions for small, mid-sized and Fortune 500 companies. As a Sales Force Automation and CRM Consultant, Jim has assisted more then 100 companies with the design and implementation of custom CRM solutions. Mr. Berkowitz is the founder and President of CRM Mastery, Inc.; a company dedicated to serving small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) by offering affordable tools and guidance to help them plan for and succeed with their CRM initiatives. |
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