Each quarter Snoo.ws tackles a new series topic to provide our audience with insight, intelligence, examples and ideas. This month is Monitoring Month where we will cover everything from basic monitoring 101 to the top monitoring tools to monitoring’s role in your overall strategy. So, stay tuned – there’s plenty to come.
Just as we’ve discussed in other articles throughout Monitoring Month, the insight provided by monitoring data is an excellent way to know how actual people feel about your brand. What they say to one another on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums, article comments, etc. reflects real opinions. Knowing public opinion about your brand is essential to conducting successful business. Applying the layer of knowing the location of mentions just helps to add more detail to the entire data picture.
Location based data is derived through geolocation tools. ”Check-in” features on social media platforms, Foursquare, IP data, and other means can all identify where a user is posting from. When looking at results from monitoring – you can take note of the mentions’ origins and get a location based understanding of what people are saying about your brand.
Market research is made easier by GeoLocation tools. For businesses wanting to schedule conventions, plan events, expand physical locations, look for areas to reach out to, and know where to market more or differently – these tools are a great way to know how real consumers feel in different areas.
What if the sentiment on your product is great in one region and terrible in another? Using monitoring platforms to provide such insight is an excellent way to know what you need to do next. Negative sentiment in one area calls for enhanced marketing efforts there, maybe a new approach altogether is needed. Perhaps the specific comments made will even shed light as to why people feel this way. Is your brand misunderstood there? Hard to access? Just unknown?
Areas with great sentiment can serve as models. Taking note of a successful location and comparing it to one where your business isn’t flourishing – you can identify the differences and know what to do to pick up the struggling sectors.
“Geolocation …[as an example] Foursquare, can be your best friend, specially if your business is brick and mortar, like a restaurant or even a hardware store,” Smart Data Collective wrote in an article and I couldn’t agree more. For actual locations, what better way to know what consumers in your area really think about you than to see what they’re saying online? Both positive and negative comments can help shape marketing, promotions, advertising, and just a business’ entire approach to customer relations.
Just with other types of crisis identification or trouble-shooting – any regional or local problems can be circumvented or seen on the horizon. What do I mean? Let’s say the day of your major event there’s inclement weather or a huge traffic jam – use your real time geolocation monitoring tools to reach out to attendees with questions, concerns, or who have posted about the event in general. You can let people know your contingency plans or ensure guests that the party is still a go-ahead.
Back in 2005 during the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, one of the many many entities disrupted was shipping throughout the Southeast US, particularly on I-10. I was living in Jacksonville, Florida at the time, home of a Budweiser brewery. Since the roads were so damaged, mass ground transportation of Budweiser’s products wasn’t possible – thus, customers elsewhere experienced a shortage of goods and in Jacksonville we experienced a huge surplus because of the backlog. Beer was on sale like I’ve never seen before or since. Imagine if Budweiser had been able to use geolocation monitoring at that time. (Clearly the larger, much more significant issues of loss and dislocation affiliated with Katrina have been easier to tackle from all kinds of agencies – I’m just focusing on this example to highlight a business use of such technology).
If Budweiser and other companies in a similar situation could have gotten the word out to regional consumers. Those in Jacksonville could have been alerted about the sale prices to help sell off the extra products even faster. And those elsewhere experiencing a shortage could have had the situation explained, maybe the company could have offered coupons to help assuage dissatisfied and frustrated shoppers, etc.
I know this one example seems far-fetched, but really all kinds of unpredictable things can and do happen that actually affects business on the ground level.
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Resources:
“Using Social Monitoring to uncover the Analytics of Geolocation,” (Smart Data Collective, 2010).
“10 Things the FBI Knows About Social Media Monitoring You Can Use to Generate Leads and Close Deals,” (Marketing Pilgrim, 2012).
“Comparing Social Media Monitoring Platforms on GeoLocation about Social Media Week NYC #SMWNYC10,” (Web Metrics Guru, 2010).
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