The Aberdeen Group’s study Brand Reputation Management: Using Online Monitoring to Protect the Company’s Crown Jewels looks at the effect of social media monitoring on brand management and groups survey respondents into 3 tiers: Best-in-class, Industry Average and Laggards.
With these three designations, the study draws a series of conclusions about what goals and processes lead to successful use of social media monitoring to protect brand reputation.
My main problem with the study is that it was fairly difficult to separate cause from effect. I outline some of those issues below.
Additionally, the study makes several points and recommendations about consumer-generated content and engaging customers, despite a strong emphasis throughout on legal issues such as fraud and trademark abuse. I agree that legal issues can arise through social media monitoring, but believe that the response process, after identification, is far different than for most other media monitoring issues. I think the study might have been improved by treating these functions separately.
Who is Best-In-Class?
The nexus of the study is the definition of their company tiers. “Aberdeen used two key performance criteria to distinguish Best-in-Class (BIC) companies [from the other companies]…These companies experienced the following performance gains over the past 12 months.”
- 95% improved their performance in protecting their online brand reputation
- 75% experienced an increase in shareholder value
But a key conclusion of the report is that “Best-in-Class companies are nearly twice as likely as Industry Average companies and 12.5 times more likely than Laggards to experience year-over-year increases in shareholder value.”
Isn’t that part of what made them Best-in-Class in the first place? Not to mention shareholder value = money = more resources for monitoring/brand intervention.
Do companies that monitor social media increase shareholder value? Or does increasing shareholder value lead to better monitoring programs?
Why Monitor?
Another conclusion is that “40% of Best-in-Class companies, compared to 24% of Laggards, see the need to protect online brand reputation as a top-three reason to deploy a social media monitoring solution.” Sadly, “protecting brand reputation” – the raison d’etre of the study – is actually at the bottom of the respondents’ list of reasons to monitor social media.
The study provides the following chart of “Top Two Pressures – All Companies”
- Build Positive Market Awareness – 45%
- Increase return on Marketing Investment – 23%
- Increase Customer Retention – 19%
- Improve Brand Advocacy – 15%
- Increase Customer Satisfaction – 13%
- Protect Brand Reputation – 11%
- Improve Market Research Capabilities – 8%
I’m not even sure what these percentages mean (it’s 134%) but any way you look at it, 11% is not impressive.
If you look at the poll from the conclusion above, the situation gets even murkier.
Best-In-Class companies were the top 20% of 275, so there were 55 of those. According to the conclusion, 22 BIC companies chose “need to protect online brand reputation” as a top 3 reason to deploy social media monitoring vs 20 Laggard companies (30% of 275). That doesn’t seem very significant.
It was also kind of confusing to draw a conclusion from a Top 3 poll and provide a visual of Top 2 responses.
Focusing Social Media Response
That Top Two Pressures chart also got me thinking about who companies are targeting with their social media response strategies. With it’s focus on “brand abuse”, the Aberdeen report is heavy with warning examples of social media shysters spreading vicious rumors about corporations or illegally using their logos.
But the pressures chart shows that companies are focused on improving customer relations, not on targeting brand threats. Maybe that’s exactly what Aberdeen is pointing to as the problem.
In any case, I started thinking about spending time “building positive market awareness” vs “protecting brand reputation”. Reaching out to customers and promoting positive information about the company, instead of tracking down and trying to alter the behavior of brand opponents.
Maybe these companies do have the answer. In social media, maybe it’s more effective to vaccine the population than to quarantine the infected.
What are Best-In-Class Companies Doing?
The study goes on to say that BICs “share several common characteristics with respect to online brand reputation management”:
- 70% have a process for acting upon insights gleaned from social media monitoring
- 70% have dedicated resources devoted to SM monitoring
- 55% deliver info concerning potential threats to brand reputation to key decision makers in real-time or within hours.
So, using the definition of a BIC, we can conclude that:
Companies that are working to improve their online reputation and have money = companies that organize and support their social media monitoring process.
That makes sense.
How do Laggards become Best-In-Class?
Aberdeen has an entire chapter on recommendations and steps for companies to improve their media monitoring and response programs. It’s a pretty good list with explanatory paragraphs for each of the suggestions.
Some of the recommendations to improve Social Media Monitoring:
- Prioritize brand threats
- Create threat alerts
- Train employees to engage customers online
- Leverage digital dashboards
- Measure performance over time
- Define best practices
- Identify/measure key influencers
- Conduct sentiment analysis
- Correlate brand protection to financial outcomes
Other Interesting Stuff from the Study:
- Social Media use is increasing: 50% of respondents are increasing investments in social media.
- Nobody’s archiving their data: 55% of BIC and less than a quarter of others have a central repository for SM data.
- Everyone’s getting help: 84% of BIC and almost half of everyone else are using Social Media Monitoring tools.
- People need benchmarks and goals: Only 60% of BIC and a quarter of the rest have defined performance metrics for their monitoring program.
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Photo courtesy of: Swamibu
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