Why do you have to get Social?

• To stay ahead of your competition
• To monitor your brand health
• To know who and where are your influencers
• To track each moves of your detractors and mitigate risks
• To engage with evangelists and detractors
• To track yours products/services or campaigns in the social media outlets
• To increase your visibility

Here are obviously just a few reasons to get on the social media wave. There is a radical shift in the purchase funnel because the customer is back in the driver's seat and express himself. Brands can no longer afford to overlook those comments, replies, references, referrals, tweets, retweets, opinions and perceptions about their products. Needless to say that posts and comments on social media outlets carry more weigh than articles in traditional media. 

We all agree that there are hurdles on the way when it comes to get relevant social media content to feed our analysis. Several platforms claim that they can put at your fingertips information that is paramount for your business activity. I don't think that an off-the-shelf product can understand my challenges and priorities. Only a well-seasoned team of analysts coupled with the right technology can help you stay in touch with online conversations about your brands.

As you all know time is an expensive currency that needs to be optimized. You need to focus your efforts on engagement that is to say responding to meaningful and insightful messages.

I always provide my clients with some key takeaways, here are a few:

• use one single interface to monitor all your subjects of interest. 
• Spend your time where you create value namely on the analysis - produce recommendations, generate insights.
• Don't stack information. All is about relevancy (clean data without redundancy).

“Businesses used to have a small suggestion box near the door that mostly housed dust bunnies and an occasional piece of gum. Rarely would someone get back to you. But people can now make a post from an iPhone or a BlackBerry while they’re sitting in your restaurant.” – Charles Nelson, President of Sprinkles Cupcakes president