Monitoring your brand online.

• Author: Kincy, Jason
• Position: SOCIAL MEDIA

DURING A RECENT PHONE CONVERSATION, another bank marketer and I were discussing the importance of a bank's reputation in its community. The conversation quickly turned to reputation tracking in the largest global communities such as Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites. Monitoring and evaluating conversations about your brand in these spaces can seem like a daunting and overwhelming task, but it can be made easier with the right tools.

Anyone who has participated in a social media seminar or webinar has been told the first step in entering social media is to listen. While I don't disagree, this is a very broad term, and I believe a more specific directive is to monitor, which implies a more proactive stance in detecting relevant conversations. There are several reasons for your bank to invest some time and resources into monitoring for online social conversations.

* Complaints and compliments are the most valuable conversations to observe. What are your customers telling their friends and family about the bank? It is often surprising how simple customer comments and observations can provide your management clues on how to improve service and minimize frustrations.

* Research is important to keep up to date on the attitudes of consumers, prospects and your competition. Adding data from social media monitoring to your conventional research provides an added dimension to the overall picture.

* Social networking discussions also serve as an "early-warning system" that may alert you that something is wrong, either with a product or a service. If you are seeing tweets or comments about inconsistent service at a location, a follow-up with the manager may be worthwhile.

The best place to start is with many of the free, basic search tools that allow you to research uses of your bank name quickly and easily. If you need more detailed reporting or automated archiving of results, you might consider a paid service. The same applies if you need to monitor a myriad of keywords and competitor brands. To make your efforts most efficient, determine the specific goals of your monitoring--to help narrow your scope and to focus your attention on the items that matter most to you.

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