In my last blog post, I spoke about the social listening features offered in the latest release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and how they could help businesses gain a better understanding of their customers. But, a couple of the questions I think a lot of people have when they are new to this technology and gathering social feedback in general are:
- With all the chatter that occurs on social media everyday, how do I get to the feedback that really matters?
- What metrics should I be measuring with social listening?
Recently, I came across a couple of really useful articles on that help to answer these questions, if you like, you can check them out and .
What follows is a quick summary of these articles as well as my two cents.
Q. With all the chatter that occurs on social media everyday, how do I get to the feedback that really matters?
A. First you need a tool to help filter out all the noise. Did you know that 40% of accounts and 8% of messages on social are spam? Social listening software like that which is a part of Dynamics CRM can help to automate this task.
Then, you’ll want to develop a list of strategic keywords to follow. If your goal is to obtain feedback on the products you sell, a couple of examples of these might be “decided not to buy [your product name]” “[your product name] is” You could also use a similar approach to gain valuable competitive insight. A few keywords you might track in this case are, “[your company name] vs. [your competitors name]” or buy [your brand name] instead of [competitor’s brand name].
Beyond tracking this list of keywords, valuable feedback can also be gained by monitoring any suppliers of partners that your business depends on. After all, if one of them were to suddenly be caught in some sort of PR nightmare or other scenario that could adversely affect your business, wouldn’t you want to be among the first to know?
Q. What metrics should I be measuring with social listening?
A. Here’s a quick list of some of the most important ones.
- Conversation Volume—How many interactions (blog posts, forum discussions, tweets, etc.) are there covering the topics that are important to you? This one is more valuable when measured over time and can be used as a baseline for future marketing campaigns. If you find yourself wishing there was more activity around a topic, start a conversation. This is a great way to showcase your expertise.
- Demographic Metrics—Data on consumer location, gender, and age. Use it to find out whether your campaigns are reaching their target audience.
- Level of Influence—A person’s online authority, measured by his or her overall reach online. Obviously, interacting with and gaining the attention of those with high influence will have the greatest impact.
- Message or Ad Reach—The number of total impressions measured by the number of sources covering a topic and each source’s potential page views.
- Sentiment—The attitudes consumers express about a product or service. Generally, social listening tools like that in Microsoft Dynamics CRM will track the adjectives used around keywords to score statements as positive, negative, or neutral.
- Share of Voice—The ratio of discussion volume your brand receives when compared to others in the same product category.
And, one more I would add to the list is:
Conversation Value—The revenue contribution associated to a conversation about a particular product or brand. This metric comes from understanding how conversations occur across different channels and the value each conversation to the brand
Obviously, all of these metrics can be overwhelming to try and implement all at once. When you are first beginning a journey into social listening, it’s better to start small with the most straightforward of the metrics listed above.
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By: Laura Heinbockel, Intelligent Technologies, Inc., A NC Dynamics CRM partner
