Social media monitoring II

I wrote last week about monitoring social media for things that matter to the PR person, and what tools might work best to do the job. In the comments that developed below that post, the issue of whether to pay for a media monitoring tool if your feeds take up "too much time" came up, and I have some thoughts on that.

To set out my point of view concisely, I'd compare the argument to traditional media monitoring. Many PR firms pay for press monitoring, but they'd be crap PR people if they didn't read a large amount of media. Looking for issues and current affairs is done through living and breathing the media.  In the same vein you might pay for someone else to track web feeds for you if it's too time consuming, but the real value is lost.

I've spent far too many years working with feeds to let me see what's happening in my field, the my clients' business areas and for out-of-work stuff. It's just part of how I consume media now to be honest. "RSS hell" it ain't.

I know there are paid ways of short-circuiting the process of web feed reading and I expect the reason many PR people would prefer that option is because when RSS becomes high volume (and in my opinion for what it's worth, RSS was designed for high volume) it takes just too much time to get up to speed.

But the bigger picture is social media is not just about who says what, it's about connecting and social networking. That's what will separate the reporting monkey from the consultant. So for that networking, engagement and for the stuff you learn which you can apply as a consultant, I'd go for the long hand approach any day, and urge PR consultants to learn long hand too.

Comments

[Stephen Davies]

Hiya mate,

I understand that different situations apply from client to client but, I must admit, I'm of the belief that monitoring work should be outsourced to specialist companies.

I agree that PR people (not just in social media but in general) should be consuming a shed load of media on a daily basis. It's our job.

At the same time though, I think their (our) time is better spent elsewhere - as opposed to wading through random and irrelevant (often spam) blogs looking for the good stuff.

Imagine if you've been briefed to conduct research into the last six months' worth of conversation of a multinational tech company like, for example, Sony. Or what about a brand name that's a generic word like Apple.

Can you imagine the amount of cr*p you'd pull up and the time it would take? Phew!

Surely it would be cost effective to use a specialist company than using a SAE/AM to do it?

Speaking from first-hand experience I know what conversation audits entail and I'm of the belief that it's not PR's role to find the data, its role is to interpret it.

My 2peneth. :-)

[Andy Merchant]

Hi,

1,For every paid monitoring tool there is a free tool out there, just as good if not better.(money saver) - in social media all tools should be free!

2, If yourself or other team members are actively monitoring the blogosphere you will always find other materials and ideas for use in your campaigns.

3, Part of a good PR role nowadays should be to monitor RSS feeds so you can act quickly swiftly to meet campaign goals.

[Sherry]

I have some doubts about the accountability of the monitoring work being conducted as an outsourced project.

As Drew says, ‘looking for issues and current affairs is done through living and breathing the media.’ And, as public relations practitioners, you know exactly what you are looking for, not external agencies. It might also be a very time consuming task to make sure your requirements are understood by agencies.