Analytics: The Problem with Taking People and Conversation Out of Social Media

+ Posted by Josh Hallett on 01.11.07 // 02:35 PM

At the WOMMA DC Summit a number of the big analytical firms were there showing/talking about their social media tracking tools. Among the big corporations, the dashboard seems be de rigeur. A number of marketing honchos talked about the power of looking at their dashboard and knowing immediately how their product/service/brand is tracking on 'the blogs'.

While dashboards and other metrics for social media can be great tools, you're taking away the core focus of social media, people and their conversations. Knowing that X% of blog posts are negative about a product/service only scratches the surface.

Now when an executive says, "I monitor blogs." I respond, "Great, what's that last one you read? Who wrote it?"

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Visitor Comments

Great point, Social Media is about people

I love it! Those same people are probably still working with "target" audiences rather than understanding psychographics, behaviors and lifestyles.

We're talking about two things here -- the need to track/quantify in order to be accountable to the board room, and the necessity of staying actively engaged and keeping it real. These days, those of us working in this environment have got to be bilingual.

But what I really want to know, Josh, is how the executives respond to your question.

nice one josh. social media is also about relationships and connections. Big companies trying to figure out how to make this scale quickly - it doesn'/t relationships take work and time.

Also, you can't turn negative perception by simply tracking it; you actually have to do something about the complaints. Measurement alone is pointless.

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