Cross-posted on VoceNation.

There has been much discussion lately about the transition from listening to engagement when it comes to social media monitoring. Forrester recently posted a review of vendors (which of course started some discussion) and other firms are talking about their ‘solutions’. At Voce we’ve been pushing this shift for some time now and would like to think we’re a bit ahead of the curve.

While we use Radian6 and a number of other tools to ‘discover’ conversations the real value is what is done with that information. Sure the obvious hits are putting out the small fires, but what are the long term trends? How do those map back to a broader communications strategy?

Within large organizations the challenge is to sort through the thousands of conversations happening daily, distill what is valuable and then work with internal folks to make sure (one or all): A: the issue is acted upon B: the knowledge shared C: the value seen D: outcome measured. Back in August Mike Manuel outlined our social media monitoring and engagement strategy with our clients. Here’s a quick chart.

For a broader look at our strategy see the diagram below. Voce works with a number of different tools to sift through the thousands of items in the conversational web. The items that make the cut, are then imported to Bridge, our custom client dashboard. Metaphorically, ‘Bridge’ is the link between the messy web of conversation and the client. Yes, it’s true not every mention of your brand online is worth your time (gasp)!.

Our dashboard is something we’ve developed in house and is currently used by the majority of our social media clients. Bridge provides a one-stop look for clients to see discussions relevant to their specific needs and an archive of all past conversations. It also serves as a hub for assigning and tracking issues internally.

For example, as illustrated above, a blog post is found that raises a customer service question that needs to be addressed. We can flag that issue, give it a priority and due date, then assign it to an individual within the company. Clients can track all this via the site, RSS or e-mail. Once the assigned task is completed the issue is closed and archived. Our primary client contacts can also reference reporting on open tasks, time-to-close and other metrics.

Remember the post talking about a centralized or de-centralized approach to social media monitoring? This is our solution to that.

We also produce weekly and monthly roll-up reports that summarize key topics and actions taken along with measurements. Long term, tagging and additional data-mining allow us to identify trends and measure the impact of the issues flagged and knowledge gained.

A bit more on this soon….