This article is part of the series of Social Media 101 articles written by Chris Syme, Chair of the CoSIDA New Media/Technology Committee, and other committee members throughout the academic year.
In this overview article, the Committee outlines the importance of using social media monitoring tools and offers suggestions on free and paid tools.
Look for more information on this topic in future posts from social media management service company Expion, CoSIDA's new corporate partner.
Social media monitoring is a hot topic, but what exactly does it involve?
Listening to what people are saying about you online is an important piece of the athletic department communications plan.
According to a recent survey of the CoSIDA New Media/Technology Committee members, almost 60% said they have a formal social media monitoring program in their departments. Associates with a plan are spending as little as one hour a day or as much as four hours a day monitoring their brand online.
Recently,
oneforty.com released an infographic on social media monitoring with some interesting statistics. You can access it here:
http://oneforty.com/blog/what-are-the-best-social-media-monitoring-tools/.
According to the graphic, over 50% of those surveyed were spending less than $100 per month on social media monitoring.
On our CoSIDA survey, we found that nobody was currently paying for monitoring with the exception of one conference. Most were making use of free tools to monitor their brand. Two of the respondents indicated their universities had pay services that they had access to, however.
Our survey also found that the majority of listening responsibilities were with the athletics communicators within the department, and not marketing. Respondents who had "new media" as part of their job description spent more time monitoring than others.
Advantage of Pay Services
Social media monitoring services like
Expion, Meltwater, and Radian 6 can charge anywhere from $500/month up to thousands depending on your size and needs. Prices reflect the depth of tools monitored and the services involved. Monitoring tools are still in their infancy and, according to the onforty.com survey, there can be issues about getting real-time results and issues with interfacing. Yet, most surveyed agreed that monitoring is a critical task in brand building and management.
Outsourcing can make social media monitoring easier, and built-in analytics that are customized to your objectives will cut down significantly on the maze of free tools and dashboards you have to manage, and probably offer better bottom-line results.
Not a Lack of Free Tools
But, if your budget doesn't include money for monitoring, you are not in the minority.
The majority of New Media/Technology Committee members are using some form of Twitter search or Google Alerts/News to monitor their brands. With the abundance of search operators (short cut symbols) available in Twitter and Google Search, pretty specific searches can be done. All the operators for Twitter and Google can be accessed in their instructions on advanced search. Google Alerts didn't get high marks from users, as lag time and incomplete results were cited by those who used it.
One of the most popular free monitoring tools is SocialMention. Free accounts are available and you can set up multiple alerts to be delivered to your email on specific search terms for most popular social media platforms.
I've encountered some glitches with SocialMention where alerts were stopped for some unknown reason and I had to keep setting them up manually. If you want to use free tools to set up a "dashboard" of sorts, some experimenting will have to take place.
But in the long run, it is worth the effort to keep your social ear to the ground. See the list of free tools in the oneforty.com graphic and try out some of the tools. See what works for you.
Time is Money
The biggest objection to starting a monitoring program is always lack of time - which really translates into lack of priority.
One of the tools you can use to monitor these events is called
sentiment analysis. It can be as simple as just monitoring (and counting) the number of positive, negative, and neutral emails the department receives. I have also used this same system with fan message boards during critical times. Spotting patterns of negativity have helped me decide when I should go on the board with an official presence and be a part of the conversation. Look for sentiment patterns, spikes, and names of frequent posters that you can ask to go offline for a personal conversation.
The bottom line is that ignoring the online chatter about you will not make it go away. We have a great opportunity to engage our fans and foes alike by using social media monitoring to build a group of key influencers that will carry our good stories to their friends.
Also, social media monitoring helps us stay involved in the conversation about us, and gives us an opportunity to build a network of social media tools that will strengthen our department's brand.