I write about many different topics for www.SSWUG.org. Every once in a while I bring up topics that are of interest to our readers, and the next thing I know, companies I may have referenced are now following me on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Notifications of the company following me happen very quickly after the editorials are posted.
This weekend I had the opportunity to speak with an individual who is responsible for brand monitoring for a fortune 100 company. He was describing to me the technology and purpose behind the practice.
Everyone knows that the image of a brand makes all the difference in sales. If people have a negative image of your brand, no matter how good the product is, it can radically impact sales. For example, a large chain store in North America had cockroach bait/poison on their shelves, but the product wasn’t moving. They found that the reason was nobody wanted to admit to having cockroaches in their home. The product was re-labeled and sales increased dramatically.
With today’s social networking the ability to impact the image of a brand is even bigger. One person has a complaint, or an extraordinary experience with a product, and the next thing you know, the posting goes viral.
What does a company do when this occurs? My friend tells me that transparency is often the best response, if any response is given at all. Find out what you know, and make it known. What happens when you don’t protect your image? Check out the YouTube video for “United Breaks Guitars”.
What is more interesting to me from the perspective of technical people are the tools used to gather, warehouse, and mine these social media sites so that a company can follow and if necessary make a public response to open issues.
This certainly may be a new skill for the data professional: Brand Monitoring. Do you know anything about it? Can you share with us how you go about managing the perception of your brand using Information Technology? Drop me a note at btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben