By Nicholas Oliver, Project Manager

“What’s all the hype about buzz monitoring? I know where our Twitter account is… we have analytics… I know and control what everyone is saying about us.” Wrong!
There is no way to control what people say about you within the social realm. The concept in itself is that people are free to discuss topics of their choice, with the people of their choice via an endless array of platforms. Across the world, 2 billion people access the internet via their computer, portable devices and even televisions with the goal of obtaining information and connecting with others.

How does buzz monitoring change any of this? The simple answer is; it doesn’t. The purpose of buzz monitoring is to understand your audience, their interests and how they talk about you. Imagine being able to see everytime a person talked about you or your company anywhere on the internet and being able to engage with them directly.

We understand that marketing and conversion is all about developing a relationship with a user through conversation and engagement – so how can buzz monitoring enhance these touch points?

We recently set up buzz monitoring for a client in order to better understand how their audiences were talking about their brand in the social space. In doing so, we came across this post on Twitter: “So it turns out I may not have confirmed my interview at XYZ. S***”. To the author and their friends, quite an insightful post – to the client, invaluable! Buzz monitoring would have enabled them to spot this immediately and engage with the user through Twitter in order to rearrange and ensure the completion of the funnel process. The business benefits of monitoring the buzz are clear and in many cases, tangible – take the Canadian university that was responsive to the speculative tweets of a prospective MBA student; they answered his queries quickly, thoroughly and personably. Their reward? A new student and a sizeable amount in fees.

So how will this help you? Until you have buzz monitoring and find out what your audience is saying about you, you won’t know…