Using social networks to monitor your brand

There are a number of ways to measure success in social network marketing.

Some methods are relatively straightforward - such as using analytics to look at the traffic flow into your site. You can also look at the volume of social bookmarks your brand / blog / website scores. If you use video virals then you can measure the volume of views and the scores that your videos achieve.

But in my view the true value, and therefore one of the key measures of social network marketing is where you measure and monitor the ‘chatter’ about your brand in order to influence your future marketing efforts.

Perhaps the best example of this in the UK is for Cadbury Wispa. Early last year Cadbury commissioned research into their brand perception online. They discovered that a number of groups (totalling more than 10,000 ‘fans’) had been set-up online campaigning to bring back the Wispa bar. This became an offline campaign when some of these ‘fans’ then used the Glastonury festival to spread the message - someone made up a banner and stormed one of the mainstages. Cadbury deny that it was them behind this stunt - but who knows?

This all culminated in Cadbury producing a limited edition of the Wispa, with a virtually guaranteed sales campaign.

British Airways should have been monitoring the forums and blogs with the sole purpose of discovering the real extent of feeling from the British, and overseas travelling public, towards the T5 debacle. This research could then in turn feed back into the corporate messaging and tone of voice that Willie Walsh and his colleagues will adopt.

You can’t always control what other people say about your brand, but you can use those same communications tools to monitor and develop appropriate reactions.

This is where social network marketing becomes truly powerful.