Selecting the right social listening tool-set is a very personalized decision that required proper planning. We discovered these 3 critical elements when exploring which platform we would choose. We thought we'd share this helpful information.

1. 3 Steps in Selecting the Right Social Listening Platform

2. 7/7/2011 2 Selecting a social listening platform is no easy task. It’s not a decision that should be made lightly.

3. 7/7/2011 3 Confidential © SIGMA Marketing Group 2010 When you consider social media data collection… There are mass quantities of data available from channel upon channel of social communities.

4. 7/7/2011 4 Confidential © SIGMA Marketing Group 2010 If you try to capture all of it, you may drown in a sea of analytics with no idea how to boil the information down into actionable chunks.

5. The 3 Steps Are… Staff Assessment Collection/Measurement Goals Defined Process So let’s dig in…

6. Staff Assessment Social media data collection (or social listening), is not a 10-minute per day thing. You can’t just glance at a dashboard to get a full understanding of your brand representation, sentiment, campaign analysis, who the major influences are, and perhaps where you should be placing your energy. 7/7/2011 6 Confidential © SIGMA Marketing Group 2010

7. Staff Assessment Gathering social media analytics and translating the data into actionable marketing strategies takes human resources. Most social listening tools can be set up with standard reporting, but there is most certainly a human analytics element to gathering and understanding the data, which cannot be accomplished through full automation.

8. 7/7/2011 8 Confidential © SIGMA Marketing Group 2010 Staff Assessment If you don’t have the manpower internally to devote to social listening, you’ll either need to augment your staff, or select a listening platform that provides managed accounts with dedicated resources who provide the analytics insights for you. If you have dedicated social media personnel, you may perhaps choose more of a self-service type listening platform.

9. Collection / Measurement Goals Ask yourself… Are you using social media for customer support? Are you monitoring competitive brands? Are you running multichannel, socially integrated marketing campaigns? Is it possible you are doing all of those things and more!

10. Collection / Measurement Goals Once you answer the questions of why… you’ll want to understand which social channels you’ll want to collect insights from. Will you want live news streams, blog feeds, Facebook updates, YouTube uploads, image posts, tweets or other sources? When you know why you are listening, you can then begin to select the relevant social channels, which enables you to filter out unwanted “noise.” Different listening platforms provide insights from different sources - so you need to know what you want to learn, and from where you’ll gather that data, before deciding on a tool.

11. Defined Process Understand what you’ll want to look at daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Map it out! Will you use your dashboard reporting daily? How hands-on will you get with the data that is pulled from your selected social channels. Will you integrate your social media analytics with your web analytics? What will your monthly insights look like? Will you need a listening platform with work-flow functionality built in?

12. Defined Process Put a plan in place ahead of time for practical use of the data. This will be your guide for building the day-to-day process of using the social listening platform you select.

13. Are you one of those people who are actually listening… but not acting on it? Does the data just pile up? Could it be you’ve selected the wrong type of tools or perhaps are gathering either too much social data, or you are not listening to the right channels? Consider whether you need a basic social dashboard, a tool that provides multichannel analytics, or even perhaps a service partner. There is a huge price range, for each of those types of social listening platforms. Do your research ahead of time before you make an investment in the wrong tools. Hopefully, this will help you start thinking about some areas you can focus your efforts when mapping out your social media listening or analytics strategy.

14. 7/7/2011 14 Confidential © SIGMA Marketing Group 2010 Good Luck & Happy Listening!

15. 7/7/2011 15 Confidential © SIGMA Marketing Group 2010 Our Blog: FifthGearAnalytics.com Web: SigmaMarketing.com Twitter: @SIGMA_MktgGrp Call Toll Free: 888.277.9837 Email: SIGMAinfo@sigmamarketing.com