Brand-jacking and Pickles.

One of the most important functions of social media is monitoring. Monitoring allows companies to listen to their stakeholders before engaging in conversations online. To effectively establish a positive online presence, they must be cognizant of their stakeholders' present conversations and identify the allies and critics. You wouldn't want to talk with a stakeholder before knowing the context of their conversation, would you?

You've probably had personal experience in needing to listen before engaging in conversation.

For example, take the last time you were at a cocktail (or for our under-aged readers: mocktail) party, you excused yourself from a conversation because, frankly, it bored you. The market for Hebrew International hot dogs and its direct proportionality to pickle sales in the Midwest just wasn't your thing. So you politely smiled and ran for your life backed away slowly.

You casually strolled around the room until you found a few people laughing and smiling in a circle. Recognizing one of the people as an acquaintance from your latest marketing conference, you take a swig from your delectable drink and head towards the group.

A few people acknowledge you into the circle and someone is in the middle of a story. The person speaking looks at you as he delivers the remainder of his thought: "...and then I said, 'Hey! Don't forget your chicken!' "

Everyone starts laughing. Standing there awkwardly, you chuckle, but wonder why he just looked at you and said 'don't forget you're chicken!' Who is he calling chicken? you think. But, you decide you're not going to take that kind of insult from anyone.

"Hey, buddy," You start. (Firm choice of words-- nice job). "I don't take too kindly to those words you just said."

"Huh?" The person responds.

"I mean, I may not have wanted to discuss pickle proportionality, but that doesn't make me chicken. I'm quite flabbergasted."

The person whom was speaking still looks a bit perplexed. An awkward silence overcomes the group. Suddenly his eyes light with understanding. "OH! You misunderstood my meaning. I was telling a story from when I was visiting my Uncle Bob's farm the other week. He had let the chickens roam and completely forgot to put one back in the coup before heading in to get a slop bucket for the hogs. It was hilarious. When I said 'don't forget your chicken' it must have sounded like 'don't forget you're a chicken'."

Now aside from trying to understand how that story was so funny, you were still turning bright red and had to repeat your previous tactic of running for your life backing away slowly.

I'm sure we've all been in similar situations. Sometimes we tend to forget that we have two ears and one mouth. The moral of the story is, we as communicators need to have our companies listen to the conversation--especially before entering into the sphere.

One of the reasons why listening to your stakeholders online is important: anything could be looming out there. For example, last year, Exxon Mobile was brand-jacked on Twitter--that is, someone pretended to be a representative of Exxon Mobile and tweeted false information about the company, poorly establishing the company's' online reputation.

When the company was contacted by a concerned member of the public, Exxon was completely caught off-guard and thrown into a crisis situation. While the profile has now been removed, case studies such as this one call into question the reasons why a company would decide not to pursue online monitoring.

Here's why I think companies decide not to pursue online monitoring:

1.We're too busy discussing pickle proportionality.

2. We think the Internet is a government hoax. Kinda like that moon landing thing.

3. Frankly, we'd love a good brand-jacking incident. We'd like a different crisis--we're sick of focusing on the economy all of the time.

Is there really a legitimate excuse for companies not monitoring online? Could we as online marketers really recommend a social media campaign without auditing our clients' online presence first?

image via this Web site

UPDATE 05.27.09: I edited a few sentences of this post because they were grammatically incorrect and did not read well.

Comments

[tommas]

With this new digital age, even how the dialog is said needs to be understood and translated, prior to engagement. 30 years ago, we boomers, enjoyed knowing that being "bad", was really a good thing. Now, in the digital age listening carefully is even more important so that the real message is lost or misunderstood.

[REA]

As someone who has spent a lot of time doing online monitoring, I am a firm believer in knowing the marketetplace before making decisions (and there are companies who totally get it). Hopefully there will be more people like you coming up in the workplace to influence more online monitoring (though I do think that brand jacking makes for an amusing story).

[Julie]

I definitely agree with you. Another thing that I have heard is happening is some government agencies are monitoring the social sites to see if their employees are posting sensitive data. All in all I think companies would benefit from reading what folks are saying about them.

[lisa m]

I agree with Alex, but I think part of the problem is that companies are already spending their money in the wrong places (in terms of marketing). I recently saw a breakdown of which mediums companies are spending their ad dollars on vs. how much time consumers spend with each medium. The comparisons are shockingly out of whack. Companies continue to pour a highly disproportionate amount of ad dollars into TV, when they should be pouring more money into internet advertising. Given how much time consumers spend there, companies would probably see a larger ROI if they gave a larger slice of the ad money pie to the internet. When money is tight, I would be a little more careful with where I'm putting it.

[lisa m]

It's been a tough sell, but I think companies are finally starting to believe in the power that social media has on their brand. The viral nature of the internet makes things spread like wildfire, and the internet does not care if the content is good or bad for your company, or even true at all (as in the case of brand-jacking). Like you said, the conversations are going on whether they like it or not. They can choose to get involved, or hear about it after its too late.

[Alex Porter]

mcQ,

The reason that we see companies not monitor is simply cost. 9/10 companies we work with are tightening budgets and unfortunately unless the $$ spent can be translated into a postitive ROI the decision makers are stamping it with a big NO and that is that.

Hopefully as the coffers open up more and more companies will monitor the online conversations and then take action on the information.

[Denise C]

Your chicken story reminds me of the Saturday Night skits involving Emily Litella. Each week, Emily would misunderstand a news item on 'Weekend Update' and would come on the show and angrily denounce it. One week she went on and on about 'Why do you not want to see violins on TV?' When told the story was referring to 'violence' on TV, she responded with her trademark: 'Never mind.' For companies not wanting to have to issue a 'Never mind' press release, monitoring is an essential first step.

[Megan McQ]

Kelly,

I couldn't have said it better myself!

That's exactly what we're trying to tell companies:

The conversation is out there. They can decide to participate in it or not, but the fact remains that the conversation has already begun regardless.

Great comment.

[Kelly]

I agree that companies should have a stronger online presence. It is and easy, efficient, and relatively inexpensive medium for them to market themselves to their customers. But more importantly, they are already part of the internet community whether they want to be or not. Customers constantly talk about products, spread rumors about the direction a company is taking (regardless of whether those rumors have legitimate basis), or just bitch about some error that was probably out of the company's control anyway. They're out on the web already - the question is what companies decide to do about it.

[Megan McQ]

Hey Tina,

Thanks for your comment! You make a good point. Marketers and PR professionals would never recommend that a company disguise their identity in online activity such as posting a review of a product. One of the primary elements of any online activity is that the company is completely transparent online.

If a company were to hide their identity, it would definitely be dishonest.When it is discovered, the dishonest actions will tarnish the reputation of the company indefinitely.

Online monitoring is meant to keep a company abreast of what conversations are taking place about a company from its various stakeholders on various platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, etc.). Simply put, monitoring is just knowing what's being said online, not adding to the conversation at all. Per the Exxon Mobile example, a monitoring system would have probably uncovered the brand-jacker and the company would have been able to proactively contact the individual instead of reacting to the situation.

[Tina]

I'm curious to hear your opinions on companies (disguised as patrons) that leave reviews of their products and/or services on websites like Yelp or Amazon. Do you see that as online monitoring or something more dishonest? Being in the loop is all well and good, but as a regular-old-consumer the practice hinders my decision making.