In the daily flood of tips, tricks and trends in the field of social media monitoring literature new features are presented by tools as well as their performance specifications are recommended. How many results can I crawl with the tool? Is image recognition offered? Which social media channels are included in data collection?
I do not deny that I am also keenly interested in this news. Nevertheless, a very important question remains mostly unanswered. How can I wrap the results into a meaningful and value adding reporting to the reader?
In this post I would like to concentrate on this issue and focus on the reporting of ongoing results from web and social media monitoring. The optimal representation of the “raw” findings on web and social media are in the centre. Usually they are transmitted to the receiver on hourly, daily and / or weekly basis and allow them an overview as well as a first assessment of the situation. The reporting of aggregated and analysed results with KPIs, statistics and conclusions will not be discussed in this paper. A separate blog article should be dedicated to this kind of reporting.
THE BEGINNINGS
We performed our first social media monitoring in 2009. At that time tools were only crawler which in addition to that could also display bar, line and pie charts to give the user at least a rough overview of the distribution of sentiments, site types and top sources. Back then complicated data analyses with reporting capabilities directly from the tool via e-mail, RSS-Feed or PowerPoint were not mentioned yet. First customers wanted us to hire a social media monitoring and demanded an appropriate result representation. We were forced to consider an own attempt of data analysis and reporting.
THE WAY TO AN OWN REPORTING
What to do when there is no way of referring to reporting? Right, you create your own reporting!
A fundamental cornerstone was laid in our reporting by limitations of technical opportunities on the part of the tools back then, which still remain until this day. We got together internally and considered with what kind of reporting we could offer our customers real added value. In addition, we exchanged views with clients on how they deal with the results. How does the internal process run after the results were transmitted? Which technical conditions and much more importantly which restrictions are there?
At this point it should be noted: You would not believe what restrictions communication and marketing departments in large companies are subjected to, even in 2016. Social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, forums, blogs etc. cannot be reached through local internet, partially (Safety first…). Nevertheless, the staffs in the departments have to – at best – operate social media marketing and community management at most success. For this there is exactly one computer in the department, which then can access these sites (for whatever reason?). The hard-working social media representatives are then in line to finally catapult their postings into the World Wide Web, just like the queues in the use of mainframe computers with punch cards at German universities in the middle of last century.
After we had gathered all important information in the exchange with our customers, we selected the suitable medium and considerations for the preparation of the content.
OUR APPROACH OF REPORTING
Our premise was and still is to present the results as compact as possible and to provide technically as compatible as possible to our customers. Furthermore, each reporting must be adapted to the individual preferences and needs of customers.
Based on the above mentioned considerations, after a long search and testing with various types of media, we chose e-mail. The great advantage of e-mail is still the reception in almost every company, the easy operation, especially on the part of the recipients and the integration into daily work processes. The recipient doesn’t need to log in separately to each portal in order to receive social media monitoring reports and to read. He gets this compact information in his usual working environment. Besides, there is a further advantage in the easy processing of results within the recipient´s enterprise. Mostly the results of monitoring flow to a social media manager. He can cut certain parts of the e-mail and forward it internally to the responsible areas with little administrative expense. On a next step, we thought about the preparation of the content. We decided to organise the results in the first level to sentiments. At the top there are negative results, since they fall as quickest in the field of view of the reader (reputation management), followed by positive results. Within the sentiment subdivisions results are grouped thematically with the help of web and social media analysts (for example, products, services, PR, special topics) and edited alike to a storytelling. On this occasion, explanation texts are written and sources are provided with link and publication date as well as further information about commitment and distribution. In addition, relevant parts are also emphasised separately in order to allow an even better significance. This way of reporting allows the recipient to get a compact overview about web and social media activities of the company as well as web and social media reactions of it within a few minutes. In addition of explanation texts, the recipient doesn’t have to open pages in his own browser and search for explicit pages, because all relevant information is already evident at first sight in the e-mail. Till this day we successfully use this kind of compact reporting with our customers in many variations. Explanatory texts are partially replaced or expanded by tables, which then serve as support for processing of prioritised tasks for the in-house social media team. The type of reporting described allows our customers a completely flexible and to their needs adapted reporting of ongoing results from web and social media monitoring. Thus, we are not bound to given reporting templates of tools or portals.
