BEWARE MARKETERS! HAMMERS GO VIRTUAL
A Case of Online Social Media Monitoring
Balendu Shrivastava
Group Business Director
eTech Group, IMRB International
Tarun Abhichandani
Insights Director
eTech Group, IMRB International
I.
Social Media + Music Ability = Effective Complaint (5 Mn+ Views)
So you are a musician and in your recent air travel to your gig, a renowned airline mishandles
your guitar in transit leading to its breakage. The airline refuses to take responsibility for it even
after your ceaseless insistence. Your bitterness turns into anger when you receive repeated
denials for your claims without any substantive reasoning. Now, you want to vent your anger –
what are your options? File a complaint that might not see the daylight? Share it with your
friends? Advise friends and acquaintances not to travel by the airline? How many could you
actually advise – 10? 100? Will it damage the giant corporation?
How about utilizing your own musical abilities by making a music video describing your bitter
experience and spreading it through an online video sharing website and receive nearly 5 Million
hits for it? This was demonstrated recently by a garage rock band which turned them into a
famous group among people who travel through airlines and share similar sentiments
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEDLHyhoqrc).
II.
Objective of the study
Several companies conduct brand tracking studies to monitor the health and value of their
brands. In quite a few cases, there are customer satisfaction track to evaluate whether the
customers are actually enjoying the brand experience. In evaluating the extent of how well the
brand is perceived and the market size it garners, various methodologies are employed to
monitor intrinsic as well as extrinsic factors.
It is more than evident that these examinations have stood the times and delivered effective
insights to brands worldwide. Such insights have been utilized to increase media and marketing
spends in traditional (print, television and radio) as well as emerging digital channels (mobile
and Internet). The potential of digital channels, however, have not been realized; the process is
evolving and on-going. Due to a high level of interactivity the digital channels offer,
measurement is inherent in them. The issue then remains is how should the digital media be used
in a manner that measurement results are collected and analyzed to provide insights on the
relationship that your brand enjoys with your consumer.
The paper presents a solution to measure the effect of a phenomena or an occurrence over a
brand among Internet users visiting websites and using social media applications such as Twitter
and Blogs. It considers the example of recent strike called by pilots of Jet Airways and analyses
the impact it had on the brand. The study demonstrates an approach that any marketer could use
and practice to undertake an evaluation of the underlying sentiments for their own brand in the
Internet domain.
III.
Metrics for Social Media
Due to the phenomenon of digital channels, such as Internet and mobile, emerging as a social
medium, evaluation tools with renewed brand perspectives are being introduced. Measuring
influence and engagement regarding a brand over digital social media is a newer and an effective
tool – termed as Social Media Monitoring (SMM). Social media facilitates online activities
through which people read, publish, share and discover various kinds of information and content
with minimal or no control. It helps transformation of consumers towards collective producers –
commonly referred as user-generated content or consumer-generated media. The tools in the
social media include publishing in blogs, sharing content over user-generated content websites,
sharing opinions in forums, manage social networks and participating in virtual worlds. SMM
measures various aspects in the content that is being exchanged by users through these avenues.
The measurement metrics that are reported through this activity are listed in the table, below:
Metric
Strength
Sentiment
Description
Likelihood of your brand being discussed in social media
Ratio of mentions that are generally positive to the mentions that are
generally negative
Passion/Engagement Measure of the likelihood that the individuals talking about your brand
do it so repeatedly
Measure of range of influence
Reach
Key influencers of your brand in social media
Influencers
IV.
A.
Mapping the Process
Identify HUMs
HUM (High-Intensity Untagged Messages) are sets of terms used in search engines and
messages exchanged by users using social media services such as social networking and Twitter.
Identifying the existence of such HUMs is the primary step in the overall monitoring process. A
marketer can identify these messages by using freely available software over the Internet such as
Google Insights for Search. The figure, below, illustrates the HUM found in certain airline
brands.
As evident from the above figure, during September 7th 2009 to September 11th 2009, the
unfortunate developments of pilots calling strikes did increase the search patterns for Jet
Airways. Around September 12th 2009, though there was a downward trend. On announcement
of 50% discount on air fare, the trend again was on an uptick. However, this trend is unqualified
as it is not clear:

What are the Sentiments in these upticks or downticks?

How Engaging or Passionate are these changes?

Has there been alteration in Brand Perception of Jet Airways?

In the social medium, who have Influenced the sentiments prevailing regarding Jet
Airways?and how passionate were these sentiments?

How far-reaching has been the effect among the Internet population?
B.
Identify the Conversation Cloud
After the HUMs are identified, a marketer could get a macro view of the discussion patterns that
exist among social media users, news as well as blog sites. Generating conversation cloud is the
second process that a marketer needs to indulge in. This cloud maps different characteristics of
the discussion and web postings over the Internet for a brand. The conversation cloud, below,
indicates appropriate aspects of the impasse in Jet Airways that were published over the Internet.
For generating this conversation cloud, customized software was utilized for the research.
C.
Quantify the Sentiment
Quantifying sentiments and passion measures the nature and tone of the web postings such as
news articles as well as discussions and postings in social networking sites such as Twitter and
Blogs. The below graph plots the degree of passion of various sentiments over the Internet from
6th September 2009 (Sunday) to 15th September 2009 (Tuesday).
Sentiments are measured on the scale of Neutral, Positive and Negative. The degree of passion
measures the engagement in blogs and content of the comments. This aspect also considers
authors who repeatedly post tweets on their Twitter account regarding a brand – Jet Airways in
this study. It can be seen from the above graph that during the start of the period there were
positive sentiments regarding the brand. However as the time progressed, negative sentiments
with fair amount of passion sprung up. At the same time, the positive and neutral sentiments
gradually decayed by the end of the week (Sept 11th 2009 and Sept 12th 2009). Subsequently,
however, we witness an uptick in the overall sentiment. This upward trend could be largely due
to the announcement of 50% discount on air fares.
D.
Determine the Reach of the Sites
Mapping the sentiments with passion gives you an insight of how the brand is being perceived at
a given point in time. It, however, does not reflect on the number of people who have been
affected with these sentiments. To determine the reach of these sentiments, reach and frequency
data was analyzed to map the number of unduplicated unique visitors on the news and blog sites.
For social networking services such as Twitter and FriendFeed, authors who posted their tweets
and their followers were considered to determine the total unique users.
The “Sentimentalised” reach provides in real numbers how many users have been affected with
negative or positive sentiments. The magnitude of visitors who viewed negative coverage of the
brand was nearly 7 Mn on a daily basis during the week. However, the brand gained a high level
of positive sentiments during the weekend upto 9 Mn visitors on Sunday (Sept 13th 2009). It has
tapered down in the days after.
V.
Brand Strength
While the above measures are critical in measuring the effect of externalities on a brand, strength
of the brand indicates how pervasive the brand is among the Internet users compared to the
competitors - the graph below illustrates this.
VI.
Discussion
Compared to traditional channels, emerging digital channels are much closer to consumers –
with their social behavior as well as thought process. These channels are transparent with no
control and interactive with two-way message exchange. As a result, it is more susceptible to
rumors and viral behaviour. Marketers can use these aspects of the digital media and influence
consumers’ brand perceptions. Marketers and Public Relations representatives could have
managed sentiments of Jet Airways by staging a presence over the Internet and in social media
websites. Below are but few of the possible activities:
•
Setup Twitter account as it gives an option of responding to the queries on a real-time
basis
•
•
Broadcast real-time updates through Twitter account
Outreach through Facebook by initiating forums and discussions
•
Allowing users to post doubts directly to senior management
•
Integrate content across these avenues
•
Facilitate users by channeling them to competitor offerings