Social Media Listening #2 - Market Trends

What are the key trends affecting this sector?

•   More companies are beginning to invest in monitoring, measuring and analysing the insights from social media channels.
  – In line with this trend, agencies are coming under pressure to demonstrate the return on investment from related marketing activity.
  
•   It is becoming essential for companies to have a distributed presence on social networks so they can respond quickly to online conversations about their brands, products and services.
  
•   Social media is increasingly used as an online campaign tool to exert pressure on businesses, advertisers, and media organisations.
  – Crisis management and understanding how to deal effectively with negative PR is becoming even more paramount.
  
•   It is essential for companies to have appropriate social media policies in place and provide guidelines for their employees.
  
•   Organisations are increasingly focused on how to glean actionable insights from brand monitoring data, and make appropriate recommendations on actions to take.
  
•   Social media can be used to improve customer service and make customer service professionals more accountable, as customers are more easily able to express opinions online.
  
•   Influence is becoming increasingly significant as a metric for blogs, networks and other forms of content.
  
•   Understanding the value of social media is increasingly important, as more brands are investing in the channel.
  – There is a greater understanding that social media must be tied to objectives, and real business KPIs, rather than arbitrary social media metrics, such as the number of Facebook friends and Twitter followers.
  
•   The marketplace for buzz monitoring technology is becoming saturated with a large number of companies offering many different solutions.
  – There have been a number of acquisitions last year, and consolidation in the industry is expected to continue, particularly as companies are interested in integrating the insight from buzz monitoring solutions with other types of data.
  
•   An increasing number of third-party Twitter app providers are now beginning to charge for additional Twitter insight and data, including Tweetmeme and Twittercounter. Twitterfeed is expected to follow suit with a similar offering.
  
•   The majority of companies are using a combination of free and paid-for buzz monitoring solutions.
  – Free tools have the advantage of creating more awareness about the industry and creating demand for enterprise-level technologies.