MONITOR
Monitoring a target audience is the act of establishing a base-line in the discussion and identifying injection points. Monitoring provides a status assessment throughout the duration of an engagement, highlighting cause and effect related to actions taken by the project team. Monitoring also serves to collect qualitative and quantitative data needed to feed project success metrics. Monitoring in itself is a tool driven activity and the choice of monitoring tool depends on the original products scoping, as each tool has areas of specialization.
In a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) setting monitoring enables the team to rise above the discussion. By mapping the volume of chatter around a topic against time we can identify ‘viral accelerators’. These accelerators typically result from real world occurrences that are reported on within the community or they can be an act of an individual. These occurrences are major events that incite discussion within the community. An act by an individual may be a polarizing comment to an occurrence or User Generated Content (UGC) that is provocative. By understanding the dynamics behind viral accelerators we can feed the flames within a discussion at opportune moments increasing activity levels or steering sentiment.
In a Business-to-Business (B2B) setting monitoring enables the team to weed through the discussion identifying those discussion trails that have the most following, cross references and track backs. Following is a quantitative measure, where as cross referencing and track backs are qualitative measures. Most monitoring solutions also provide tools for the engagement team to assign discussion threats to subject matter experts within the team and directly engage. Some mapping tools provide visualization capabilities, which enable analysts to ascertain relationships between influencers within the community.