MarketingSherpa Blog

Just in case you needed another reason to monitor social media, the Economist had a quick article last week about two airlines’ response to PR bombshells that detonated on Facebook.

The airlines’ staff members were joking about cockroaches on board and smelly passengers–not exactly good PR. The companies discovered the comments only after customer complaints and press reports started coming in.

Monitoring social media–like blogs, social networks and bookmarking sites–gives you a good idea of your company’s online reputation. And it will help you find employees badmouthing the company before your customers do.

Monitoring is only part of the solution, though. You need to have policies against disparaging the company, and you need to remind your staff that what they say online stretches across the planet.

On a side note, I’m starting to think that monitoring social media can have amazing benefits. Alan Scott, CMO, Dow Jones, told me in a recent interview that Dow Jones identifies trends and customer preferences by crunching data from its social sites and others across the Web. That’s a heck of a way to judge your market.

About Adam T. Sutton

Adam T. Sutton, Senior Reporter, MarketingSherpa
Adam generates content for MarketingSherpa's Email and Inbound Marketing newsletters. His years of experience in interviewing marketers and conveying their insights has spanned topics such as search marketing, social media marketing, ecommerce, email and more. Adam previously powered the content behind MarketingSherpa's Search and Consumer-marketing newsletters and carries that experience into his new role. Today, in addition to writing articles, he contributes content to the MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa blogs, as well as MECLABS webinars, workshops and summits.

Prior to joining MarketingSherpa, Adam was the Managing Editor at the Mequoda group. There he created content and promotions for the company's daily email newsletter and managed its schedule.

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Categories: Business To Business, Research And Measurement, Social Networking Evangelism Community Tags: Dow Jones, Facebook, monitor social media, PR