Why do marketing and communications professionals struggle with the validity of Social Media? Perhaps because it is raw, unstructured, unfiltered and immediate. All of which is contrary to the marketing communications discipline. This post is inspired in part by Tony Steward following a recent Twebinar hosted by Radian6 (a leader in Social Media monitoring for PR and marketing) based around “listening”, which has fueled a lot of intense discussion amongst Social Media professionals.

Trained and/or experienced marketers and communicators have worked with a set of “listening” tools for many years; Focus Groups, Research (often done by 3rd parties), Telephone & Web surveys, spot surveys and customer support feeback. Often, the “listening” is done by contracted research houses and filtered back to the client. This has (and in many cases still does) work very well. Marketers work with promotions calendars and schedules all tied into budgets with projected ROI. Reports are given to senior management and campaigns measured and analysed for success and determining if they should be repeated. I suspect few consumers know the depth of work behind a “simple” ad campaign. Add into the fray marketing, PR and advertising agencies who execute (often very well) a lot of this work, and you have a complex set of rules and best practices.

Now toss in the ability of the consumer to immediately and instantly comment on their experience with a product and the ability for many others to also instantly provide feedback very openly and uncontrollably. This is raw, uninhibited feedback. There is no filtering and even the CEO or chairman of the board can see it. Regardless of whether it is negative or positive.

There are methodologies to deal with this collection and analysis of raw material, although few systems exist today. Mostly this can be somewhat filtered and organized through the use of monitoring tools (in marketing and PR there are approximately 60 monitoring products out there) but as Tony Steward aptly points out; what is the action that is taken? How does a company incorporate that feedback?

The implications run deep. They may also lead to entirely new ways of doing business. What do you think? How does a company, government department or non-profit learn to integrate such raw feedback alongside more structured “listening” tools?