Social Media Monitoring for Public Companies

It is important, but not just for brand monitoring. It’s important for a number of reasons beyond basic marketing purposes, perhaps more so for a publicly traded company. For smallcap companies it may be easier and less costly, but is still important. Here’s why;

1. Investor Relations: For those companies on the pink sheets or venture exchanges most chatter takes place in stock bulletin boards – but not all. Your stocks may well be discussed in other forums, on social networks (e.g. LinkedIn or eCademy for business social networks) or via microblogs such as Twitter or Identi.ca. You can gain key insights into investor moods and how they are discussing your business or even competitors.

2. Board Governance: Some insights can serve to keep the board informed of general market trends and assist in governance matters. Including warnings that there may be an emerging issue to address in rough times such as large lay-offs.

3. Liability & IP Protection: You can use these tools to monitor for possible infractions on intellectual property protections such as patents. If unions are involved, monitoring public forums may give warnings of strikes. You may face leaked information that can affect stock prices (such as United Airlines suffered when a blogger posted they were bankrupt; several years after the fact and the stock price tanked.)

4. Adults Too: Chatter across social media channels is not just for kids; thinking that way can be a costly mistake for a public company today. The average age of a Facebook user is 43 and for Twitter it’s 38. There are a number of social media channels that are of no interest to kids, such as for golf or sailing.

5. Management Monitoring: Senior executives of public companies often come under scrutiny not just by news media, but by shareholders and sometimes the general public. Monitoring and researching social media channels can help keep an eye on the reputation of senior executives and help avert any potential crises.

These are perhaps the primary reasons to research social media channels to begin and then monitor those channels on an ongoing basis. There’s so much information moving onto the Web every day that no industry sector is isolated. Before you monitor however, it’s best to retain your PR firm or a research house to conduct the initial scan of your ecosystem to help understand what to monitor, how frequently and to what degree.