Social Media Monitoring and B2B Product Development
Wed, May 12, 2010
Social media has implications for all aspects of B2B companies, but one that many people don’t think much about is product development. The social web is a great source for information about products and services, but you will only be successful in using this information if you can properly gather it, organize it and share it with the right people in your company. Social media monitoring tools can help you with this series of tasks. I will primarily use the term products in this post, but if you are a service company and you are looking to expand your offerings, consider using some of the same ideas.
Getting Started
Every social media monitoring project begins with an understanding of what you are looking for and what you hope to do with it. In a product development scenario, meet with the product development team or product manager to make sure you know what types of products they are already working on. Use this initial meeting to decide whether it makes sense to discover new features for existing products or to find suggestions for entirely new products. And yes, I understand that this cannot happen in a vacuum and companies can’t develop new products out of thin air, but the process might be used to validate the need for new products you are already working on.
Ideas for Monitoring
Assuming that you are already listening for mentions of your company, we will not consider that part of this approach. Start with the specific products you are considering. These include brand names, product descriptions, product numbers of your products and those of your main competitors. Also include some general industry terms to make sure any relevant conversations are picked up. While some comments you discover might be very specific like, “If the ABC company widget had a third screw halfway between the other two, it would fit my device without modification,” but you are more likely to find less specific comments that might not even relate to your products. As you start getting results, review them with your product managers to refine the search terms and to better understand how to track and use the comments.
Depending on the type of products you make, be sure you are monitoring technical forums to find both questions and answers. Many times, existing customers help others solve problems and those solutions can be incorporated into future product upgrades or even documentation.
Product Testing
Social media monitoring does need to just be a passive listening activity to support product development. You can identify specific users, within customer companies and those using competitors’ products, and reach out to them. If you have a product that needs beta testers, but you don’t want to publicly announce where you are in the development cycle, you can find testers, or people to give feedback, through monitoring.
Competitors’ Products
To make sure you get the widest possible range of data around your product category, it makes sense to include general industry terms and specific terms from your competitors. A side benefit of this approach is that you may learn about their products from their customers, which could inform the development of your products. This information could also be helpful for the sales team as a way to help sell against the competition. Comments about a feature that doesn’t meet a customer’s needs could convince your product team to add a feature that more fully functions to the requirements.
Ongoing Process
This use of social media monitoring in this case is definitely an ongoing process where you continue to review the results with the product manager for relevance and applicability. It is not a “set and forget” program. As products change and industry trends change you will be looking for different terms, different reactions, different customers. You might even consider this approach as you explore expanding your product offerings into other vertical industries.
Have you thought about using social media monitoring for product development and what would your challenges be?
The B2B Social Media Monitoring 101 Series is sponsored by Jive Software | Jive on Facebook
Jeffrey L. Cohen is the Managing Editor of SocialMediaB2B.com. Follow Jeff on Twitter at @jeffreylcohen.
Tags: b2b social media monitoring 101 series, product development
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Another key part of getting into social media is deciding and defining what success looks like. This makes it easier to determine whether your social media efforts are successful, or whether they need to be changed.
In terms of social media monitoring, the services selected depend on your needs, objectives and required features. In some cases, free tools can do the trick while paid services offer more features to meet different needs.
cheers, Mark
Mark Evans
Director of Communications
Sysomos Inc.
@sysomos
Mark: Thanks for adding your thoughts to this conversation.
Great post, Jeffrey. I like it when anyone gets a little more specific about how Internet monitoring can grow your business.
Another thing to consider is this: Gathering data about your market and potential customers is even more important if people aren’t really talking about your product online. If your product doesn’t lend itself to that kind of public discourse, perhaps you can get creative and find other ways to activate your base.
thanks!
Eric Melin
@spiral16
@SceneStealrEric
Eric: Thanks for the comment. I agree that when people are not talking about your products that is an opportunity to begin those conversations. Other times it is about getting creative with what you are listening for, as many people talk online without using brand names.