Online discussion has many facets; you need to cover them all
Online discussion takes place across many different types of sites, from forums to micro-blogs like Twitter to social networking sites like Orkut and Facebook. Which type is most important to you depends on your brand. Review sites, for example, are very important to consumer electronics brands, but much less so to pharmaceutical companies.
Your key requirement is to capture all discussion about your brand consistently, regardless of its location. A secondary requirement is that you can segregate consumer conversations from those of professionals or semi-professionals (this is often an issue with blogs).
The types of site we cover change all the time, but the key ones are:
- Forums. The biggest source of online discussion, forums stand out for their depth of content and conversational style. Rich online forums exist for most topics in most countries. Examples include:
- Review / shopping sites. A key source of buzz for many industries. Examples include:
- Social networking sites. Some of these sites have huge memberships and substantial volumes of buzz. The percentage of content that is relevant to brands and not just 'empty chatter' tends to be lower than for review sites and forums. Examples include:
- Video sharing sites. YouTube in particular is very important for some types of social media monitoring, like tracking viral ads. Examples include:
- Blogs. Personal and professional journals, with consumer comments. We make a distinction between professional journalistic content (not consumer discussion at all) and consumer comments. Examples include:
- Micro-blogs. Twitter in particular generates a very high volume of buzz. However, the relevance of the content is often low due to the short message format of posts:
- News sites. Many mainstream news sites feature discussion around articles on their site. These often attract a lot of high quality buzz. Examples: