Mike Spataro, senior vice president of client strategy and channel partners at social media monitoring companies VisibleTechnologies was this morning’s keynote presenter at The Conference Board’s Social Media Seminar.

I missed the opening video and study, but am told that those will both be available to us soon…

Based on polls from yesterday, most of the attendees here are very familiar with the concept of social media, whether in their personal or professional life. The presentation this morning focused primarily on how companies can leverage social media (i.e., Twitter) as a resource for:

• reputation management;
• customer service;
• marketing; and
• competitive intelligence.

On the corporate level, only a handful of people in attendance here claimed to actually be responding to those who are talking to or about them. Spataro said that in his experience, only 25 percent of companies actually participate in the conversation, but that taht number is doubling each year.

The process, Spataro outlined, follows a relatively linear process of:

• listen;
• learn;
• measure;
• engage; and
• Monetize (The ‘M’ was actually capitalized in Spataro’s presentation – hm, intentional?)

Social media is undoubtedly an emerging area of exploration for companies and as such, most are still in the listening stage. However, Spataro emphasized that while you can have a lot of data (as most companies do), “data doesn’t help you if you can’t turn it into business insight.” Often times, Spataro said, social media gives companies insight into what they don’t know, and may never have even thought about looking for (e.g., Kraft Foods launched a new salad dressing and though they were tracking for reactions to the new flavors, consumers were actually complaining about injuring their hands when trying to open the bottle. The company immediately changed and resolved its product safety.)

Unfortunately, for companies looking to find a one-stop-shop to handle each stage of their social media maturity, Spataro admitted that there’s no perfect solution in the market today, not even his own company. No doubt, competitors in this space are certainly vying to be the platform of choice. Until then, companies looking for a solution need to do their due diligence and clearly articulate what their goals are and what they’re looking for from a vendor, before dishing out request for proposals far and wide.

Questions companies must ask themselves before diving in:

• What do I want to know?
• Who needs to know [about our insight]?
• What do I want to do with the insight? What happens when I have it?
• What are the right topics? (Be flexible!)
• How do I integrate this with my operation?
• Do we need to activate? Should we hire someone? Get someone already in our organization?

More important, companies must always, always build their social media with scalability in mind. The conversation grows and changes, and successful monitoring and response requires equal input from strategy, people, technology, and services. Relying on any one of these as a standalone solution will only take you so far.

Spataro shared the primary role social media is playing in to organization (in descending order of popularity):

• Build customer relationships;
• Customer service and support;
• Reputation management;
• Product and event marketing;
• Crisis and sensitive issue management; and
• Industry thought leadership.

As the list shows, customer service is rapidly becoming the face of the brand. Unlike in customer call centers where the customer is actively calling in with their problem, most people complain onto the World Wide Web aren’t expecting anyone to hear them (But, we at CRM certainly do now!). Spataro performed a dramatic (ok, not really dramatic) reenactment of the customer’s shocked reaction to companies who respond to his online gripe sessions.  Spataro did note that companies don’t have to respond to everyone that’s talking about them. Don’t worry, he said, about the guy with two followers and runs a pornography site (I’m still hesitant to write someone off based on their social “status.” Who knows what insight this person might provide unless you bother to interact first?)

In conclusion, Spataro left the audience with the challenges that still need to be overcome when it comes to the use of Twitter in the corporate arena:

• Transparency: Agencies may offer to go online for you and represent your company, but customers want transparency and authenticity! Spataro has seen agencies get blacklisted for their lack of transparency and turn into just another way to spam.
• Uncontrollable, unstructured: Companies have to put some rules around Twitter and their strategy for participation and response, or it will very easily get out of control.
• Consistent immediate participation: The customer doesn’t go away when the work day ends. Just like any quality customer service, Twitter has to be a highly accessible channel, available 24/7. Twitter should go worldwide, cover every language. “Consumers,” Spataro said, “aren’t going to allow brands to sign off at 6 PM.”
• Legal restrictions and ramifications: Breaking through the cultural barriers is always a challenge as social media champions battle the lawyers and naysayers.