This document provides guidance for writing marketing activity reports (MARs) based on social media listening and insights. It discusses the MAR writing process, including pre-writing steps like portfolio reviews, industry research, and clustering ideas. Key points of listening to social media are outlined, like identifying complaints, compliments, influencers and crisis signals. Recommendations should be actionable, strategic and consider marketing perspectives. Post-writing steps involve proofreading and submitting the report to accounting managers. Disclaimers note that Brandtology is not responsible for the accuracy of social media information or subsequent business decisions made based on report insights.

1. PRODUCTIVITY and QUALITY: Doing the right thing
Team building and Training for Brandtology PH Staff
November 19-20, 2011
MARs Writing Process:
Strategies and Techniques

2. Writing MARs is a PROCESS
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3. PRE-WRITING
Organize
Learn • Read the posts at the DCMS
the ideas and
• Portfolio • Visit the actual forum sites
• Products about the client’s • Read Facebook Fan Page insights
• Campaigns Wall
Industry • Listen to tweets; observe at
• Product Launches
• Involvement in social media Sina microblog
• External and internal industry • See what news site reports • Outlining
landscape • Listing
• Competitors • Clustering
Know • Target market Listen
to authentic social media
the client conversations
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4. Listening to Social Media: Why is it important?
1. Complaints
Be aware of posts or
conversations where people
are complaining about our
client’s product or service
A complaint is an
opportunity to demonstrate
problem-solving abilities.
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5. Listening to Social Media: Why is it important?
2. Compliment
Social media compliments are the online
equivalent of testimonials. Potential
clients looking for reassurance on a
purchase decision would love to see
what consumers think about their
products or services.
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6. Listening to Social Media: Why is it important?
3. Expressed need
People who have a need
will express it by searching
online using keywords or
by seeking advice from the
general public. In such
cases, our clients can
reach out with an offer of
assistance or a free demo
for example.
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7. Listening to Social Media: Why is it important?
4. Looking out for
competitors
Our clients can be
alerted when their
competitors’ names are
being mentioned by
potential customers who
are inquiring about their
products or who are
dissatisfied with their
products.
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8. Listening to Social Media: Why is it important?
5. The crowd
Following the crowd can give our clients a
better understanding of the public’s sentiment
towards a topic that can affect its brand.
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9. Listening to Social Media: Why is it important?
6. Influencer
We can spot the
influencers online and
highlight their opinions
towards our clients’
brands.
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10. Listening to Social Media: Why is it important?
7. Crisis
Discussions in social
media can serve as a
warning sign before a
major thunderstorm.
But before a crisis
were to happen, we
can pre-empt it by
listening to what’s “What gets measured gets managed,
and what gets managed gets done.”
going on and try to
rectify it before it blows -Peter Drucker
Management Guru
up. 10

11. Listening to Social Media: Why is it important?
9. Measuring
ROI
It is important
to measure
the ROI if our
clients have
any ongoing
marketing
campaigns.
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12. Listening to Social Media: Why is it important?
9. The Audit
A brand is the sum
of all conversations
and is no longer
completely
controlled by the
corporation.
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13. Listening to Social Media: Why is it important?
10. Negative fallout
Companies have to
monitor online
conversations as it could
affect corporate
reputations and their
business prospects.
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14. socialmediavision.com
7 Ways to Understand Text
in Social Media
Source: Ogneva, M. (2010) The many emotions of social media.
Berinato, S (2010). Six ways to find value in Twitter’s noise. Harvard Business Review.

15. • QUESTION
– Ends in question mark, obviously. As such, it’s tagged as a
question.

16. • CONDITIONAL
– Conditional voice allows you to differentiate between the
netizen’s current action / feeling and how it would be
different if something else were different.

17. • INTENT
– Unlike conditional voice which points to intent if something was
different, the intent tag helps our clients understand what the
consumer wants / doesn’t want to do right now, under the
current set of circumstances.

18. mediaplusme.wordpress.com
Negative words from the tweeters
can guide your client in prioritizing marketing
messages and product development.

19. • AUGMENT
– This voice differentiates between degrees and severity in
sentiment, as well as identifies emphasis.
– “I don’t like this product.” is not the same as “I hate this
product!”

20. • RECURRENCE
– This voice allows our clients to understand if the mentioned
event happened before, or if it’s an ongoing issue.

21. • INDEFINITE
– This voice is literally the virtual “suggestion box” for your client’s
product / brand.
– When a netizen in the forum says, “I wish the charges are not too
high,” then it must give you actionable insights.

22. After listening comes organizing . . .

23. Organizing ideas and insights
Outlining
Clustering
Insight Insight Insight Insight
Insight Insight Insight Insight
Insight
Insight Insight Insight
Listing
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24. Example of Clustering by client:
Notebooks •overheats
and •has touchpad
Laptops problem
•Repaired twice in a
year
Desktop •Dell and Alienware
PCs preferred
BRAND •Samsung
recommended for
Monitors
x gaming
•Dell more durable
Slates •Acer tablets for sale
•Acer user said no
receipt needed
Services upon repair
•HP preferred due to
3-year warranty
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25. Cluster Analysis
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26. Cluster Analysis
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27. Cluster Analysis
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28. WRITING
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29. Pre-requisites in writing/analyzing data
Should stop presenting just graphs and descriptions of the
graphs but instead put more meat into the discussions (e.g.
why did buzz go up/down?). We want to see 3-month
comparative charts (SME) as buzz momentum is something we
want to look at as well.
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30. Pre-requisites in writing/analyzing data
For the Key Findings, please look for the unknown unknowns.
We don’t want to give the client something that they are
already aware of. Make sure that there is enough buzz. Pls
show both buzz volume and conversation size.
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31. Pre-requisites in writing/analyzing data
In the recommendations, try to have a marketing perspective
(strategic marketing more important as we can’t assume that
the company would have enough resources to do a huge
campaign every time).
Recommendations should be actionable and specific. It is not
enough to state that the client can use social media. There
should be details as to how, which channels, why would that be
the approach, who to engage and what campaigns should be
done.
Recommendations should not be product specific as our
clients (which are regional offices) could not act on this unless
they specifically said we want to see this in our reports.
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32. Pre-requisites in writing/analyzing data
Use Marketing Terms
DON’T say “The buzz decreased from August to September.
This was because there was a campaign in August and the buzz
has died down”.
Say something more like “The campaign does not have a long
tail effect. The buzz died down very fast, in less than a month.
What HP can do is to plant a seeder on XXX forum to make the
buzz last longer. The top influencer who spoke of this campaign
is Ali [link]. He could be engaged to make sure the buzz doesn’t
die on this channel.”
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33. Pre-requisites in writing/analyzing data
RECOMMENDATIONS have to be specific. Direct action. The
conversation is still active and they can do something about it.
“Have more campaigns to attract netizen’s attention
continuously” – is wrong because clients don’t have money to
have campaigns every month.
Suggestion:
From the campaign, there are some die-hard fans of XXX. Even
after the campaign, there is a group of influencers who kept
talking about the product. They are A, B and C (provide links
and details of influencers). These are the people to engage.
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34. Pre-requisites in writing/analyzing data
General Tips
-Always think as an online marketer- are the recommendations useful to them? Can
do they something about it?
-Don’t give vague recommendations- they have done months and months of brand
analysis. Give them something useful.
-Please make sure the slides are done- don’t say that you’re too busy to finish the
things please.
-Show both buzz and sentiment charts. Buzz (unchecked post) and sentiment
(rechecked buzz)
-A lot of writers kept repeating what you can see on the graph- reason being
because this is the way the template is so I write this way. WRONG
-Account IC pick a good example of a report for each account and show all the
writers. Follow this template.
-A writer mentioned that she took 2 days to read 700 posts. Eddie’s advice is not to
do INSANE work and no actionable insights.
a) Read 700 posts but only 1 insight. Wrong
b) Read 100 posts but found 10 insights. Right
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35. After writing the MARs, what is the next step?
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36. POST-WRITING
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37. POST-WRITING
PROORFEAD
Proforade
Poorfread
Prrofreda
PROOFREAD
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38. Submit to the Account IC for initial checking
Aim for a zero-return rate
Revise promptly
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39. This report and the information contained therein are based on information from social media on the Internet and other
publicly available data. Brandtology does not warrant the accuracy of such information nor is Brandtology responsible for
the content and accuracy of such information. Advisory information may be contained in the report. Any subsequent
decisions made based on the data must be decided after your professional managers have carefully reviewed and
assessed what impact such information will have on your company. In no event shall Brandtology be liable to you or your
company for any lost profits, lost revenue, interest, goodwill, lost data, cost of procuring substitute services or for any
indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages of any kind, however arising, that are related to these terms, whether
in contract, tort or negligence, or any legal theory.