Developing an Effective Social Media Measurement RFP

Now that I’ve had the pleasure, and sometimes pain, of digesting RFPs and RFIs from dozens of companies seeking partners for their social media monitoring and intelligence programs, I feel ready to offer some insights and tips on how to develop a strong proposal for your organization.

One of the interesting trends over the past year is how fast companies went from calling for a quick demo and proposal to issuing formal RFPs - a real validation of the increasing importance of this new stream of data. Brands are anxious to get closer to their customers and are finding social media is one of the best ways to do so. With that in mind, here’s a handful of items to consider when developing your first social media RFP.

• Understand Your Needs: Think through what you want to learn from consumers who share information about your brand, products, services, industry and competitors. There is a huge difference if you just want to monitor mentions of your brand to keep an eye on potentially hot issues vs. the need for indepth strategic insights that could impact customer service and product development.
• Identify Your Team: Will your social media intelligence team have staff from one division or from several different internal groups? This is particularly important if you’re a big company or agency. It’s likely the VP of Corporate Communications, the Chief Marketing Officer, the Director of Market Research, and the head of Customer Relations are going to look at the data in very different ways, so it’s important to articulate that in your proposal.
• Data Depth: Give some thought to the importance of the depth of data coverage you’d like. Despite the sales pitches you’ll hear, there are big differences in how much of the social media landscape providers cover. For instance, do you want all blogs, newsgroups, message boards, mainstream media, video-sharing sites, etc., and both original authored content as well as follow-up comments? It’s important to outline data coverage that match your company’s specific needs. In some industries, messages boards may be more important than blogs. If you want to identify top authors then you’d want to be sure you target vendors that include that type of data. The more detailed you get the better.
• Frequency and Access: Does your staff need to see the data hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly? Do you want to access the information on-demand at your desktop or mobile phone or want it spoon feed throughout your organization in a variety of printed formats? It’s likely that’ll depend on the different members of your social media team. Again, the more you think this through upfront, the easier the decision process will be later on.
• Speed and Analysis: Some companies need unfiltered posts without any analysis and they want to see them as fast as possible, while other brands can wait a few hours to receive an entire threaded discussion from start to finish that has been fully analyzed to provide thoughtful insights. Balancing the need between speed and analysis is another consideration.
• Actionable Insights: Do you want to just monitor and measure consumer perceptions, or are you getting your company prepared to start participating more actively in online communities? Once you’ve figured out your strategy in this area, it may lead you down a few different decision paths and impact the structure of your RFP. The same goes for whether you are looking for additional value-added consulting services or just a technology provider.

If you consider some of these tips it should help you save time and more easily identify the right group of social media providers to consider. Keep in mind, however, that there are no silver bullets in this emerging industry just yet. There are dozens of companies like ours that provide a dizzying array of different products and services, so reducing your time to find the right fit for your company should also be a priority.

Mike Spataro