The difference between monitoring and synthesizing BBS and blog conversations

Tangos of China Web 2.0 fame recently discussed the increasing number and effectiveness of social media (i.e. blogs and BBS) search engines in China such as Qihoo. While none are (yet) as good for Chinese as Technorati or Icerocket is for English, they are getting better.

Tangos writes (my translation):

The emergence of these tools provides effective means for enterprises to monitor consumers' feedback while at the same time enable consumers to know others' comments allowing for the spread of information. For companies, these tools are a double-edged sword. There is a greater need for companies to pay attention to and learn how to use these tools.

While I agree tools such as Qihoo will be useful for companies to monitor consumer conversations, "monitoring" may not be enough.

Mike Manuel, one of my favorite bloggers and a well respected social media PR thought leader in the US, suggests, in reference to blog popular search and tracking tools in the West such as Technorati, Blogpulse, Icerocket, Sphere etc.:

Yeah, there are tons of tools and tactics to streamline the process of discovery and tracking but *synthesizing* all this information and determining what's actionable vs. insightful vs. plain wasteful is a time-intensive task.

Monitoring is hearing. Synthesizing is understanding.

Coming from an agency that "gets" social media, Mike goes on to suggest that PR agencies who want to help their clients synthesize "edge" conversations face a challenge because due to the fact that "synthesizing" is time consuming, it is often delegated to the lower ranks within the agency. However, these lower ranks do not have the experience or skills to actually know what to know what to do with the information:

More often than not, you need to find, synthesize, strategize, then react. And you need to do this relatively fast.

In other words, that college intern might be able to count conversations and post a few messages on BBS, but you don't want to leave it to the kid to determine your PR strategy for this new medium (and you do need a strategy). Just ask Colgate or Dell (Chinese or English)

You may not even want to leave this up to your PR agency. We have found that in China, while there are exceptions, PR firms (both local and international) are still stuck in a very traditional media relations and event planning approach. While some do recognize the need for understanding social media, very few are doing much about it.

Furthermore, as I suggested previously in commenting on another Tangos post, while tools like Qihoo are a great place to start for tracking social media, for many companies, even if used wisely by experienced professionals, such tools may be too limited to adequately cover the Chinese BBS and blogosphere which in my opinion is even more varied, large and dynamic that in the West.