Social Media as the New Canary
October 12th, 2011 by Melissa L.
The term ‘canary in a coal mine’ originated from earlier days when miners would bring the birds with them to serve as early detectors of toxic gases. If the canaries showed signs of sickness, the workers would put on masks or hightail it out of the mines.
Social media is taking on the role of the canary, serving to forewarn us of natural disasters: one Chilean teen hacked a $75 earthquake detector to make it post real-time updates to Twitter. The mayor of Mexico City is planning a mobile quake alert system to be implemented by year’s end. In other cases, social media has been an early detector of social uprising, as we saw with the revolution in Egypt.
In B2B marketing, social media monitoring helps us detect shifts in customer affinity toward a company or a product, and spot market trends. It can also be used preventatively to forewarn customers of recalls, bugs or scams before they find out the hard way. Point being: social media is a useful – and much more humane – way for businesses to act as a sentinel for their constituents.
What clever ways might you put the “new canary” into practice at your company? Think you can out-canary the Chilean teen?