Monitoring & Analyzing Social Media

Social Media Monitoring: Why You Must & Its Value

You don’t really need to be active in social media.

Twitter? No. Blog? No. Facebook Page? No. Social bookmarking? Nyah. Second Life? Forget about it.

Social media — like any other tool for marketing — should be researched and evaluated based on how best to reach and communicate with your audience.

But (you can tell it’s a big BUT), you do need to be monitoring and listening in to social media.

Do you have comment cards available for customers and prospects?

Do you have a suggestion box in your location(s)?

Do your sales people listen to customers?

Do you have a customer service department or person?

Do you have your company name in Google News Alerts or have a paid clipping service for news releases and such?

Have you ever conducted a focus group or other similar market research?

If you answered yes to any of the above, you need to monitor social media.

I’ve been involved in SM monitoring almost since I first became active in social media in 2005. There are a lot of monitoring tools available, both free and paid. (For reference, see a previous post on my own blog about online tools, and my Delicious bookmarks tagged social-media-monitoring.)

How and why you should monitor social media? Let’s look at four key ways to use social media monitoring:

Monitor your company and product names, as well as any other trademarked, marketing and related terms about you. This is a no-brainer. People are talking about you whether you are listening or not — so you might as well listen. You also can track competitors.

• During your monitoring see what negative, neutral and positive things are being said. Before jumping in to respond to negative streams, gauge if the content is emotion- or fact-based — it’s tough to sooth a debate filled with emotion, so be cautious. Also determine if the author receives a lot of traffic or seems to have a lot of influence. If either are low, consider your timing if you should respond at all. (This point requires another post to really discuss.)

Gauge how effective your marketing messages are. I’m talking more than just negative or positive reactions. Those do not necessarily come from your branding efforts. Review the results for your company and related names used above and see what’s being said and what main points are associated with your terms. (See AuthorTags image from a SM2 term I’m tracking.)  Then, adjust as you see appropriate. You also can track your efforts over time and compare to sales data to determine what impact social marketing has on sales.

Market research: Don’t look for your company-related names; look for trends and issues associated with your industry and your marketplace. You may have conducted surveys and other research in the past — with social media you can do the same in real-time (or at least pretty recent time).

If you are planning an outreach, use social media monitoring to smooth the process: For the subject or topic you plan to use for SM outreach, search for it first. See who’s already blogging, tweeting and discussing it. Then, see if those people are ones you want to engage: Gauge their level of influence, their comments on your topic, etc. — all the while learning more about them. That will help you better connect with them if you do contact them.

For the image, I use Techrigy’s SM2 service. However, other services also have graphing and analytical tools. Even with free services, you can take the data and develop your own charts.

One more point: No matter if you use a free service or a paid service, there’s still an investment. Both require an investment in time to fully analyze the data. The trade off is in the amount of money you pay for a comprehensive service that will compile the data and start to analyze it, compared to the amount of time you need to gather and compile the results and then analyze using the free tools.

-Mike Driehorst

Social Media for Competitive Intelligence

In my first job out of college, I had a really unpleasant task every Monday morning. See, I worked at a large regional bank and every morning I had to call a dozen other banks and get all their rates. Saving, checking, loans, mortgage. There was no way to disguise who I was. After about 10 minutes on the phone, the teller was pretty annoyed with me. After 15 minutes, he was ready to hang up on me.

“Wait!” I’d cry. “How about a 30-year fixed mortgage on a….”

Click.

Back then, monitoring the competition was tough. Today, thanks to the ever growing world of social media, it’s a whole lot easier to find information about your competition. Here are a few simple tips to get started:

1. Be a Twitter Spy. Set up a Tweetbeep. If you can use Google Alerts you can use Tweetbeep. Just go to Tweetbeep.com and enter your competitors’ names. You’ll be notified when anyone Tweets about your competition. The information you receive will be a gold mine. Your competitors’ clients will tweet about how well (or poorly) the latest pitch went, their employees will complain about working all night to get the new product into beta. A reporter will talk about using them for a source. Customers will talk about pricing. The HR intern will tell you that layoffs are coming today.

Did you hear that something big is happening at a competitor and you can’t wait to be Tweetbeeped? Then just go to http://search.twitter.com and type in search strings like “[Competitor name layoff” “[Competitor name] acquired” “[Competitor name] president” People will share scoops on Twitter that they never would in person or on the phone.

You can also start following your competitors’ executives, managers, employees, interns and contractors. Not to mention, their biggest clients. When news is coming from the company, you’ll get it from every perspective—giving you the full picture. Of course, don’t be surprised when you get the spin from the company president and PR director and the juicy stuff from the interns and contractors.

2. Get LinkedIn. I’m willing to bet you already have a LinkedIn profile and some good connections on the site. But now, it’s time to start mining LinkedIn for information on your competition. First take a moment to consider what LinkedIn knows about a company: it knows who just joined a company, it knows who left, it knows who received a promotion and it knows who is connected to whom at other companies. Now, rather than rely on a person to write a company profile, aka Wikipedia, LinkedIn can create an automated feed to pull all this together into a shockingly accurate profile. Go ahead and check out your own company profile by searching here: http://www.linkedin.com/companies.

A quick scan will tell you how many people work at the company and who recently left the company. Seeing who left is not only a great tool if you’re looking to recruit from the competition, it’s also a good way to see if a particular department is in the midst of a shakeup.You can also identify the companies most connected to your competition. This may help you identify where they recruit their employees, who their biggest clients are, and what strategic alliances are most important. Company divisions and acquisitions are also listed, allowing you to understand the corporate hierarchy. The information on number of employees, revenue (listed even for many private companies), median age, employee gender and the various schools their employees attended, rounds out the picture.

3. Dive deep with Manta. Manta.com is one of the largest and most popular business information sites on the Internet. Manta has profiles on 63 million plus companies, including yours. The site specializes in hard-to-find information about small businesses and other privately held companies. Membership to the site is free and you can use the free contact management system on the site to track and share competitive information with the rest of your staff. The information on companies varies, but in general, you can find annual revenue, key contacts and number of employees. Premium financial reports are also available for a fee. Can’t find the information you need? The site has a question and answer feature that allows users to post a question that can be addressed by the site’s other members.

Interested in seeing who is affiliate with your competitors? Visit their company pages on Manta.com and find Manta members who are associated with the company. You can also see who else (maybe your clients and prospects) who are viewing your competitors pages. And, similar to Tweetbeeps for Twitter, you can an alert on your competitors to be notified when something on their pages changes. (Disclosure: once upon a time I worked at ECNext, the company that owns and operates Manta).

One other point: Your competitors are probably using these same tools to keep tabs on you. Keep an eye on your own social media presence to see the image that you are projecting. Social media has changed the way we do a lot of things in the business world, including how we keep up on what our competition is up to. Somebody, somewhere out there, is talking about your competitors, opening up a world of information never before available. Now is the time to take advantage of it. Who knows, now may also be the time to take advantage of a 30-year fixed loan, too.

Social Media and Smarter Product/Service Development

It’s exciting to watch as the value of social media is being revealed in layers: one layer, the fairly wide recognition of the value of monitoring social media as a means to follow what people are saying about ones products and/or brands; and another layer: which is less common but gaining in popularity – monitoring to support active participation in social media circles for engagement with the public a la Whole Foods and Southwest Airlines on Twitter.

And now, the newest layer: using social media to help guide smart product/service development. Only a small number of forward-thinking companies (savvy ones, to say the least) are turning to social media as a means to run customer‐led innovation initiatives. One of the most talked about examples of the moment is Del Monte’s launch of Pup‐Peroni , which is featured in a video case study at Advertising Age. The piece tells of how the company used a collaborative online community to successfully launch the Pup‐Peroni dog snacks in six weeks. It’s an excellent example of customer‐led innovation played out within social media. Del Monte isn’t the only company using this family of model to make
innovation a community exercise that taps into the creativity and user‐driven suggestions of its lead customers. But there’s another angle to using social media to find your lead customers, and to tap into what they have already said – and are saying – to help guide product/service development; to help companies better understand what their – your ‐‐ customers need. As researchers, what we realize (and have realized through work we are doing for our clients) is that for many, many companies, a mass of information that holds precisely these clues exists online, though often buried in niche communities. Locating these communities and analyzing their conversation for insights that can help guide smarter product/service development is precisely what we do for our clients.

At the Social Studies Group, we are digging deeply in exploration of the tastes, ideas and opinions that can help companies guide product/service development. As researchers, we are immersed in this task. And as researchers, we are repeatedly fascinated by what we continue to find.

We recently completed a project for a national consumer foods company in connection with a product that has not been as successful as they had hoped. Our job was to collect information that would help guide the development of a follow‐up product. A second assignment saw us collecting consumer opinions around an existing media‐related product; the purpose: to help ensure that its next iteration mirrors readers’ interest. The task of locating these communities and relevant conversations almost always begins with monitoring. For instance, we know first‐hand that SM2 holds vast potential for uses far beyond simply gauging the popularity of ones brand. The key is knowing how to design your search in order to arrive at the results that will lead to the most valuable insights which are, in this case, the information that reveals your customers’ real needs and translates to smarter product/service development.

Twitter Spammers Are Getting Traction

The current economy is a chaotic test of bravery and creativity.  At a time when many businesses around the world are hurting and adjusting to the economic realities in an effort to stay alive, the quest to “monetize conversations” within social media has given way to a rise in use of questionable tactics.  We all need to create value and tangible results, how one gets there is the key differentiating factor. 

Since comScore is stating that Twitter traffic hit 10 million visitors as of February of 2009, the stakes are high and climbing. At this pace it’s completely feasible that Twitter will triple to 30 million visitors or more by the end of the year. Given the economic reality and desperate need to drive revenue, I believe more Twitter users will resort to various spamming techniques. The formula for them is simple, get as many followers as possible by any means possible, automated or otherwise and then solely based on volume of followers broadcast or “spam” them into oblivion directing them to a lame product site. Repeat process. Largest challenge? Inventing new Twitter account names.

Despite the best efforts of Evan Williams, Biz Stone and the entire Fail Whale…er Twitter crew, spammers are still prevailing which clearly takes away from the value of influence by watering down the experience.

For example, while writing this post and observing the search term “new to Twitter,” a particular tweet showed up 26 times in just over 30 minutes with 14 of those accounts being most likely fake ones similar to the examples below.

As stated, initially the vast majority of these ReTweets were from starter accounts with no picture, low numbers and only one tweet (shown above) to show for the account. The safe assumption is that Callen is the spammer behind this activity.The scary part however, I observed Callen getting traction.The rate at which this tweet was showing up was increasing over the remainder of the hour, fueled by fake accounts, while more and more real Twitterati started picking up on the ReTweet action.What did Callen’s account say during this attack? “Welcome new Tweeters!”

I hesitated before exposing this tactic for fear of spawning new spammers but there it is. If you believe in generating real social capital, having a strong reputation then please be a decent human being and don’t spam people with a ton of fake or ghost Twitter accounts.The unfortunate part is, I know this plea will fall on more than a few deaf ears.  So I call on all Twitter users who read this to expose these fraudulent activities at the very least by using the hashtag #spammer.

“If only fail-whales could be controlled to solely affect spammers while leaving the rest of us alone…if only.”

Who Should Be Your Online Voice?

Congratulations. Your company has finally decided to make the official
online plunge.

A blog, twitter and maybe even Facebook. Whatever you decide, be sure you
have chosen the appropriate “host” for your online “gathering.” This is a
cocktail party for your brand - that never ends. Your online voice is
always on, always entertaining and always looking for more guests.

Call them what you wish: Interaction Evangelist; Knowledgarian Czar; Content
Chief; Information Marshall - they need to posses key traits to ensure
success.

Your online voice needs to be a Subject Matter Expert (SME), someone you’re
confident will maintain respectable behavior and maintain a clear 30,000
foot view of the business development role.

Subject Matter Expert

An SME will be well versed on your industry; engaging discussions about the
current activities, issues and hot points. They will clearly understand the
history of your market segment and have a unique perspective on the future
direction as well. Knowledge of your competition is a must.

This person should have a solid understanding of the key online properties
that relate to the business. Do they participate in related blogs,
discussion groups/forums and industry related niche sites?

Online Behavior

This person needs to be an “A” level player with regards to online behavior
and actions. Ask yourself, would you be comfortable with this person talking
to members of the community? Can they be a consistent representative for
your business?

You host should be somewhat connected to the other “movers & shakers” within
your market as well. If not, are they positioned well to become an
influencer with their experiences, knowledge and network?

The last thing you want is someone who is argumentative and combative; the
ultimate “know-it-all” is a huge turn-off. Have you met that person at a
social event? Not someone you want to spend much time with, is it?

30,000 Foot View

My interpretation of being able to see the big picture is always identifying
additional creative opportunities for the company. Measuring ROI and other
metrics is often an after-thought; every conscious effort should be
monitored, tracked and rebalanced at least every 90 days to ensure the
efforts are not an exercise in futility.

They should be knowledgeable on the Search Engine Optimization strategies
which benefit your company. Their inter-department communication skills
skills should be head and shoulders above nearly everyone within the
company. Not only should they be familiar with daily activities and
strategies, they need to communicate their initiatives back to the company
to avoid any surprises.

Are they monitoring tiny URL’s, site analytics and using social media
monitoring tools? Have you outlined specific metrics such as improved
traffic, increased conversions and improved revenue from specific online
channels? These are must-have tools for your online manager’s toolbox.

Making the decision to utilize multiple online marketing channels is a big
decision. Finding the right person to drive that bus is just as important.

Have you made the right choice?

5 Greatest April Fools Moments in Social Media

Anyone involved even tangentially in social media has come across the term linkbait - the creation of articles whose sole purpose is to generate traffic, links, and eventually lead to a rise in Google SERPS.  I find that linkbait reaches a point of saturation when themed around specific events - April Fool’s Day is one such event.

At the risk of overwhelming readers with endless links of poorly planned April Fool’s Day jokes and gags, let’s turn out attention to the 5 best April Fool’s Da of the day:

5 - Buying and being like Twitter.

Identi.ca buys Twitter.  Many of you may not remember Identi.ca - the open source solution to Twitter - when it first came on the scene.  Basically, Identi.ca gained a microblogging market share when Twitter had performance and scalability issues, though it has all but lost its momentum after Twitter stabilized some.  The Guardian claiming that news can be told in 140 characters barely missed being formally included in this list.

4 - Nine Inch Nails Strobelight.

NIN has previously made press featuring The Slip as a free download if you put in your email.  This time around, if you try putting in your email to get Strobelight, you get the Windows blue screen of death.

3 - Weird Digg Popups.

Digg had a disappointing showing last year, showing different symbols when trying to Digg a story, which ended up resulting in performance issues.  They were smarter this year with Internet memes popping up after following a Digg.  I would have ranked this higher had the popups not shown up after every Digg.

2 - The return of Zaibatsu?

Even though this turned out to be false, it was kind of cool to think that Zaibatsu was back on Digg, even for a moment.  Maybe he’d be quiet on Twitter then. (Chill Reg, we all love ya)

1 - Reddit pwns basically every social media site ever.

As we can see, Reddit has really outdone itself this year.  Reddit is a top tier social news / crowdsourced content site, but today it really took the cake and flexed its creative muscle.

The homepage was skinned to look like Digg, the Science subreddit like Slashdot, Worldnews like whitehouse.gov, etc. You get the idea;  pure awesomeness.

Please Don’t Invite Your Friends…

Unless you really know that they want it.

These days, when you get an email, it’s less likely to be the subject line than the name of the sender that will be the PRIMARY reason why you would (or would not) read your message.

Now, think about this in the context of much of what is happening online.

Companies, websites, Facebook applications…they all make it easy for you to invite your friends or share things with them.

Just because it is easy for you to upload 500 pictures from your vacation doesn’t mean I want to see them.

And, just because it is easy for you to invite all of your friends to your new Facebook group or cause, doesn’t mean that I want to join.

If it’s relevant, sure, invite your friends, but only if you KNOW that it is relevant.

Because if it isn’t, you are taking a big risk.

As David Berkowitz blogged, “No, I Don’t Want to Join Your Group (Nor am I a Fan)”

And, if you look down below the group and cause invites that you receive on Facebook now, you’ll see the line that says “Ignore All Invites From This Friend.”

When someone clicks on that, you become like Diana, the equivalent of a Facebook spammer.

For all intents and purposes, your ‘marketing messages’ just don’t exist.

You have lost relevance.

You have lost permission.

And you don’t need me to tell you that you can’t afford to have that happen.

Tools Only Get You So Far

Tools such as Techrigy are great to have in your social media arsenal. Actually these tools are more of a necessity than a “nice to have.” However, with all the great tools out there comes a lot more interpretation of data and information. While tools such as Techrigy can help get the job done, they are ultimately not responsible for the success or failure of a social media campaign. How you interpret and act on the data is what will determine your success.

Here are a few tips that can help you make the most out of tools such as Techrigy

• If you are using a third party agency or company to run your social media campaign make sure they give you a debrief on how they are using tools such as Techrigy and what specifically they look for.

• Make sure you align your social media strategy with your marketing strategy. Techrigy gives you a lot of data and all of your interactions and community responses need give off the same “voice” from your company.

• Before you or a third party begins using a tool like Techrigy, make sure you understand all of the capabilities and possibilities. These tools are robust and can probably give you more information than you know about.

• Make sure you participate with the community. Techrigy does an excellent job of creating a community around their product, largely thanks to the help of a Connie Bensen.

• Stay up to date on new features, releases, and bug fixes. Several companies out there provide email newsletter alerts with updates, make sure you read them to understand what’s going on. You never know when that new feature you want will finally make its way into the actual product.

• Before starting off with any type of monitoring or analytics tool you have to understand your goals. This goes hand in hand with understanding your strategy. However, if your goals are to get more links and get talked about on the “big” blogs, then make sure that’s what you’re using your monitoring tool for.

I hope these 6 simple tips will make your experience using tools such as Techrigy more meaningful and more powerful. Do you have any other tips you want to share?

Knowledge, Power & Social Media

Power is the ability to act or capacity to perform or act effectively. Power is most often used to control or influence. Without a doubt, Social Media has a great deal of power! Social Media is exerting a great deal of influence over traditional marketing, advertising, and communication channels. Social Media has also given a great deal of power to the average consumer as has been demonstrated time and time again. One single individual with a single post or tweet can change an entire company’s product offering, policy, or strategy. Consumers and individuals clearly understand the power of social media and they are not afraid to use it. On the other hand businesses have not gained power from Social Media as quickly as individuals have. Why is that? It is because of knowledge.

Knowledge is defined as awareness or understanding gained through experience, observation, or study. The average consumer doesn’t need to have a great deal of knowledge to take advantage of the power of social media over businesses. All they need to know is ‘I state my case (whether it is valid or not) and if enough people hear or see it then businesses react and I win.’ This Power of Social Media is many voices (consumers) and the influence of one (business).

This formula works for consumers because it does not take much for a consumer to know what triggers a business to act. However, businesses on the other hand have to know the many triggers for the many individual consumers in order to influence them to act. For businesses there are many, many, many more data points to be collected and analyzed.

Knowledge is acquired through analyzing data. When it comes to Social Media this is called “listening”. In words that Marketing Execs and CEOs will understand, this is called Market Research, better put: Market Research on steroids. Instead of surveys or focus groups this is raw, uncensored potentially unsolicited viewpoints of real people. As you listen, you learn how to use Social Media to your advantage. Gaining power when you use what you have learned from listening.

What can you learn through listening to Social Media? Businesses can learn how to select profitable new markets to enter, create a “Blue Ocean.” Through Social Media, businesses can learn how to select and attract the customers who best match their organization. Businesses can also reduce the risk and severity of bad customer service claims. These are just a few of the many things that businesses can learn from listening to Social media. The next step is to put these learnings to use.

So to harness the power of Social Media you need to understand that many voices to become the influencer. For businesses this means that you have to get many voices to influence others that you feel are worth doing business with. To do this you must listen, learn and act. Contrary to popular belief, knowledge is not power. Power is the wise use of knowledge!

Techrigy + ManoByte = Power

Byte or get bitten!