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August 22, 2012
Key issues and 11 questions to consider when selecting a social listening tool
To help with social media monitoring, it's possible to track and trace, in real-time, any digital communication if it’s in the public domain. Social media have, of course, created an explosion of trackable online and public dialogue.
Herein lays an amazing opportunity to gain an endless amount of market and consumer insight and intelligence. But herein also lays considerable new challenges for marketers.
The technology is not the issue
In response to the anticipated market opportunity for monitoring and analysing what consumers are saying on social media there has is a plethora of software tools developed that can perform these tasks.
A colleague dedicated over a year to the creation of a taxonomy and guide summing up the main features, functions and benefits of 250 different social media monitoring tools.
Despite the…
Social Media from Laurel and Hardy Shhh….
Last week my wife mentioned to me, and I’m not sure how this came about, that Laurel and Hardy, or Stanlio e Ollio to give them their true Italian identity, actually spoke with an English accent, which is why when the English attempt to speak Italian, they tend to find us so funny. Now this might just be my wife’s way of protecting my rather brittle confidence when it comes to talking Italian in her native tongue, but it was a perfect (she wouldn’t have known this at the time) example of delivering content that was both relevant and interesting to the audience, in this case me.
Since 19% of all activity online is spent using social media compared to 6% in March 2007 (comScore, Dec 2011), it goes without saying that…
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July 31, 2012
The makings of the ideal Community Manager
In a recent post on Smart Insights, Steve Kitt laid out some solid reasons why companies should consider having their own online community. Steve makes a good argument, but even if you have your own community and manager, your brand will be fodder for discussion on other communities you have no control over and that’s why having a community manager (CM) is important for every company.
The reason you need a community manager is not only because you need someone to build or manage your own “walled” community, but because you need someone to represent you in all communities across multiple channels where people are talking about your brand. A company does not have to have its own online forum to have a community manager. A brand’s community stretches across a multitude of channels.
A virtual diplomat
A community…
KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid
A now established process within some of the world's mega brands, social listening is now a highly competitive market in itself. With so many experts and software options it can be difficult to decide what option is best for you.
While social listening creates many opportunities I believe it is less obvious for smaller less talked about brands or industries, hopefully sharing my learnings from running this process at First 10 for a number of clients will help you design it into your SME. It all starts with keeping it simple.
Listening
Listening to your customers has always been important, social networks have just changed the scope and places in which that feedback can take place. Within this article I focus purely on social listening which I will explain in more detail shortly. Before I do, you should remember that their are…
This video does it well we think
Earlier in the year, I described how consumer brand Burberry communicate their vision for how they seek to use social and digital media to transform their company.
Recently, I’ve seen another good example from B2B technology hardware and services company EMC (See their Social @EMC hub). Take a look; it’s tackling the tough job of convincing sceptical employees who ask “what’s the point” in a light-hearted way. As you can see, it shows that social media is nothing new, simply that technology now helps us to communicate in a way we always have, since the time of the caveman and cavewoman...
I found out about this video on the blog of Keith Paul (@Kempipa), the “Chief Listener” at EMC. It’s an interesting blog, if you’re working in a large company and dealing with big company issues. In this …
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March 14, 2012
How to control social media ‘bush fires’ to protect your brand
Prior to the digital social media era, brands could control most marketing and communications channels.
Marketers could determine which messages were conveyed, to whom, where and when, thus ensuring their precious brand image was preserved intact.
Enter social media - the tinder to set fire to a previously dry marketing environment.
Social media’s power and reach deliver real power to consumers
Social media lets consumers refer, recommend, vote, score and comment positively or negatively on anything they feel or experience about a product or service.
A particularly big dose of fuel is added to the 'brand communications bush fire' by social media’s interactive real-time capacity to broadcast messages. Reach is potentially unlimited, extending through compelling multi-media formats, such as pictures and videos ‘taken on the go’ with smartphones.
Brands must be…
“Listening and Engaging in the Digital Marketing Age” - a report, from Forrester.
The full report from Forrester, commissioned by Dell, is available to read and download from Dell's micro-site, which is here, the up-shot is that companies that launch listening and digital engagement initiatives are rewarded with improved customer satisfaction scores, loyalty and brand metrics.
Only 50% of companies surveyed (US sample) feel that social media is a core function in their business, however they do feel that their efforts are serious despite only 6% of companies saying that their social media functions are very integrated in the business.
“Listening and responding to customers is so basic and fundamental. The emergence of social media elevates how companies can act on the feedback they get from customers,” (Karen Quintos, senior vice president and Chief Marketing Officer at Dell)
We've read and summarised the…
We saw this post on Open Forum, and then Mashable and thought that it was a great question to ask by Mashable, since there’s a wealth of potential for some markets.
You may have seen in the past that we have compared the features of the main social media monitoring tools. Well, there's now a new tool to add to the list! Cruvee is the first vertical social media monitoring tool, that we’re aware of.
This approach seems proven and popular for the wine market with around 30% of US wineries using it. With that evidence, why aren’t we seeing more platofrms like this for other markets? A gold mine, surely. That said, Cruvee remains free, for now!
What makes Cruvee so special?
Paul Mabray, VinTank’s chief strategy…
How should we manage social media conversations in the real world?
Did you see the publicity late last year around the launch of these "command centers" by two megabrands? Think nuclear power station or space shuttle consoles, very futuristic. I thought their launch campaigns were really interesting in the way they were used to highlight, the importance of listening and responding, both to consumers and other people within the company.
Gatorade Mission Control
Here is a great example of how one brand uses social listening not only to monitor, but to engage and influence too.
Mashable wrote-up the thinking behind this. If you take a look at this promo video, you can see how they emphasise the importance of listening to ALL conversations, but not only to monitor negatives, but find a way to engage and create dialogue. You can also see the scope of the control centre is not just…
A comparison of 36 social media monitoring software tools
There are a bewildering number of social media monitoring tools to choose from. A 2015 comparison of social media listening tools from Ideya Ltd shows that there are around 250 tools available. Of these 191 are paid, with the remainder free or using a combined model.
How to decide which tool(s) is best for you?
Knowing how to decide on the best tool is certainly challenging. This post isn't as comprehensive or up-to-date as the latest Ideya report, thanks to all the merger and acquisition activity in this area, but it compares 36 of the best known social media listening tools including free and paid. If you want to know the free tools go straight to category 4.
The bulk of the work on the original post was completed by a specialist, Michael Brewer of Clerestorey who compiled this comprehensive directory of…
