Social media sessionsListening tools

October 2010

Outline

1. Introduction2. Our process - recap3. Monitoring – why?4. Monitoring – basic tools

Introduction

Welcome to the hand-out version of our training session focusing on social media monitoring and research.

This is a very top line look at some of the tools you can use to keep track of online conversations.

Let’s begin...

How we approach social media

Our process – a quick reminder...

We use a very straightforward process when developing social media activities, whether they are for internal or external audiences.

It starts with listening, and developing a specific picture of what our relevant communities are saying / doing.

Once we know what we are dealing with, we establish the best ways to engage with them, adding value at all times.

Following a specified phase of engagement we’ll analyse the impact we’ve had, taking those learnings and feeding them back into the ongoing cycle.

Listen

Engage

Analyse

Our guiding principles

In our experience, success in the social media space is shaped by four principals:

- Be useful

- Add value

- Never sell

- Respond quickly

If these elements are part of your approach, the communities you operate in are far more likely to follow you, trust you and ultimately, recommend you.

Be useful

Add value

Never sell

Respond quickly

Monitoring – why?

Why listening is important...

Social media platforms connect people with shared interests and passions.

People participate because they have something of value to contribute (in most cases).

They are engaging in conversations and sharing things that their networks are interested in.

If we take the time to see what they are saying / doing, our job is much easier.

We should shape our activity on the people we want to reach.

They are our ‘editors’.

10 reasons why brands listen...

Complaints Compliments

‘Expressed’ needs Competitors

‘Crowd’ sentiment Influencers

Measurement Audits

Crisis / issues Threads / chains

Via top rank marketing blog

A real life example...

“I bought a mattress from Argos based (primarily) on this

Twitter exchange.”

Monitoring – basics

Listening out for?

We want to listen for things like:

- Brand mentions

- Products / services

- People mentions

- Topics / subjects

- Journalists / bloggers

- Comments / views

The great thing is that everyone is providing these insights for free.

Right here, right now.

The basic monitoring toolkit...

Today, we are going to briefly look at some basic free tools you can’t start using straight away for current and prospective clients.

You may be familiar with some of the tools, but each has a role to play if you want to get an overall picture of what is being said / shared.

Let’s go...

Best general snapshot tools

http://www.socialmention.com http://www.addictomatic.com

Uses:

- General / day-to-day

- Audit stage

- Activity monitoring / buzz

Tip:

- Make these the tools the foundation of your listening efforts

Real time Twitter tools

http://www.twazzup.com

Uses:

- Great for Twitter hashtags

- Can identify influencers (basic level)

- Ranks content in order of popularity which is useful

Tip:

- Make the most of the keywords featured in the bottom left corner

Twitter specific

http://search.twitter.com

http://backtweets.com

http://moitter.com

http://tweetreach.com

Uses:

- BackTweets is great to see how often people are tweeting links to a website

- Monitter is great for looking at local buzz, especially when managing an issue

Tip:

- Only use these if Twazzup.com doesn’t go deep enough for your particular search

Blog searching

http://wikio.co.uk

http://blogpulse.com

http://www.technorati.com

Uses:

- Discover blogs by topic / author

- Track published posts and run archive searches

- Get an indication of blog popularity

Tip:

- Search both posts and blogs as results can vary

Forums / blog comments

http://boardtracker.com

Uses:

- Goes beyond blogs and gives you an insight into responses to topics (especially useful for customer insights)

- Gives you a feel for what lengths people will go to in order to be heard

Google tools

http://google.com/

(then search by tool type)

Uses:

- iGoogle is such an easy way to keep track of news, feeds, searches – worth setting up as your home screen dashboard

Bookmarking tools

http://delicious.com

http://ww.evernote.com

Uses:

- Bookmark any page from the web and store it via tags / folders

Contact

Adam VincenziniParatus Communications

Adam@paratuscommunications.com

http://www.commscorner.com http://twitter.com/AdamVincenzini