Social Media Monitoring - Measuring the Buzz

I spoke today at the TechReady conference, participating in a Podcamp organized by Paolo Tosolini. I covered Social Media Monitoring and was not allowed any slides so here is a blog post covering my speech and some go-do's for Marketers out there.

Overview:
Social Media is changing the Digital Media landscape in ways the web has never before seen. There is more information on the web today that is user generated through social media technologies than media driven. With this movement, the tools and technologies to market to your audience have changed as well. Let me say though, that Marketing is still Marketing; essential focus needs to remain on your business objectives and goals. Those coupled with the audience you are trying to reach should help drive your messaging and media mix.

Social Media Monitoring:
Social Media Monitoring is the way in which you are able to measure both the conversations that are taking place as well as who is influencing the conversation within the user generated content web. Searches are performed using keywords supporting your brand or product and any blog, micro-blog, and mainstream media article can be retrieved. Once you have the conversations, now it's critical to understand a blog with 2 viewers vs. a blog with 2 million viewers. This is done by tracking in-links (other blogs linking to your post) as well as eyeballs viewing the post. Combine these and you as a Marketer can now monitor both what the sentiment is about your brand as well as who is influencing your target audience.

Free Tools:
There are 3 categories of tools that I am leveraging day in and day out. The categories are below:

- Alerts (Live Alerts, Yahoo Alerts, Google Alerts)
- Blog Pulse (Technorati, Nielsen Blog Pulse)
- Micro Blog Pulse (TweetScan, Twittermeter)

With all 3 of these, you have the ability to have each tool package up that days information and have it emailed or added to an RSS feed. I recommend playing with each around the keywords that matter to you, but making sure you have coverage across these three areas.

Case Study:
Microsoft Windows just launched a campaign today called the Mojave Experiment. Traditionally, you'd have to measure success around this campaign by campaign site visits and click-through to end actions (learn more, buy). You could then layer on a survey (on site or off) that would hit on perception shift goals. Through the social media tools above, you can get a pulse of sentiment and influence just by doing 3 searches, see below:

Yahoo Alert
Results will be emailed

Technorati Blog Pulse

build into a watchlist for RSS delivery:
Technorati RSS Feed
- Just add keywords

TweetScan

Within the same day, you have a large amount of intelligence regarding sentiment and influence around your brand, product, or campaign.