B2B Web Strategy Blog – eMagine

New social media monitoring tools: easier and more insightful

February 11th, 2010 Posted by: Bill Gadless

Most experts on the subject agree:  the first thing you should do in a social media program is to monitor what’s already “out there”, meaning what’s being said about your firm or brand.  It only stands to reason that what you learn from listening will help make whatever else you intended to do more responsive and smarter-seeming.  And it can reveal immediate and ongoing opportunities for engaging in meaningful conversations with customers and influencers.

In the past, monitoring was easier said than done.  In particular, it was difficult to gauge the relative influence of a given comment’s source, or analyze how your brand was faring against competitors’ in the sea of online comments.

The good news, however, is that “Social media monitoring software is a fast-growing category of tools designed to slice up online conversations to try to determine things like where conversations about your brand occur most often, or how much you are being talked about versus your competitors,” says Chris Koch in a recent post on his B2B blog. Many of these new tools are available as SaaS (Software as a Service) over the Internet, making it easy for marketers to try them out.

Chris’ post would be an invaluable resource simply for listing more than 50 such tools/vendors (with hyperlinks!), in the categories of “Search”, “Microblogging search”, “Discussion group search”, and “Comprehensive”.  But he also points out a number of parameters that these tools (collectively) can measure, including…

• Tone and sentiment. Some of the tools can help you determine whether entire conversations are positive or negative, and whether the individuals within those conversation are supporters or detractors.  But, no surprise, they have difficulty dealing with styles like tongue-in-cheek sarcasm.
• Response needed. Some tools flag the types of comments or conversations that deserve a response and route them to a designated person for action.
• Distribution of conversation. Most of them let you segment the different social media to determine where conversations are happening.
• Conversation trends. Some tools let you analyze the direction and popularity of conversations over time, which can be helpful during important periods such as new offering launches.
• Share of attention. You can track the amount of conversation about you vs. competitors.
• Identify influential sources. These tools can determine the popularity of conversations and their sources;  this may help you decide which blogs to target for outreach, as one example.
• Conversation locations. Some of the tools tell you the geographic location of people involved in the conversation.

This is all great news for those B2Bs in the planning stages of their social-media program.  By using some of these tools, you can learn what’s being said about your brand or company, and with what level of influence and distribution.  Your social media plan, and its execution, are certain to be the better for it.

Entry Filed under: B2B Web Strategy,Social Media