In November I gave a presentation at Monitoring Social Media 09 (#msm09); it was picked as top presentation on Slideshare today. What a wonderful surprise. The presentation (below) and also here sets out the business case for monitoring social media, the implications for organisations, and what we need from buzz monitoring providers.
An additional requirement was identified by Marshall Sponder (aka as the Web Metrics Guru - yes!) at the event. It was for the standardisation of buzz metrics/measurement. It was a point well made and one that I support. Thanks so much to everyone who viewed and favourited this presentation and I look forward to further conversations on this topic.
After C21’s Social Media Forum I was invited to give a talk about social media and brands to a major UK broadcaster. Whilst the points made in my previous addess are relevant for entertainment brands and broadcasters, it made sense to explore how social media is impacting entertainment itself.
This subject is fascinating and I feel like I’m just scatching the surface with this presentation - so watch this space for more mullings on the topic.
Further to my recent post about listening platforms, I was interested to learn that Microsoft has developed a new buzz monitoring prototype, called Looking Glass, which it has recently started to promote. The video below shows it in action.
It claims to monitor buzz in real time (if that is the case, they have succeeded where many others have failed) and will integrate other types of data from back end systems like CRM, customer service and sales to show correlations. Not surprisingly it depends on other Microsoft technologies like Silverlight and Sharepoint.
The effective integration of other types of data is bound to help buzz monitoring become more mainstreamed. Microsoft is not the only company taking this approach. Some industry players like Jive are partnering with existing providers like Radian 6, whilst others like Sales Force are working to integrate social media monitoring into their offer.
Exciting developments are certainly taking place. Watch this space for further updates.
I’ve been doing ‘buzz research’ using a combination of free and licensed tools for a number of years now and I thought it might be useful to share a few thoughts and experiences given all the ‘buzz about buzz’, in particular, the growing interest in professional listening platforms.
Let me begin by saying, my starting point is has always been scepticism regarding the ability of machines to do the job on their own. Whilst I am fascinated with Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity concept, I believe we are still a long way away from computers being smarter than humans. The current limitations of listening platforms prove it.
So the question for me has always been which tool is the best minimiser of the need for human intervention, not which one will replace it. The tools on the market today are simply not sophisticated enough, if they ever will be, to deliver full automation. And are we really ready for it, if they could?
The list below provides an overview of what I consider to be the top strengths and weaknesses of the majority of tools on the market.
Strengths: They help make sense of the data
Provide sophisticated dashboards with easy to use reporting features
Facilitate early detection of problematic issues which could negatively affect product sales or share price
Provide a ‘temperature check’ on a wide range of issues and metrics
Increasingly help manage engagement through response management tools and workflows
They do not capture everything that is relevant although they get better with training
Assessing who is influential is hotly debated and contestable with no standard methodology in place across providers
We need to supplement tools with human analysts to properly vet and classify the data
In spite of their limitations, they are incredibly useful tools for what they do pick up. It is then up to the human analysts and planners to make sense of it all. The ability to identify problems and consequently take corrective action before an issue becomes a crisis reaching national or global proportions makes these tools entirely worthwhile.
But early detection of customer experience and service problems is not the only reason to have a listening service in place, other reasons include identifying who is influential in conversations about your brand, your share of those converversations, and where they are taking place. You just need to be aware that you need to factor in time to vet and classify the data if you are going to fully reap the benefits.
If you are interested in finding out more, please consider attending Monitoring Social Media 09, where I and others with experience in this field will be speaking in depth about this topic.
Speaking about brands and social media at C21’s Social Media Conference at BAFTA, I highlighted both the threats and opportunities for brands, suggesting there was more to be gained than lost by trying to leverage social media. My presentation cites some best practice case studies and emerging opportunities in the social entertainment space.
Brands need to understand the dynamics of social media, in order to participate credibly because word-of-mouth has eclipsed traditional broadcast messages as the primary influencer of today’s consumer.
Migrating over from my old blogger site to shiny new Wordpress site… while I am getting things in order, it will primarily be used for linking to my other feeds (lifestream).