Nick Baggott's CRM and Digital Marketing Blog

Which social media monitoring tool should you use?

I have been working recently with Richard Lucas of Tangent90. Richard has compiled a concise review of Social media monitoring tools for the client and he has allowed me to share this review with you. So, thank you Richard....

Brandwatch

Overview :

Brandwatch enables the user to set keywords and start the search across websites and social media platforms. It includes scan search of Twitter, facebook, youtube Blogs, forum and news . brandwatch offers  a user friendly interface, easy to set up.  Sentiment  accuracy in the standard market range. The tool offers a customisable dashboard to have all the available data in one view, and exports report in cvs and email format

£: Reasonably priced, from starting packages

Synthesio

Overview :

The syntesio platform offer a wide range of analysis tools. In addition to the standard sentiment analysis , number and localisation of mentions, it offers multilingual and multi-regional support.

The platform is user friendly and easy to set up

The sentiment analysis however, relies strongly  on human intervention. The sysntesio team offers data analysis together with the subscription, and it doesn`t not come cheap. The system also, at the date of testing ( Spring 2011) presented numerous bugs.

£ : starting package expensive

Radian 6

Overview :

Radian 6 is possibly one on the most powerful social media monitoring tools on the market. As its competitors it offers sentiment analysis, customisable dashboards, and powerful data analysis across the widest range of sources, unlike its competitors , it can be integrated with Salesforce and webtrends. The reports can be exported as emails,cvs and PDFs

The learning experience with Radian 6 can be frustrating,  with a steep learning curve, to utilise the tool in all its features.

£ : starting package expensive

Addictomatic

Overview :

Addictomatic is a free web app to locate  content on the web based on any topic, event or subject and provides the users with a windows containing the mentions for the brand or topic searched.

Compared to the other mentioned tools, Addictomatic is more news and social media oriented, but it doesn`t offer the complex automatic operations as Brandwatch or Radian 6

The tool doesn`t offer a dashboard or sentiment analysis, and any further operation offered by other automatic tools, is left to the user.

£: free

iGoogle

Overview :

iGoogle is a free web app which requires quite a lot of customisation and configuration, it is meant as a consumer tool for managing a personal experience and not as a shared business tool.

£: free

Personal Mashup using WidgetBox

Overview :

WidgetBox is a collection of over tens of thousands of Widgets which can be turned into mobile Apps and into ‘Blog Embed’ Components for a simple low cost subscription.

Some widgets quickly hit the refresh limit on services such as Twitter and Google and so pages can be denied access to these services.

This requires the use of a Web Designer with basic knowledge of HTML and web design.

£: free

 Postscript:

 Since I wrote this post, I have been contacted by webfluenz - see below. I have reviewed it and it looks to me like a good value low cost tool that is certainly well worth considering. The costs start at $99, but rises based on numbers of users etc. This is the note they sent to me originally which includes a link tio the site

I came across your review on social media monitoring tools and wanted to bring a tool to your notice called webfluenz. I wanted to inquire about whether you will be interested in reviewing our tool. To give a brief introduction, webfluenz is a social media monitoring and measurement tool that allows users to listen, monitor and enagage with social media conversations in real-time. For more information, please visit our website (http://www.webfluenz.com/) 

Greenpeace attack VW using social media

Thanks to my good frind, Louise Vaughan, of the wonderful Acceleris-MC for sending me the link to this excellent example of social media marketing by Greenpeace. If I were VW, I would be much more forthcoming and pro-active about this. "NO comment" is not the wisest response, in these days of social media proliferation.

The full article is copied below, but if you want to follow the link to the actual page, then click on the headline below:

Greenpeace pressures Volkswagen in online campaign

 

Volkswagen continues to be targeted in what Greenpeace is calling its most successful online campaign ever.

An estimated four million people have watched the environmental group’s online film (click here to view) attacking Volkswagen’s record on climate change, while 370,000 people have signed up to join the campaign against the carmaker.

Now Greenpeace is offering a £5,000 budget to whoever produces the best one minute anti-VW advert – with the prize money to be spent on making the campaign’s next movie.

The competition is being run across the UK, Germany, France and Belgium. It will be launched on Saturday, September 17 at the Curzon cinema in Soho with the closing date two weeks later.

A panel of ‘PR experts and film professionals’ will choose the winner and there will also be a public vote to pick an audience favourite.

Greenpeace climate change campaigner Richard George said: “VW markets itself as a green car company. But in reality it lobbies against key climate change laws and only fits the most fuel efficient technology to a small proportion of its vehicles."

The website www.vwdarkside.com outlines Greenpeace’s objections to the carmaker.

Volkswagen said it would not be responding to the accusations.

Author
Jeremy Bennett
01733 46826

 

Q&A With Marketer Magazine

Following the seminar I did with Marketer magazine at the start of the summer, I have answered some of the questions that we had no time to do on the day, as have the other 2 guest presenters. Here is a link to the Marketer site with all of the answers and below is a transcript of just my responses....

I recently read a blog on LinkedIn where people were discussing the difficulties of gathering statistics about your audience on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Do you have any tips on capturing this information?

 

There is not a perfect solution. Facebook and Twitter provide limited information, but there are tools available that can help you. In fact, monitoring social media and online PR is challenging, not just Twitter and Facebook. There are many sentiment-tracking tools available that scan the web, including social media, for mentions of your brand or products and produce reports. Most of these are subscription based, such as Radian 6 and Buzz Metrics. They are not perfect, but provide a wider view than just individual social media mentions. If you are in B2B, you may well get more mentions on blogs than in social media, so you should keep your analytics as wide as possible.

 

We have a Facebook page and my boss wants us to keep it very bland, with no mentions of client names – she is worried that our competitors will see them. For example, we have to say “pharma company in Swindon” rather than Pfizer. Doesn't that fly in the face of the open nature of social media?

 

Yes it does, however you also need to be aware of commercial sensitivities. You need to treat social media as you would any PR. So if you need client permission to mention them in PR, then you should also get it for social. I would be driven by client issues rather than competitor issues. I am sure there are many other ways that a competitor can use to find out who your clients are (they only need to ask one of your employees for an interview for example). So if your clients don’t have an issue with it, then I would be as specific as you can be, without giving away any commercially sensitive information. If in doubt, check with your clients first. Social media is all about content; you need to have an opinion, a view of some kind. Bland content will probably defeat the object of doing it. So try to persuade your boss to ask your clients if they have any objections, in fact whether you can help them by talking about them in your PR. Find a story or two which helps your client relationships and the benefits with your client should outweigh any information that a competitor could use. If you are helping your clients, why would they want to switch, even if they are approached by one of your competitors.

 

If you operate in both B2B and B2C markets, can you combine your social media approach or should you have a separate presence for each market?

 

This is a good question. It depends on whether you have different products, brands and distribution networks. My advice would be that if you operate in different markets, whether the markets are B2B and B2C, or UK and abroad, or high-end and low-end, then you should have different tailored communications for each audience. Therefore the logic is that you need different communications channels. In B2B you may focus on blogging and Twitter for example, with a B2B Facebook page just being a hub that drives viewers to the blog and tweets or the consumer Facebook page. Content should be relevant and specific for whichever markets you operate in. Your social media activity should be thought-leading, using whichever expert you have in your organisation who has credibility in that sector. Bear in mind that this person may not be the marcomms person. It could be the technical expert, engineer or sales person, for example. 

 

Periodic table of SEO Factors

Just found this neat graphic of SEO factors from Hubspot's Inbound Marketing University   blog. 

SEO is the most important element of your Inbound marketing strategy and this simplifies (or at least does for the visually minded) the complex world of SEO. 

The original source is Search Engine Land, and you can download a copy of it from their site

How and when to use social media

This is part 2 of the series... some tips on using social media...

Tip 1: Consider the role of social media in your marketing plan

• Social media is very good for developing customer engagement, building reputation, thought leadership and word of mouth referrals. It is all about long term brand development
• It is not so good for new customer acquisition, awareness generation or short term sales leads. This is because typically the only people who are likely to follow you are those that have a relationship with you already.
• However, if you create content that is interesting enough to be referred to by others, then your existing customers may send it onto their contacts, retweet it or link to it.

Tip 2: Focus on a few key social media channels

• The big 3 social media channels are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
• Google accounts for 9.16% of all UK web visits. Facebook is second with 7.69%. YouTube is 3^rd with 2.48%. Twitter is 20^th, but rising fast. Source http://www.hitwise.com/uk/datacentre
• Linked In is the largest B2B social media site, but usage has plateaud and participation levels are much lower than the big 3. You should have a presence on Linked In, but don’t expect the same level of interaction as you will get on the others.
• Blogging is the key social media channel for B2B and small businesses, as it is simple, search friendly and ideal for thought leadership. Remember, you should talk rather than sell on your blog. Comment on the news, your industry, recent research and articles, rather than constantly selling your products and services (that is what your web site is for...).
• You may also consider a strategy where you focus on influencing existing blogs, groups and communities by commenting or starting discussions in those channels. It is often better to speak where the audience is now, rather than driving them to your channel.

Tip 3: Have a presence in all channels, but focus...

• You need to be accessible, so have a page on each of the big 3 and Linked In. However, if you have limited time, then focus your efforts on a few channels and simply link to those from the other pages. For example a small B2B firm could focus on blogging, Twitter and YouTube, but have Facebook & Linked In pages with links to these channels.

Tip 4: Consider your tone of voice and target audience

• What impression do you want to give? Do you want to speak as an independent  guru / expert giving advice on the industry, or do you want to be a brand ambassador, who only talks about what your company is doing, or maybe you want to be a facilitator, suggesting discussion points and asking for reader comments? You need to take a position and be consistent with how you talk to your audience.
• Your tone may depend upon your relationship with your audience. Who are they? How knowledgeable are they about your content? How do they view you?

Tip 5: Integrate social media with your marketing comms

• Use social media to communicate with existing contacts about what you are doing, such as future events and launches, white papers you have written, new web tools you have developed. Publish new content on your blog and short videos on YouTube and then use Twitter or Facebook to drive people to them.
• For example, create a Twitter # for your events, so if attendees tweet about what they have learned, you will be able to find out what they are saying. http://hubpages.com/hub/Why-Use-Hash-Tags-On-Twitter

Tip 6: Use the free measurement tools

• YouTube Insights http://www.youtube.com/my_videos_insight - tells you how many people have watched your video, who they are, where they are, how many dropped off before the end etc
• Google Alerts www.google.com/alerts. - This tells you when anyone writes about you on the web. Set up a Google alert for your company / brand name and personal name. Bear in mind it only works well if you have a distinctive name. Set one up for “John Smith” and you will be flooded with irrelevant alerts.

 

Tips on how to build a web site with limited resources and technical expertise

I have just written a couple of short advice sheets for a charity. It is for marketers who want to do some digital marketing, but have limited budgets and experience. Here is part one...

Tips on how to build a web site with limited resources and technical expertise

Tip 1: Decide whether to build a Web site or blog

• Do you need a web site? Writing a blog would be simpler. A blog doesn’t need the same degree of technical knowledge and can be built quickly. A blog is simply a simple web site, where the posts are in chronological order (web log). Tips on blogging are within the social media tips document.

Tip 2: Why not consider a free web building tool?

• Just search for free web sites on Google. There is moonfruit, webs.com, GBBO....
• Moonfruit has built over 3.5 million free web sites. You just log in, choose a template and start writing. It really is that simple. They have a library of images and design templates and even e-commerce functionality. You can only build a simple 15 page site for free, but that should be sufficient to get you started. www.moonfruit.com
• Once you have built your free site, you can always upgrade – Moonfruit has a £4 per month service which gives you unlimited pages, paypal e-commerce functionality and more storage space.
• Moonfruit also has a series of free white papers and beginner’s guides, such as how to optimise your site to make it appear higher in Google.

Tip 3: Make it easy to find

• Communicate your web address in every customer touch point, your business cards, ads, email sign offs, blog, brochures....everywhere
• Optimise your site for Google. This is complex and the Moonfruit guide will give you more information. Key things to consider:
  • What is your web site address (URL)? Is it easy to remember and also the type of words that customers may search for?
  • Make sure you develop a set of keywords (words that people may search for when looking for businesses like yours) and use them consistently and frequently within the copy on your web site (this is called keyword density).
  • Tag all of your web assets with keywords. Every picture, link, illustration etc on your site, should be tagged with descriptive words, to show Google what your web site contains. Use the same words in tags that you have developed for keyword density.
  • Google also scans your site for links, so build links on your site from one page to another and make sure that the links are on words that are searched for. A builder should have links on words like “house extensions”. Don’t use “click here” or “learn more” as the link words.
  • Consider paying for some Google advertising. You can start with a budget as small as £10 and you only pay when someone clicks through to your site. It is simple to do www.google.com/adwords

Tip 4: Make it easy to use and find things:

• Have a contact us page and make sure there is a tab at the top right of your site to take you through to the contact us page – allow them to contact you by phone, email & include your postal address and a map to your location too.
• People expect your logo to be in the top left and for it to be a link back to your home page, wherever they are on your site

Tip 5: Integrate with social media

• If you have other marketing channels, such as a blog, Twitter, Facebook page or YouTube videos, then make sure there are links to these on your home page. www.addthis.com is a free site that will enable you to put a link with all of the social media logos onto your page.

Tip 6: Integrate with your other marketing

• Link to your event programme, email newsletter sign up or communicate product launches

Tip 7: Use the free tools to measure success

• Google Analytics is free. It will tell you how many visits you are getting, where people are coming from, what they searched for, how long they stayed etc www.google.com/analytics
• The Google Adword Keyword Tool will tell you what words Google currently associates with your site, now. This tells you what keywords your site is optimised for now.
• Google Insights for Search will tell you how often different keywords have been searched for in any time / date combination for any region.

Tip 8: Just get on with it!

• It really is not as difficult as you would imagine....

 

setting up multiple blogs

I've just spent half an hour showing 8 people how to set up their blog on typepad. They all did it at the same time on their PC's. It was very straight forward. It just shows how simple it is to do on typepad....

I'll link to these blogs soon, so watch this space....

Who is tweeting about what in your town?

Thanks to Stephen Smyth who I met at a Business Link presentaion this week for showing me this cool Twitter tool. It tells you what is being Tweeted in any particulat atea in the world. For example, near my home in Wokingham, England, people are currently tweeting about Glastonbury, Wimbledon, the new iPhone and a suspected bomb alert in nearby Camberley. But in New York it is "TGIF - Thank God It's Friday" and Michael Jackson tributes....

It is called Trendsmap

What are they tweeting about down your way?

Update on Asda Democratic Consumerism

A few months back I wrote a blog post about ASDA and how they are trying to take on Tesco by listening to customer research rather than setting up an alternative to Club card. It looks like Asda were listening, as I have just had an email from their PR agency with an update (full marks to Asda and Freud for tragging and influencing bloggers)... Also, full marks for building in the link back to their site within the press release to encourage link backs to their site and of course better search engine performance as a result...

Here is what they said:

Hi Nick,

 

I know that you wrote on your blog about Andy Bond’s ‘Democratic Consumerism’ launch last year, so thought you might be interested to hear that George at Asda has installed cameras in two factories in Bangladesh, becoming the first retailer to launch webcams in overseas factories. It’s all part of Asda’s commitment to encourage customer involvement in the business, and aims to reassure customers about standards and working conditions.

 

The move follows recent moves by George to bring highest quality clothing at lowest price, including a permanent 100 day ‘no quibble’ quality guarantee, and the cameras in Bangladesh follow webcam launches at Asda House in Leeds, a carrot processing plant near Selby, and at an automated cow-milking machine in Lockerbie.

 

Quality you can trust: George at Asda is first retailer to launch webcams in overseas factories 

George at Asda has become the first retailer to allow customers behind the scenes access to the suppliers they source from by installing webcams in two Bangladeshi factories. 

The ‘Clothing Cams’, which can be viewed at www.asda.com/yourasda, are part of Asda’s ongoing commitment to encourage customer involvement in the business and launch in an effort to reassure customers about standards and working conditions.

One camera is in the quality testing lab of a factory making jackets, trousers and shorts for George, and shows the team performing a variety of tests on garments including strength tests to make sure the fabric won’t rip or lose its shape or lose colour after washing. The second camera is situated in the finishing section of a factory making jeans, casual trousers and shorts and shows the final stages of pressing and quality inspections before the garments are shipped to the UK.

Paul Wright, Head of Quality and Ethics for George at Asda, comments:
“Launching two cameras is a relatively small step towards our total focus to customer involvement but it is a further demonstration of our commitment to the quality of our products. We work very closely with our suppliers to ensure high standards are maintained and we wanted a way to showcase our collective achievements across our entire global supply base.

“We are the first fashion retailer to put webcams into factories, allowing our customers a direct window into our business in a way that has never been shared publically before. The factory owners are extremely proud to think that customers in the UK will be impressed by the standards of production.”

Over the last 18 months George has been striving to bring the highest quality clothing at the lowest prices possible for customers and is now so confident in the quality of the range that Asda recently launched a permanent 100 day ‘no quibble’ quality guarantee, the best returns policy on the high street.

The cameras in Bangladesh follow webcam launches at Asda House in Leeds, a carrot processing plant near Selby, and at an automated cow-milking machine in Lockerbie.