(FREE) SOCIAL MONITORING TOOLS

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As Radian6's social monitoring package starts (according to their website) at $600/month* to cover only 1 topic profile (see http://bit.ly/nLXHFK) and as much as $10,000/month for a ‘Pro’ account (to hear a mouse fart) – you really need to ask yourself whether your brand actually requires that level of engagement.   

Unless you’re a brand with a significant need to 'frame' and direct discussions - someone like Nestle or Monsanto for example (recently voted “2011’s Most Evil Corporation of the Year”) - you'll be happy to know that there are any number of Social Monitoring Tools that will meet your needs.  Note:  Be mindful to choose at least one overarching tool that monitors multiple types of social media.  Here is the beginning of what we hope will be a growing list of (free) monitoring resources, so if you stumble across a new free social monitoring tools (that aren’t trials or limited time offers) please forward to info@goodbuzz.ca.  

Social Mention – As the title implies, SM tracks and measures what is being said about a specific topic in real time across more than 100 social media services. While Social Mention may appear to allow the setting up of alerts, the functionality hasn't been available for nearly a year.  Still a solid real-time social search algorithm that measures sentiment (positive, neutral, negative) as well.  

MonitorThis – Allows you to search for brand mentions in 25 different search engines, however doesn’t appear to support alerts.

WhosTalkin.com - The search and sorting algorithms combine data taken from over 60 of the internet's most popular social media gateways (however also doesn’t appear to support alerts.)  Also, check out IceRocket and Alltop

Facebook Search as a Facebook specific monitoring tool. Openbook may also be useful in turning up mentions of your brand in Facebook status updates. 

Addict-o-matic lets you instantly create a custom page with the latest buzz on a given topic. The browser-based tool offers a one-stop customized site for seeing results across multiple social media channels.

Guzzle reads hundreds of feeds on social media sites every second to help you keep abreast of stuff you care about.

Buzzoo is a buzz aggregator drawing from multiple sources.

BuzzFeed sports a robust buzz-detection algorithm.

Twendz piggybacks off Twitter Search to offer user sentiment in real time.

Social Seek will tell you who’s making the most noise about your brand.

Mon.itor.us is a free website, server and traffic monitoring service.

Keotag lets you search multiple search engines, create social bookmark links around a topic or see who has used your brand as a tag.

Comment Sniper lets be the first to comment on relevant blog posts about your brand or sector. You set up blogs you want to monitor, and Comment Sniper sends you a desktop notification or text message to your mobile device whenever a new post goes up.

coComment is a Web service and Firefox plug-in that helps you keep track of blog comment threads. Whenever there is an update, such as a new follow-up comment, coComment notifies you instantly. It’s a handy service that saves you the trouble of checking back on blogs that don’t offer a comment notification feature.

Commentful is another Web service that helps you keep track of blog comments.

Omgili (Oh my God I love it) forum search engine lets you find communities, message boards and discussion threads about any topic.

co.mments helps you keep track of conversations.

Boardtracker, Big Boards, and Yuku Find crawl forums, blog posts, images and microblogs. They'll also let you know when a new forum starts specifically to discuss your brand or organization.  

WatchThatPage - Keeps a watchful eye when updates take place to an important Web page — say, your Wikipedia page or key pages on your competitors’ sites. Instruct WatchThatPage to keep tabs on any Web page, and you’ll receive an alert any time a change is made to the page.

Google Alerts - One of the easiest and most popular of free monitoring services, Google Alerts are notifications of (customizable) new results on up to 1000 search terms.  As the name implies, alerts can be set up. 

When you marry this with Google Trends (which compares how frequently searches have been made on up to five topics over time) you can unearth a great deal of insight. Social media monitoring begins with a dashboard.

A good choice to begin your monitoring is Google Reader: Subscribe to the RSS feeds of top blogs in your sector, competitors’ sites, news sites, Twitter searches and more, all in one place. You can even subscribe to searches on sites like Flickr and YouTube, so you’ll get an update on any new image or video that matches your brand or cause.  Finally, Google Realtime Search, lets you search the social Web (chiefly Twitter) and create email alerts for search terms. Also don’t forget Google Advanced Blog Search

As we mentioned, here is the beginning of what we hope will be a growing list of (free) monitoring resources, so if you stumble across a new free social monitoring tools (that aren’t trials or limited time offers) please forward to info@goodbuzz.ca.   

THE NEXT 5,000 DAYS OF THE WEB - TED PARTNER SERIES

MASTERING FACEBOOK MODERATION

As simple as people find the Facebook interface and as powerful as its feature set, it’s amazing how many brands only seem to recognize a portion of the platforms potential.  Though we freely admit that messing it up can be easy to do. Knowing what is best practice it seems is always easier than consistently delivering it.  With that in mind, here are some of the lessons learned along the way.

Post Frequency - Be aware of what content you would like users to see from your brand and how frequently you are posting.  Remember, your fans may be passionate about your brand, but that might not mean they want their Facebook News Feed flooded with updates at the top of every hour. Keep in mind that a user’s News Feed is live and real time information.

Posts are also more effective during the week when people are typically checking Facebook (in the morning, just before or after lunch and in the evening). Create a schedule just like you would for any media.  Note that Post frequency can also vary depending on the industry your brand is a part of. For example, a news brand may post more frequently than a restaurant. The users are expecting more posts from a news organization than their restaurant.

Post Type  - Make effective use of multimedia and dynamic wall posts and apps for heightened engagement. Not only do multi-media posts present engaging content, they also provide key viral discovery components. That’s where the Facebook “share” function comes into play, which is automatically included on every wall post using the Facebook “links” app. Utilizing Facebook’s video, audio and image posts allows users to share with friends via news feeds and notifications, which helps spread the word and keeps them coming back for repeat visits.

URLs  - URLs should be short and easy to type. Making them that way increases the chance that a visitor will click on them. However, public URL shorteners don't include your brand in the URL, and some services like bit.ly allow the general public to see your brand's traffic!

URL shorteners are Internet tools used to shorten longer URL links. These shorteners are typically used to accommodate character space and are more aesthetically pleasing. Another way brands utilize these shorteners is use it to track the analytics of a link. These shorteners allow users to view how many times the link has been clicked and redirected, and where the link is being shared. Several online services offer to shorten your URL for free but do not give the links or pages credibility.

Building an Audience - Driving traffic to your page is key to building your audience. Facebook ads can amp up the amount of visitors you have to your page increasing the likelihood they will connect with your page. Promoting Facebook exclusive offers is another way to attract users to your page.

If applicable, cross-promote with other associated official fan pages to give credibility to your page. For example, if you have an official company page and have offerings in other pages, make sure you link them to main page for user reference and vice-versa. That way, users who are connected to one page have the opportunity to see the other pages and connect with it too.

Page Information - Fill out your page information as completely as possible within the Info tab and the blurb box underneath the profile image. This helps your page surface when users conduct a Facebook search for your company.  Focus the brand’s social presence. Too many separate company pages can lead to over-fragmentation, which can be confusing for users trying to find accurate information.

Engagement - Updates should ideally be posted when most people are checking their Facebook accounts. Vitrue research shows that posts are more effective during the week when people are typically checking Facebook (first thing in the morning, just before or after lunch and in the evening).

Brands should aim to post updates 2-3 times a day to keep content fresh on their wall. A brand who posts infrequently will have stale content which will not encourage users to return to a page. A brand who posts too much may annoy their audience, which may result in their social connections opting out of your company’s updates.

Posts should solicit as much engagement and participation as possible. The best ways to engage your audience are by asking questions in your updates, posting relevant content that the audience will comment on and share. Fan comments are more desirable than “likes” because they require more of a time investment from the user. Also when a fan comments, it gets broadcasted to their friends through their news feeds.  Remember, users are on your page to interact with your brand, so try to respond to user comments and wall posts in a timely fashion. They will appreciate the attention and might tell their friends about the experience.

Moderate fan posts and comments for obscenity and spam as it relates to your company’s social media policy. Moderation allows for a safe environment for all ages. However, some brands are more accepting of certain language based on their brand personality.

It's also best to use a branded URL shortener to give your links credibility and assurance that the link will redirect to a relevant page. Another benefit of using certain branded URL shorteners is that they protect against making your links analytics public. For example, if you add a "+" to the end of any bit.ly link, you can make the analytics public.

Since social media is a more informal landscape than traditional media, the brand communication should be more personal too. Balance promotional offers with conversation.

Remember - The space is intended to allow for two-way communication -- don’t simply use social media as a push medium for promotions.  The entire exercise is intended to be participatory.

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Need some help getting started?  Maybe you’d like Goodbuzz to moderate your social platforms?  How can we help you?  E-mail Andrew Giles or join the discussion on Facebook.

SOCIAL MEDIA IN 2012 - TRENDS + PREDICTIONS

Note:  These predictions are by Freddie Laker, Director of Digital Strategy at SapientNitro.


SOCIAL MEDIA IN 2012 - Ultimately, share of voice, point of view and community influence will be more important than brand ownership — and marketers will need to get over it if they want to stay relevant in 2012.

1. Privacy expectations will (have to) change

There will be a cultural shift, whereby people will begin to find it increasingly more acceptable to expose more and more of their personal details on different forms of social media. Sharing your likes, dislikes, opinions, photos, videos and other forms of personal information will be the norm and people will become more accepting of personalized experiences, both corporate and personal, that are reacting to this dearth of personal information.

2. Complete decentralization of social networks

The concept of a friend network will be a portable experience. You’ll find most digital experiences will be able to leverage the power of your social networks in a way that leverages your readily available personal information and the relationships you’ve established. We’re already seeing the beginnings of this with Facebook Connect and Google’s FriendConnect.

3. Our interaction with search engines will be different

Real-time information in Google search, e.g. from Twitter, blog results and user reviews, will be more prominent. Google’s Social Search will change the way we interact with search engines by pushing relevant content from our personal networks to the front of search results, making them more personalized. The importance of digital-influencer marketing will increase significantly.

4. Rise of the content aggregators

The amount of content online is growing at an exponential rate, and most online users have at least three online profiles from social networks to micro-blogging to social news sites. Our ability to manage this influx is challenging, and content aggregators will be the new demi-gods, bringing method to madness (and make a killing). Filtering and managing content will be big business for those who can get it right and provide easy-to-use services.

5. Social media augmented reality

Openly accessible information from the social-media space will be used to enhance everyday experiences. For example: the contacts book in your phone links to Facebook and Twitter to show real-time updates on what the contact is doing before you put in the call, real-time reviews from friends and associates will appear in GPS-based mapping services as a standard feature, and socially enabled CRM will change the way companies manage business relationships forever.

6. Influencer marketing will be redefined

As social media continues to permeate more and more aspects of not only the way we interact with digital media but also other channels such as digital outdoor, commerce or online TV, we will see the significance of influencer marketing grow dramatically. As a basic example, the inclusion of Twitter in Google search results or Google’s soon-to-be-released Social Search will permeate search results with content that will not be managed by Google’s infamous PageRank but by social influence and relevance to your social network. Discovering people that can help you to reach your desired consumer will become exponentially more effective and important.

7. Ratings everywhere

In today’s world, having a commerce site that doesn’t have user ratings could actually prove to be a detriment to sales. In the near future, brands and businesses will more frequently place user ratings and accept open feedback on their actual websites. User ratings will become so common that marketers should expect to find them woven into most digital experiences.

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Note: There is also a complete Slideshare narrated presentation available.

See the full article at AdvertisingAge

Additional source: http://takemetoyourleader.com/2010/04/01/social-media-2012-presentation/

The Cult of “ME” - Narcissism and Social Media

Freud and others believed a reasonable amount of healthy narcissism allowed an individual's perception of his needs to be balanced in relation to others.  Marked by the rise of celebrity culture, the destruction of tradition, the devaluation of ordinary skills and families in our modern society - advertisers today know that consumers (i.e. “YOU”) obsessively focus on “the realization of the self".  

This cult of “me” is ironically fueled by "personalization." Web 2.0 personalizes culture so that it reflects ourselves rather than the world around us. Blogs personalize media content so that all we read are our own thoughts. Online stores personalize our preferences, thus feeding back to us our own taste.  Google personalizes searches so that all we see are advertisements for products and services we already use.  Whether Yahoo’s "It's y!ou", to “mySAP” to the “iPad” to T-Mobile’s “myTouch’s - 100% you," --it seems like you’re getting "you-ed" everywhere today. 

The shear irony therefore in multiple advertisers attempting to target millions of people with messages about their individuality, makes you realize just how uninspired we all must be.   Society itself seems to have used up its store of constructive ideas.  Moreover, we seem to have lost both the capacity and the will to
confront the difficulties that threaten to overwhelm us.  Today we are commentators and pedestrians in a state of somnambulism – seemingly oblivious to the fact that we have become both politically and intellectually bankrupt.

Isn’t it time we rediscovered our sense of civic obligation?