Social Media Monitoring Tools

Discovering what consumers are saying about a brand, their products, their services, or even their competitors, is becoming ever more important in what we do.

Social Media conversations are the fastest growing segment of the web – with more than 1 million new articles posted on a variety of sites and communities every day.

People are talking about brands, products, services, and people. Moreover with today’s digital communication tools they are publishing their thoughts to a worldwide audience. They write on blogs and in online communities, and they share pictures and videos on popular sites. Paying attention to these online conversations is a new imperative for anyone who cares about a brand’s reputation.

As more consumers turn to "peer-to-peer" web communications as their trusted source of news, information, and opinions, this growing phenomenon is creating a new generation of "brand influencers" who are collectively altering perceptions and purchase decisions.

Brands need to connect with consumers online and participate in ongoing social media dialogue about their products and services, so to be successful we need to understand the landscape of social media, including the most important sites, communities, and the most influential consumers.

Although there are several fee-based buzz monitoring services available, I have compiled a list of free, simple to use, but extremely valuable social media monitoring tools and techniques that will allow you to keep track of a brand’s reputation, or even spy on the competition.

All of these tools are very powerful methods for gaining information and intelligence, and uncovering what people are saying online about our clients and their competitors, all of which can help us produce more insightful work for our clients.


The Full Service
You don’t have to be a developer in order to create your own custom buzz monitoring tool. Thanks to Yahoo Pipes, you can quickly set up your own RSS tracking, complete with filters, for anything you want.

Search Queries

Using Google is the easiest way to find out the overall impression of a brand online. You can start off by simply making sure a site even appears in search results. Then you can get a little more clever by trying queries such as “[brand X] sucks”, “I love [brand X]”, “[brand X] is horrible”, etc.

Keyword Alerts

You can keep track of the latest buzz via email using Google Alerts, which lets you track web, blogs, news and groups for any phrase you want. Select “daily”, “weekly” or “as it happens” updates and you’ll get an email whenever a particular keyword(s) that you select is mentioned. You can create several alerts for things such as brand name, product name, etc., and even for terms to monitor negative comments.

Search Query Trends
What search queries are popular on Google right now? Thanks to Google Trends you can get an idea of which keywords are most searched for. You can narrow your research to specific countries or cities – letting you know if a product has global or local appeal.

Industry News

If you simply don’t have time to track everything that specifically relates to a brand, or it’s competition, you can still track news that relates to its industry. Moreover and Yahoo are just a couple of resources that offer RSS feeds for aggregated industry news.

Mainstream News

One of the best ways to track mainstream media mentions of a brand is to use Google News. Enter the brand name, sort the results by date published, and then subscribe to the RSS feed. You’ll get instant RSS updates of any news items that mention the brand.

News Buzz

It’s one thing to track any news that relates to a business, but if you just want to know about the news that becomes popular then sites such as Digg and Reddit will let you search for submitted stories that match a company name. Subscribe to the resulting RSS feed and you’ll know about any story that mentions the company – or their rivals.

Real Time Buzz
Serph is a very valuable tool that tracks keywords or phrases in real time. Serph doesn’t just look at search results it looks at all the available online information out there and it does so in real time. If you want to get a good snapshot for a particular term or phrase then Serph is the way to do it.

Social Media News

By the time a hot news story gets picked-up by the mainstream media, it could have made the rounds for days in the blogosphere. Technorati is one of the best options for tracking social media sites. Custom RSS feeds let you get quick updates on any blog that utters a brand’s name.

Blog Posts

If a blog happens to ‘ping’ the blogosphere, the chances are that it will get on Google Blog Search. Even if the blog isn’t in Google news, or doesn’t make the main Google index, Google Blog Search might still find that story that mentions a recent product launch. You can get alerts to matching stories via email or RSS.

Blog Comments

Sometimes tracking a blog post doesn’t reveal the full conversation about a brand. The blog post might be positive, but those leaving comments could still attack its reputation. Services such as co.mments.com track the comments left on blogs. You can search for a brand and subscribe to the RSS feed for instant updates.

Blog Conversations

A negative blog post appears on a low-trafficked blog and there are no comments to track. End of story? Not quite, what if a very popular blogger picks up on the story? It could spread very quickly. Blogpulse’s conversation tracker helps you track who’s linking to that blog post about a brand.

Blog Trends

How well is a competitor’s new product launch going? Blogpulse trends lets you track whether a keyword is getting growing blog mentions or not.

Tags

Wouldn’t it be great if you could enter a keyword and see who used that word as a “tag”? How much better would it be if you could see matching tags across more than a dozen sites? Keotag.com does just that, making it easy for you to track if someone tags a page using a brand or product name.

Brand Tags

The basic idea of brand tags is that a brand exists entirely in people's heads, therefore, whatever they say a brand is, the brand is. Brand tags is a collective experiment in brand perception in which all the tags are generated by people so you can see what people actually think a brand is.

Forum Posts

Sometimes the most important conversations don’t happen on blogs. Forums and message boards can host conversations about a brand and you’d never know about it. Sites such as Boardtracker.com keep an eye on popular forums and alert you by RSS if a company is mentioned in a thread.

Consumer Complaints

Ripoff Report is a worldwide consumer reporting website and publication, by consumers, for consumers, to file and document complaints about companies or individuals.

Keyword Referrals

Sure you could probably take an educated guess as to which sites might get the most traffic for a particular keyword, but it’s more useful to actually spy on the competitors. Compete’s Search Analytics allows you to enter a keyword and see which websites are getting traffic for that keyword.

Site Referrals

Maybe you’re not sure which keywords you should target for an SEM campaign. Compete’s Search Analytics will also let you enter any domain name and see which keywords are driving traffic to that site, so you can see which keywords competitors are targeting.

Bookmarks

Remember the days when customers would bookmark a site and you would never knew about it? Thanks to online bookmarking services such as del.icio.us more people are sharing their bookmarks online. RSS feeds make it easy to track whenever someone bookmarks a web page that includes mention of a company.

Twitter Search

Twitter search is a great way to find out what people on twitter are talking about. Twitter search is a search engine for twitter and it’s an extremely valuable twitter monitoring tool. You can see what people are saying about a brand or a particular topic.

Photos

Did an employee release a photo of a new product? Did someone snap a photo of the MD leaving a strip-club? The chances are that they might upload it to image hosting sites such as Flickr. You can subscribe to an RSS feed that will update you on any new image that matches a company or product name.

Videos

Google Video recently switched focus to index videos from many online hosting sites (such as YouTube and MetaCafe). Now you can keep track of videos that include brand names.

Changing Information

Wikipedia is one of the most trusted resources for information on the web. You might be interested in any updates to a company profile, or maybe if your competitor is trying to remove links to a website. Fortunately you can track change history for any Wikipedia page by clicking on the “history” tab and have the changes sent to your RSS reader.

Job Listings

If a competitor wants to start a new service or launch a new product, the chances are they’ll need to hire new staff to achieve this. Classifieds search engine Oodle scours many online job listings and aggregates the information in a central location. Set up RSS feeds for searches on competitors and you’ll know whenever they list a vacant position.

Financial Filings
You can get a good feel for the financial health of publicly-traded companies by keeping a close eye on their SEC filings. Use Edgar Online to see if they are subject to an SEC investigation or if they are dumping stock!

Conference Calls

Sometimes you can learn competitive information by listening to a company’s conference calls. SeekingAlpha lets you subscribe to an RSS feed of conference call transcripts. Open up the transcript and you can quickly get a snapshot of their financial health, or new product launch.

Patents

Keeping track of patent filings was notoriously difficult before Google Patent Search came along. Now you can keep any eye on patents filed that relate to your industry, or even ones that might violate company held patents.

Events

Yahoo’s Upcoming lets you get RSS alerts on any new event that matches selected keyword. You can keep track of conferences that you might want to attend, or sponsor. In addition, you can keep track of seminars or meetings being held by competitors.

New Products

Say you want to get some ideas of products that might be hot right now. The community tagging section in Amazon.com lets you view product “tags”, and then review similar tags. You can use this to get an idea of companion products.

Mobile internet use up 25%

Mobile internet usage is growing eight times faster than PC-based internet according to the first set of mobile data from Nielsen Online.

The Mobile Media findings show that mobile internet traffic increased 25% from 5.8m in Q2 to 7.3m users in Q3 2008. In comparison PC-based internet only had a 3% growth from 34.3m to 35.3m.

The survey found that mobile internet is increasingly popular among young people, with 25% of mobile internet users aged 16-24, with just 12% being older than 55.

BBC News is the most popular mobile internet site, attracting 1.7m unique users in Q3. This was followed by Google, Facebook and Hotmail, highlighting the advantage of mobile when it comes to immediacy.

Mobile internet traffic also accounted for the majority of page visits to sites like BBC Weather, Sky Sports and Gmail.

People often need fast and instant access to content wherever they are, and mobile can obviously satisfy this. But the fact that weather, sports, news and email sites make up the majority of the leading mobile sites show that at the moment mobile internet is mainly about functionality and need, as opposed to the more entertainment and ecommerce-focused makeup of the leading PC-based sites.

However, the fact that so many people now access the web through their phone shows that mobile internet is fast becoming a viable opportunity for advertisers and publishers to reach important demographic groups.

Find Live Guy by Vodafone

Vodafone have created a nice little campaign called Live Guy in which a Vodafone representative, dressed in a red jumper and boldly proclaiming “I'm Live Guy”, is heading round the UK as the focus of a treasure hunt.

The idea is that Live Guy moves around the country visiting 11 cities over a 12 day period, and uses a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook’s wireless capabilities to get online and leave a live trail of clues to his whereabouts.

Hunters simply have to track him down using his route plan and the clues left on his blog and across social media sites, and confront him with the words “You're Live Guy and I'm a Vodafone winner” to be in with the chance to win a netbook.

Treasure hunters who are unable to meet Live Guy in person can also have the chance to win a netbook by sticking pins in a Google Map app to guess his location.

You can find out more, and join in the hunt, on the Live Guy website.

Google’s new customisable search feature

Google has launched a new feature called SearchWiki, which allows users to rearrange and customise their search results.

The idea is for users to be able to tailor searches they may frequently use. For example, if someone searches for cinema listings, they can make a preferred site always come first in the search results even if it would usually come further down the list in the natural search.

SearchWiki also lets users add URLs for sites they would like to show up in the search in future, remove results they are not interested in, and even allows users to make notes on sites for future searches.

The feature is only available when a user is signed in with their Google account and does not affect the way other users receive search results.

Any changes only affect users own searches, but SearchWiki also is also a great way to share insights with other searchers as you can see how the community has collectively edited a search result by clicking on the 'See all notes for this SearchWiki' link.

Intel's Digital Drag Race

Intel has launched a design challenge which pits designers in a head-to-head race to create the best animation in one hour.

Called the Digital Drag Race, designers must create a 17-second film based on the theme of speed, power, or innovation using three mandatory assets - a video, a music file, and a vector image.

Racers have one hour to create the film using Adobe's Creative Suite 4 on a computer powered by Intel’s latest chip the Core i7 Extreme Edition.

The Digital Drag Race site includes the professional films along with a user-generated section in which amateur designers can submit their films, together with a You Tube channel where all the videos are hosted.

User reviews more influential than brand websites

Five years ago the internet was pretty much just an entertainment media. Today it has evolved into an effective everyday management tool that is enabling consumers to control and develop their lifestyle experiences, whether that is communication, entertainment, information gathering, or resource management.

As a result there is a wealth of opportunity for brands and advertisers to engage with these active consumers, but the challenge is to create campaigns that enable them to continue to feel in control.

According to a new report by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA), two thirds of European internet users regard user reviews as being more important than a brands own website when deciding which products to purchase online.

The report states that 64 per cent of Europeans consider personal recommendations important when researching products and services, whilst only 49 per cent deem the websites of well-known brands to be important.

In addition, 41 per cent admitted to changing their mind about the brand they were about to buy based on online research.

Online research is also leading to more sales, with conversion rates increasing from 50 per cent in 2004 to 87 per cent in 2008.

In 2008, consumers made an average of 9.2 online purchases per person over a six month period, compared to 7.7 in 2007.

E-commerce has more than doubled since 2004, with 40 per cent of users making an online purchase in 2004, compared with 84 per cent in 2008.

Could this be the perfect mobile phone?

We’re all still waiting for the perfect mobile phone right? And although there are plenty of great handsets out there, no-one has yet designed one that covers every single feature impeccably.

Well gadget magazine T3 in collaboration with design company The Alloy reckon they might have cracked it with the '01' - a phone that seamlessly integrates a camera, games machine, GPS unit, and full web browser in a sleek slice of black metal.

The 01 Phone comes with a large touchscreen display which can be operated using either your fingers or a multi-touch stylus, whilst tucked away inside is a full, multi-function QWERTY keyboard.

Although the original design had a suitably futuristic virtual laser keyboard which projected a keyboard-shape onto your lap or desk, in practical terms it wasn't smart enough to be included as was a bit uncomfortable to use.

Instead the slide-out QWERTY keyboard makes it easier to write messages, and even changes interface depending on the function being used on the phone at that time.

For example when using the camera, the keypad brings up camera-related buttons leaving the whole of the screen free to display the image. Likewise, when browsing the internet the keypad displays only internet-related buttons, and switching into the gaming mode means the keypad displays a full game controller set-up.

The back of the 01 Phone looks just as smart as the front with a 5-megapixel camera, and even contains a slide out 'mini-phone'. This mini-phone gives you basic functions, allowing you to make quick calls without the need to get the phone out of your bag or pocket. It's made of flexible material, so you can even wrap the mini-phone around your wrist!

Underneath the slide-out keypad are two pop out wireless earphones which can be molded into a comfortable shape to fit in your ear.

The project is still at the "wouldn't it be cool if…?" concept stage, but those behind it are serious about taking it further, as all the technology featured in the 01 Phone is possible, so there is no reason why manufacturers can't build something similar. In fact, The Alloy is currently creating a working prototype, so we may soon be able to get hold of our own 01 soon!

You can find out more and join the campaign to get the 01 made at: www.the01phone.com

Are agencies ready for the recession?

As the credit crunch starts to bite there are stories emerging of job losses, agencies closing or looking for merger opportunities.

But it still appears that some agencies have not woken up to this reality and seem content with top heavy management, slow and inflexible processes, unrealistic creative, and a lack of analysis.

Agencies that seem to have abandoned the fundamental disciplines of proposition-driven creativity, targeting, testing, and ROI strategies that are so attractive to brands as we enter recession.

Even some of the pure-play digital agencies do not seem to have mastered the disciplines required to turn their technical skills into effective customer communications.

So how should an agency prepare for recession? As important as keeping costs under control, isn’t it commonsense that in a recession clients look for ROI and quick gains?

Now is the time to move more customers online and to be smarter with data and analytics in order to hone targeting and messaging. A time to test and use the results to establish why some ideas work better than others, and then to apply those learnings. A time to focus on propositions and benefits, and to show brands how we can improve their results for less than they currently spend.

Using social networking for recruitment

According to recent research, the UK lags behind other European countries in recruitment-based social networking. The 'Aquent Orange Book 2008-2009' found that as a tool for talent acquisition, social media has yet to be fully tested or quantified in the UK with only 2% to 7% of UK candidates and employers using social networking websites for recruitment purposes.

However, 39% of German candidates, 34% of French candidates, 30% of Polish candidates and 23% of candidates from the Netherlands rated social networking sites as a preferred method of job seeking, as did 13% to 18% of employers in these regions.

The perceived risk is that candidates can expose themselves to potential discrimination and can also damage their employment prospects because their online footprint may not come across very favourably. For employers, it remains hugely labour-intensive, can be frustrating, and poses very real risks of brand damage and internal misuse.

But despite its flaws, social media is worth exploration and investment, especially as avenues like job boards and print media are becoming less effective and more expensive.

The survey also found that the demand for skilled digital specialists across London continues to increase, reportedly leading to high rates of staff turnover and short lengths of employment. The average length of service was found to be two years for staff in corporate sectors and digital agencies.

Meanwhile, staff turnover rates of 20% and greater were recorded for a quarter of digital and marketing staff in digital agencies. These high rates of employee churn have an obvious raw cost to the business, but at a deeper level they harm the competitiveness of many agencies at a time when securing market share is increasingly critical.

Caterham to produce user-generated sports car

British manufacturer Caterham is giving enthusiasts around the world a chance to design its all-new sports car via the Web, in a partnership with "virtual car manufacturer" Project Splitwheel.

By joining the Project Splitwheel website, members from around the world are able to submit ideas and concepts for every single aspect of the new Caterham sports car, in what is believed to be the world's first project of this type.

Users can join for free and discuss and debate ideas with other users before ultimately voting on what makes it to the final vehicle.

The Splitwheel website will use a combination of articles, blogs, forum discussion, and a Wikipedia-style user-edited database to create the final design. Project Splitwheel will also provide guidance and input from automotive industry experts as required.

It’s every petrolhead’s dreams to run their own sports car company, so Project Splitwheel is effectively the world's first virtual car manufacturer. Once the final specification is agreed, Caterham will seek to produce a prototype vehicle, which could become an addition to its range as early as 2011.

Caterham has manufactured lightweight, two-seated roadster-style sports cars since the 1950s, including the classic Seven, and currently offers five models which range from £12,000 to £36,000 each.

Top brand websites still inaccessible on mobile

According to a new report by Bango, ten of the twenty most visited websites still fail to work properly on leading mobile handsets.

Between three and five per cent of traffic to websites comes from mobile users, yet websites are not adapting fast enough to match mobile browsing trends, and are failing to present mobile-friendly versions of their sites.

Consumers who access sites from mobile phones often have a bad user experience which can potentially damage the reputation of the brand. Brands should now be asking which handsets, countries and languages matter most to their business, and developing a mobile strategy to match this.

The report, which analysed websites on a number of criteria, found that sites which translate well to mobile include eBay, YouTube, Yahoo!, Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Pepsi launches on-pack QR codes

Pepsi is to launch on-pack and on-shelf mobile QR codes in a bid to increase consumer interaction with the brand.

Pepsi will encourage consumers to photograph the codes - which are unique barcodes that are recognised and translated to a web address by a mobile application - using their mobile phone in order to drive traffic to a dedicated mobile website.

The site includes content such as video clips from around the web, including Pepsi's own 'life-coach', Rusty, as well as mobile games.

The inclusion of QR codes on-pack is an innovative means for Pepsi to communicate and give something back to their consumers, and as consumers become familiar with the codes and their use, Pepsi will be looking to create further opportunities for utilising them in talking to their consumers.

QR codes are an exciting way of getting consumers involved, and although they are still relatively new in the UK, with a brand like Pepsi Max pushing them into the limelight, it should only aid the take up.

QR codes have previously been used by the BBC, The Sun and Harrods.

Tesco looks to become the heart of digital family life

Tesco is to launch a combined interactive ‘pinboard’ and shopping portal in a bid to put the brand at the centre of household life.

The UK's largest retailer is aiming to revolutionise the way people shop online with an interactive desktop that links directly to Tesco.com, and aims to replicate a typical family fridge door.

The application is designed to be a message board and communication point within the homethat will enable user to sync calendars, notes and recipes with Tesco.com, have a shopping list that can be constantly updated, and place orders and arrange delivery without the need to open a browser.

Users can also 'pin' digital photos and messages to the screen, and Tesco aims to enable direct access to social networking sites like Facebook and Bebo.

The retailer had identified the increasing number of homes with PCs and laptops in the kitchen as an opportunity for them to go far beyond their current etail experience, with the idea of the solution being a hub, like people already do with a kitchen pinboard or their fridge.

Grocery shopping isn't very exciting on the web, so Tesco have embarked on a strategy to improve that and change the way people shop online, with the concept of ‘little and often’ rather than ‘one great big shop’, becoming more convenient.

The retail giant is also opening its programming interface (API) to encourage developers and brands to create applications for the new desktop in order to generate an immersive web experience.

They want to build a developer community around the Tesco API to push the concept of creating something that's more than simply grocery shopping. For example a recipe site could have an application on it with the ingredients linked to the users' Tesco.com account.

This is about creating functional utility attached to the Tesco brand, along with its products and services that ultimately drives an emotional as well as a rational connection to the brand as it becomes a more useful part of daily life.

The trial will run until the end of March 2009, and the project is part of a major strategic focus by Tesco to evolve the online shopping experience. The retailer has also announced an overhauled of Tesco.com in April next year.