Online brand tracking

[Richard Martin]

Companies are often offering an online brand tracking service to us.

I consider this an important issue - but what do these guys actually do that we can't do ourselves?

We don't have a huge amount of money to play with, and currently use Google Alerts as a guide which has served us pretty well.

So I was wondering what tools these guys use and whether peopel think they are worth the cash?

No doubt a few companies will crop up here to defend/promote themselves.

Thanks for reading.

 

[petera]

Hi Richard, a lot of Digital Agencies are using sophisticated social media monitoring software that can track ten of thousands of online conversations about brands, news stories etc. These software packages also allow you to engage with those people who are talking about your brands which, from a reputation management point of view, is really powerful.

 

[Richard Martin]

So they basically have an advanced Google Alerts tool?

Once they have ID'd a comment, I guess it would be up to us to respond if/how we saw fit.

 

[petera]

Yes, but a very very advanced Google Alerts. You can track conversations over a period of time to see how they develop, find out who the social authorites are on your brand and whether they have a blog, facebook profile, twitter profile etc.

Yes you would be expected to engage with these people although some of the bigger companies using it will hire PR agencies to deal with the negative posters.

 

[Richard Martin]

Thanks for your time Petera.

 

[paretowasright]

Richard,

There are 2 products used for this and they are both expensive but very good too. One is about $600 for 20,000 searches and the other is a £10k licence per annum but needs quite a lot of training to master (about 80 hours) . You are right though quite a lot of this can be tracked if all the correct alerts are set up but bigger brands and companies need the depth these bits of software give especially for measurement.

 

[DoLally]

Hi Richard, a lot of Digital Agencies are using sophisticated social media monitoring software that can track ten of thousands of online conversations about brands, news stories etc. These software packages also allow you to engage with those people who are talking about your brands which, from a reputation management point of view, is really powerful.

Hi Richard

As Petera says above they have enormous resource to track social networks - a friend of mine got a contract job with a well known online money portal - he mentioned on his twitter account that he had got the job and it would be "easy" - he received a phone call from their HR department within the hour (it might have been a few minutes) asking him to remove the tweet - not the best start he could have had

 

[paretowasright]

Hi Richard

As Petera says above they have enormous resource to track social networks - a friend of mine got a contract job with a well known online money portal - he mentioned on his twitter account that he had got the job and it would be "easy" - he received a phone call from their HR department within the hour (it might have been a few minutes) asking him to remove the tweet - not the best start he could have had

Your friend is clearly not a very skilled 'online ambassador' if he made a faux pas like that. I assume he/she is doing the measurement side of things and being kept away from consumer engagement?

 

[DoLally]

Your friend is clearly not a very skilled 'online ambassador' if he made a faux pas like that. I assume he/she is doing the measurement side of things and being kept away from consumer engagement?

- no he is just a web developer - nothing to do with customer relations

 

[paretowasright]

Dolally..thank god for that
Petera...when I get some time I will post a load of ways to track social media for free but it takes about an hour to set it all up. I may also list all the measurements that can be used from some industry standard stuff we use.

 

[Richard Martin]

Thanks again for the info.

paretowasright - would be very interesting, thanks.

 

[Synthesio]

[Hi Richard,
Online tracking services really make up a continuum of monitoring tools, and the one that would be right for your company is really dependent upon your goals.
For some companies, free tools like Google Alerts, Technorati, Twitter Search, RSS feeds on NetVibes, TweetDeck, etc. are just what they need - basic monitoring with some in-house labor to put it all together.
For others, there is simply too much information and/or the free tools do not provide enough metrics for the information. Like any paid service, part of what you are paying for is more advanced technology, and part of it is the convenience of having much of the work done for you. We have our own index, for example, that we filter by hand (both the relevance of the article and the sentiment - positive, negative, or neutral), so that companies like yours can simply focus less energy on "cleaning" the search returns and analyzing it, and more on engaging with your customers.
You might like a wiki put together by Ken Burbary that shows a number of free and paid monitoring tools that lets you sort them by name, media type coverage, whether they are free or paid, and the countries that they monitor. We can't post the link, but if you look up Ken Burbary social media monitoring wiki, you'll find it

Best wishes in your monitoring,
Michelle
Synthesio

 

[paretowasright]

Edited below

 

[paretowasright]

[Hi Richard,
Online tracking services really make up a continuum of monitoring tools, and the one that would be right for your company is really dependent upon your goals.
For some companies, free tools like Google Alerts, Technorati, Twitter Search, RSS feeds on NetVibes, TweetDeck, etc. are just what they need - basic monitoring with some in-house labor to put it all together.
For others, there is simply too much information and/or the free tools do not provide enough metrics for the information. Like any paid service, part of what you are paying for is more advanced technology, and part of it is the convenience of having much of the work done for you. We have our own index, for example, that we filter by hand (both the relevance of the article and the sentiment - positive, negative, or neutral), so that companies like yours can simply focus less energy on "cleaning" the search returns and analyzing it, and more on engaging with your customers.
You might like a wiki put together by Ken Burbary that shows a number of free and paid monitoring tools that lets you sort them by name, media type coverage, whether they are free or paid, and the countries that they monitor. We can't post the link, but if you look up Ken Burbary social media monitoring wiki, you'll find it

Best wishes in your monitoring,
Michelle
Synthesio

I think this is poor attempt at getting clicks on the wiki mentioned and if so the poster clearly fails to understand social media by adopting such cheapskate chancer methods.

 

[Synthesio]

Paretowasright,
I'm sorry it came off that way! Actually, thank you for reminding me of being 100% transparent in posts: we are a monitoring company, but I felt that our solution would probably not be the best for Richard and I wanted to share a link that has been passed around quite a bit since it lists both free and paid tools.
Richard is right that free tools are often just the thing for small businesses. The most important thing is listening.
What could even be useful for some would be to add an extra listening pipe that monitors mentions made about online reputation. People often post articles about free ways to monitor your online reputation that are useful for small business owners to update their methods for listening.
Typing in "free online reputation tools" or "free social media monitoring tools" in Google search will give pages of helpful articles.
Again, sorry if the last post came off as a spam-like post, that is the last thing that I intended. Social media can indeed be tricky and a great deal of miscommunication can happen when sending written messages back and forth.

Michelle

 

[paretowasright]

Thanks for clarifying Michelle as it so looked like a cheap plug for that wiki
There are far too many chancers coming on here with single digit posting levels trying it on and I seem to take exception to that!
I look forward to your social media contributions x

 

[Synthesio]

I was glad you left that message, actually. Everyone in social media needs to be kept in check sometimes, and it is the comments that may seem negative at first glance that make us stop, think, and reflect on how we wrote something, and offers an opportunity for further dialogue.
Forums are the best for all of this Look forward to your contributions as well!

Michelle