This week I was interviewed on the best ways to measure social media and the different applications for both PR and advertising professionals.

PRWeek wanted to know more about how Radian6 makes social media monitoring a user-friendly experience. My answer to this question touched on the fact that users often start off trying to manually monitor blogs using a collection of free online tools. However they quickly discover that they are missing user generated content from sources other than blogs and getting overwhelmed with what they do find with too little time to analyze and no way of knowing what they should be focused on from a priority point of view. I mentioned that a social media monitoring solution should allow for the ability to monitoring all forms of social media from blogs, video and image sharing sites, opinion sites and forums to new platforms like microblogging. The tool should track viral properties continually on every type of content so that it can be sorted and prioritized. It should be helpful in finding trends, influencers, and crisis’ and be a valuable tool for comparing relative buzz verses competitors and between known issues. Social media is high speed and so the solution used needs to be able to track in real-time and with a user-interface that turns the complex into the easy-to-use-and-understand.

PRWeek wanted to know some of the best ways to measure social media. I mentioned that a solution should help the user dynamically measure buzz, sentiment, influences and other conversational metrics. And it should measure by topics as defined by the user whether by brand, competition, industry, personality or corporation.

Finally, PRWeek wanted to know the different uses of social media monitoring in the PR and advertising fields. For PR professionals, the ability to track online conversations, uncover potential crisis’ as they happen and know which influential sites or individuals to engage with is invaluable. On the ad side, social media monitoring uncovers growing trends, shows the locations of on topic conversations for ad placements and provides a way to gauge the effectiveness and impact of a campaign over time.

Source: PRWeek Products & Tools Newsletter

At the Rising Stars Gala & Awards Ceremony last night at the Delta Beauséjour in Moncton, New Brunswick Radian6′s CTO, Chris Newton, was selected as one of this year’s Rising Stars from this year’s list of IT professionals nominated by peers for their superlative work and contribution to the industry and their community.

Congrats Chris!

We were honored to host Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer last week here in New Brunswick. Our paths first crossed in social media when we saw him tweet on Twitter about his search for a social media monitoring solution for a client of his at Doe Anderson. We reached out and the rest is history. During one of his messages he mentioned that he’d love to visit and after his successful Baja1000 and Robbie Gordon experiment it was suggested that a bit of maniac sledding take place while he was here. And it certainly did and thank goodness Jason wasn’t hurt in the process.

Jason also had a chance to interview Marcel about social media measurement which included a brief look at the product itself. I must apologize that I wasn’t much of a camera man so it can get a bit blurry in spots with the screen shots but it will give you an idea at least.

Also see the video at Social Media Explorer.While Jason was here he also agreed to be the guest speaker at our region’s very first Social Media Meetup – Third Tuesday New Brunswick. About 30 people showed up to hear a great talk from Jason including lots of examples of how social media can work. Organized by Lisa Rousseau of MeshEast, the attendees also passed the hat and helped to raise $163 for the Frozen Pea Fund to support Susan Reynolds.We thoroughly enjoyed our visit with Jason and hope he comes back to visit us in during the three other seasons of the year. We promise lots more adventure then as well.

Jason Falls is in our neck of the woods next week so we thought, why not have him speak at our region’s first Social Media Meetup. With the kind help of Lisa Rousseau of MeshEast the idea took shape and the meetup was born.

If you happen to be in the area we’d love to see you at the Meetup next Wednesday, January 10th at 7pm in Fredericton. If you aren’t from the area and you want your fill of 8ft high snow drifts and sub zero Fahrenheit temperatures just like Jason just let us know as I’m sure we can find space next to the fire to warm you up.

See you there.

We’ve all seen how ideas can spread with social media. The Frozen Pea Fund inspired by Susan Reynolds is a wonderful example. Just take a look at the number of posts generated so far on the topic. And because of the discussion try searching frozen peas on Google and see what you get. One post on the first page but pages two and on are dominated by the discussion.

It’s a great example of how real communities are in the virtual world of social media. It shows how powerful ideas and views can be quickly shared amongst communities and how real actions can be taken (see the money Connie Reece has been raising for Breast Cancer Research).

Let’s not appease cancer. Support the The Frozen Pea Fund.