Leading interactive marketing firm Rosetta selects Radian6 to provide monitoring tools for social media, online public relations, and online reputation management client service offerings.
CLEVELAND, Ohio (PRWEB) October 28, 2008 – Rosetta, one of the nation’s leading interactive agencies, selected Radian6 after an extensive review of online news and social media monitoring services. The monitoring capability will be used for Rosetta’s comprehensive social media and online reputation management client service offerings.

Rosetta’s Online Reputation Management service offers clients a comprehensive four-step process that includes online monitoring, issue identification, strategic content development and deployment. The firm’s deep expertise in search engine optimization (SEO) and interactive marketing offers clients a total package solution to managing their brand online.

Rosetta chose Radian6 to offer our clients the best solution for online news and social media monitoring. The tool is flexible, scalable and can respond to a client’s reputation management needs in a 24/7 business environment.

According to Paul Elliott, partner in charge of Rosetta’s Acquisition Marketing practice, “Rosetta chose Radian6 to offer our clients the best solution for online news and social media monitoring. The tool is flexible, scalable and can respond to a client’s reputation management needs in a 24/7 business environment. ”

Radian6 features a River of News widget that tracks keyword mentions real-time, allowing clients to follow the online “buzz” surrounding their brands. The customizable features of the tool provide insight into both positive and negative perceptions of a brand, helping to identify areas of opportunity and improvement online.

About Radian6 Technologies Inc.
Radian6 provides the social media monitoring platform for marketing, communications and customer support professionals. The company’s flexible dashboard enables monitoring all forms of social media with results appearing in real-time as discovered. Various analysis widgets give users the ability to uncover the top influencers as well as which conversations are having an impact online. Visit www.radian6.com for more information.

About Rosetta
In July 2008, Rosetta acquired Brulant, positioning it within the top 10 of interactive agencies. The company is focused on translating personalized customer connections into business growth for clients. Rosetta brings deep industry expertise to client work within the Retail & Consumer Products, Healthcare, Financial Services, Consumer Technology & Media, B2B and Travel & Hospitality markets. The company’s client service model is based on forging a deep partnership between its integrated team of strategy, creative, marketing and technology experts and clients’ organizations to ensure accelerated and sustained business impact. Some client relationships include Scholastic, Borders and Tractor Supply Company (retail); Johnson & Johnson, Bristol Myers Squibb and Allergan & Shire (healthcare); HSBC, Nationwide, Citizens Bank and National City Bank (financial services); and Microsoft and T-Mobile (Media & Technology). Visit www.Rosetta.com for more information.

Consulting firm will use platform to help clients monitor their company brand, industry happenings, and competition.

Boulder, Colo. (PRWEB) October 19, 2008 – Room214, a Google-certified search marketing and social media agency, has chosen the Radian6 platform for social media monitoring for several of its clients. The firm will use Radian6 to capture online conversations and help steward its clients online reputation.

Radian6′s social media monitoring platform gathers real-time-as-discovered information from across the social web, including blogs, video sharing sites, boards and forums, and emerging media such as FriendFeed and Twitter.

The conversation that happens afterward among the community and key influencers can provide a wealth of information. Monitoring social media with Radian6 allows us to capture valuable insight about emerging trends or crises around a brand so our clients can respond quickly.

“The true value of having your brand mentioned online goes far beyond the mention itself,” says James Clark, cofounder and managing partner of Room214. “The conversation that happens afterward among the community and key influencers can provide a wealth of information. Monitoring social media with Radian6 allows us to capture valuable insight about emerging trends or crises around a brand so our clients can respond quickly.”

Tracking, listening and engaging around views and questions expressed in social media are an increasingly important part of customer relationship management. And the public nature of these conversations mean that compliments, criticisms, and influencer opinions travel farther, faster, and with greater impact. By monitoring spikes in conversation around targeted keywords, Radian6 users can pinpoint their most active industry influencers, reach out, and participate in the conversation at its peak.

“Online conversations across social media can provide key strategic insight for brands,” says Marcel LeBrun, CEO of Radian6. “Using Radian6, businesses can understand what terms their customers are using to describe them, or even their competitors. Armed with that critical information, companies can adjust their marketing and communication efforts – both online and off – to converse with their customers in a language that resonates with them.”

“Monitoring the social web with Radian6 will give us and our clients the power to drive successful word of mouth for their brands,” concludes Clark. “Companies that demonstrate that they’re listening and responding to their customers will always have a competitive advantage. Customer service, public relations and marketing opportunities arise for the brands that best engage in dialogue.”

About Room 214 Inc
Room 214 is a social media agency offering outsourced online viral and word of mouth marketing services that includes: online reputation management and monitoring, social media campaign development and execution, Facebook strategies, management and implementation, iPhone application development, custom blog implementations, podcast production and promotion, syndicating online press rooms, optimized press releases, online article marketing, search engine optimization, pay-per-click campaigns, landing and conversion page development and email management.

Visit www.Room214.com, for more information and be sure to read the CaptureTheConversation Blog at: http://www.capturetheconversation.com

About Radian6 Technologies

Radian6 provides the social media monitoring platform for marketing, communications and customer support professionals. The company’s flexible dashboard enables monitoring all forms of social media with results appearing in real-time as discovered. Various analysis widgets give users the ability to uncover the top influencers as well as which conversations are having an impact online. Visit www.radian6.com for more information.

If there is one thing I’ve come across in the past year its that there is a large demand for case studies when it comes to integrating social media into business. Case studies are popular because they take a potentially large and fluffy concept and put it into real life examples that companies can sink there teeth into and related to. In fact, Radian6 hopes to be releasing a series of its own case studies soon on the various ways our clients are using social media to listen and engage in order to reach new customers, satisfy current ones and manage their brand (amongst many other uses).

So when we heard of it we immediately jumped at the chance to be a sponsor of the upcoming BlogWell conference in San Jose on October 28th. “8 Great Case Studies on the Best Social Media Programs at Large Corporations” – with companies like Cisco, Wells Fargo, UPS, Kaiser Permanente, Intel, The Home Depot, Graco and Walmart.

If you are a company struggling with how to embrace social media in order to make it an integral part of your business this could very well be the conference you can’t afford to miss. And if you needed yet another reason to go here is a 15% discount code – “weloveradian6″ – that can be used to save your company money when you sign up to attend.

See you in San Jose.

So on Tuesday I published a follow up to my original top 10 reasons post, Five more reasons brands should listen to social media. I meant to publish the second half to that post yesterday but alas I misread my time availability after delivering the keynote at the Broadband Services Forum in Halifax on behalf of Radian6 and traveling back home. So, as promised, though a day late, here are yet another five more reasons brands should be listening to social media.

The Mashup
Product and service innovation is key for any business to stay ahead of the curve. And your customers can be a gold mine of information for new and creative ways to use or adapt your product. If you’re paying close attention, you might be fortunate enough to find customers that have taken your product and done something new with it. For example, Ikea Hacker takes out of the box Ikea furniture and shares customers’ improvements, adaptations and fixes for bugs like a perpetually wobbly stool. Monitoring the web can bring your company ideas for new features or even new products, courtesy of your customers.

The Correction
It happens. An employee puts out incorrect information, a customer or vendor oversteps their relationship and represents themselves or their information as “official” when it might not be. Listening to the conversations happening online affords you the opportunity to hear this dialogue as it unfolds, and step in to correct information when needed as well as reestablish guidelines with the representatives working on your behalf. Preserving your brand equity online is critical, and filtering and correcting misinformation is a critical piece of doing so.

The Advocate
When a brand or company talks about their benefits, people might listen, but they also might be skeptical of the message. When an individual talks passionately about their love of a brand or product, or what a fan they are of a particular company, people take notice. That third party opinion is often viewed as more trustworthy, more genuine, or more objective. Tracking your brand across the web will help you and your company find your advocates – the people that may be singing your praises but whom you don’t yet know. Find them, thank them, encourage them, and use them as a resource to understand your true brand value through your customers’ eyes.

The Common Ground
Birds of a feather flock together, and so do brand enthusiasts, or people with common interests overall. If you’re in the travel industry, finding collections and communities of travel enthusiasts across the web makes your outreach and marketing efforts more direct, more personal, and more effective. Reaching customers where they congregate and starting a relationship based on mutual interests can rapidly build your network and create interest in your brand.

The Infringement
No one likes to play the heavy, but there are very real instances where a person or company may be infringing on the brand or intellectual property that you’ve worked so hard to build. Monitoring your brand across social media will allow you to uncover these instances and quickly decide on a path of resolution. Whether it’s a blog scraping your proprietary content or a website republishing your copyrighted information, you can choose how and where best to address the issues and engage the offenders for a quick solution.

As a business 6Consulting have moved away from the traditional pick the telephone up and bash it sales model. Trust me, from an ‘X’ Sales Director this has been quite the leap for me. OK I instigated it and created the model, but convincing others it is a superior sales model has not always been easy.

Before people jump on me and say you can’t sell without picking the phone up and talking to people I must state that we DO talk to people on the phone, we just generate enough relevant inbound enquiries that we do not need to make cold calls.

The Social Media Sales Funnel is all about generating inbound communication, brand awareness, referrals and more. So how does the funnel work?

Before any sales funnel is created you need some activity, here is a breakdown of that activity:

1. Blogging
2. MicroMedia
3. Images
4. Video
5. Mainstream News
6. Forums
7. Our own websites
8. Channel / partnerships
9. Events and Speaking engagements

In a nutshell we perform activity in the above 9 areas and have a clear documented strategy for each. It is this activity that feeds the funnel. We do not purchase data, have teams of outbound sales reps or scripted sales activity. Rather we search, listen, learn, engage, co-create, knowledge share, network, post, tweet and more. It’s a new spin on selling, taking the old methodologies and updating them for a networked world. Its soft selling, not hard or cold selling, its meeting people at their point of need and being on every network, everywhere!

It’s Engagement Selling!

Like a traditional sales model we attribute activity targets within each of our 9 key areas, from this we can assign KPI’s, measure the activity and calculate an ROI on that activity. We don’t just measure ROI in terms of revenue, and this is an important aspect of Social Media Engagement Selling, we measure levels of engagement, awareness of our brand, revenue and more.

By adopting this model we are also able to offer leaner, smarter, quicker more responsive sales, support, training and consultancy. We can keep our overhead low as we don’t need masses of salespeople, technical staff or other. Our staff churn rate is virtually zero and we don’t need to spend thousands on marketing or pay per click campaigns. We engage with relevant people, offer help and advice, share knowledge and ultimately turn a bigger profit than if we had an older more traditional sales model.

The businesses of tomorrow will need to be lean, smart, responsive, engaged and relaxed about control of their brand. They will need to embrace the new channels customers and potential customers are demanding they participate in, so be smart, use this economic downturn as an opportunity to make your business better, not just for you, but for your audience as well.

Not long ago I published the Top 10 Reasons brands should listen to social media.  A lot of people enjoyed the list so I dug in to see if there were even more reasons to listen – and there were – at least 10 more reasons.  Today I’m going to share 5 more of these reasons with you.  What do you think?

The Long Tail
Influencers carry a lot of weight, but there are millions of people online at a given time. Passionate brand evangelists can be found in far reaches of the web, in smaller and more niche communities. Social networks, communities, and forums exist for the most specialized interests you can imagine, and monitoring social media closely is the best way to find them. There can be immense value in connecting with these small but passionate groups and giving them opportunities to get acquainted and connected with you and your brand. Connecting with “the long tail” can do wonders in raising the awareness of your brand within your target community.

The Story Angle
Looking at your brand and your industry from a single point of view can be limiting. Listening to how other people are telling stories about your product, company, or brand can uncover new and creative ways to talk about your business. You may uncover subtle trends in your industry or innovative ways of describing your work. The media and the readers of your blog will enjoy capturing a creative story that will help your brand stand out from the competition.

The Misstep
One of the challenges of participating in social media is giving up strict control of your messaging by allowing your community – internal or external – to participate in its creation. With that openness comes challenges, including employees who may mean well, but may be giving out misinformation. By paying attention to your brand mentions in social media, you can identify these potential missteps early and work with your teams to correct inaccuracies. You may also learn some valuable information about rumors, misconceptions, or incorrect information that’s been circulating through your internal networks so you can work to clarify and correct it.

The Recruit
More than likely, the first thing a potential employee will do when considering your company is do a Google search. Monitoring the web ensures that you’ll know what they’ll see and read before they do. And today’s talent market is incredibly tight in many industries, making great people the most valuable asset for many businesses. Listening carefully to discussion online in your industry can help you identify experts and standout talent that you may not find through traditional search channels.

The Brand Association
You’ve likely spent a great deal of time and money establishing your value proposition and brand positioning in the marketplace. But are your customers and potential customers viewing your brand through the same lens? By expanding your monitoring efforts to listen broadly across the web, you may capture tangential associations for your brand across new lifestyles, demographics, or cultures that you hadn’t previously considered. And if there are negative terms associated with your brand, discovering them will allow your company to address issues when needed and keep realistic awareness of overall brand perceptions for future planning.

Need even more reasons? Stay tuned tomorrow and I’ll publish yet another 5 reasons to monitor social media.

Just this past weekend we rolled out a number of new features available to subscribers of the Radian6 platform. These new features aim to make listening and engaging in social media even more effective and efficient within agencies and enterprise organizations.

Social Profiles – This is the ability to show a social profile for posted items found in your topic profile. This allows a user to easily uncover the “who” behind each post. It provides a list of known and possible accounts across a number of social media applications in a hyperlink format so users can decide to reach out and add to their contacts.

Advanced Drill-down – This is the ability to select a word in a conversation cloud, a point in a time-series graph or a bar on a comparative topic monitor to open up a new River of News, times series graph or conversation cloud. This enables an efficient way to uncover trends and the underlying causes by further diving into the results on a more minute basis.

Social CIM (option) – With social CIM (community interaction management) capabilities turned on, discovered posts can be prioritized and assigned various team members. Users can create and assign tags as well as make notes on each post leaving a complete audit trail and the ability to report on results at a later date. With this option, listening and engaging in social media can become a completely manageable, enterprise-wide initiative.

Have you registered yet for the New Marketing Summit being held on October 14 – 15, 2008?  If not you should consider checking it out.  Radian6 is sponsoring this great event, a socia–media-meets-marketing gathering spearheaded by none other than Chris Brogan, Paul Gillin and David Meerman Scott.  I also have been invited to speak on a panel regarding social media monitoring which I’m very much looking forward too.

I was trying to come up with a great list of other reasons of why one should attend when I came across a top 5 list done by Aaron Strout over at Mzinga (also a sponsor and speaker at the event).  Aaron said it so well that I thought I’d simply share his list below:

1. The event is being held at Gillette Stadium, home of the 2001, 2003 and 2004 world champion New England Patriots. Oh, you’re a Dallas Cowboys fan? Well, skip this one and move on to number 2.
2. You’ll get a taste of how social media and online community can make your marketing efforts faster, better and cheaper.
3. With hundreds of people attending, you’re likely to meet not only a number of experts in the field of “New Marketing” but also many traditional marketers that are working to figure out what new media/social media is all about.
4. There are some really great speakers there including uber-blogger and VP of Cross-Tech Media, Chris Brogan, authors David Meerman Scott, Paul Gillen, CC Chapman, principle of The Advanced Guard, Brian Cavoli, VP of Marketing at Digital Influence Group, Laura Fitton, Principle of Pistachio Consulting, Chris Penn co-founder of Podcamp/CTO, The Student Loan Network and many more.
5. With all these social media people in one place, it’s inevitable that there will be some awesome parties. And believe me, social media people know how to party!

Similar to what Aaron says on his post, by being a speaker and sponsor of the event we get to offer up a special $200 discount off the list price for anyone that wants to REGISTER – just use the code “chrisvip” when you sign up.

Thanks to Aaron for this great list and look forward to seeing everyone at the event.  BTW, the twitterstream of the event will be alive and well so please make sure to follow my tweets at @davidalston