We’re so excited to announce that Microsoft has selected Radian6 as a social media monitoring tool supporting their Central Marketing Group. As a brand that is mentioned in 6% of all online postings per month, Microsoft has been paying close attention to user generated content for several years. Particularly to listening to and understanding buzz around their company and their products as well as engaging with customers for support, events, and product launches.

And at Radian6, we’re poised to help take them to the next level, delivering some broader and deeper listening capabilities to their core marketing and product teams.

Why Social Media?

Aaron Lilly, a Sr. Marcom Architect at Microsoft, explained that Microsoft sees immense value in the social space, because it helps the company connect more deeply with customers, prospects and enthusiasts on their terms and wherever they are online. This improved connection allows Microsoft to share the news and information on the company or products that their customers are asking for, where they are asking for it.

“Radian6 helps us discover where important conversations are happening online, so we can be part of them,” Lilly explains. “There’s a huge value in being able to have a rich, real-time dialog with customers across our diverse businesses.”

Lilly says Microsoft’s involvement in social media is both proactive and reactive. They’re proactively contributing to the dialogue about Microsoft by sharing information and providing access to the company through social channels like Facebook and Twitter. But they can also be responsive to the issues and conversations that happen around and about the company and their products, often helping to clarify a misunderstanding or offer quick and valid direction from the source.

Whether it be questions around the Bing search engine, or chatter about how Office is impacting the way people work, those discussions give Microsoft lots of opportunity to better understand how their community views their brand, products, and business, and lets them use those insights to inform future strategy.

Why Radian6?

Given the breadth and diversity of Microsoft’s businesses, and the volume of online conversations, the central marketing team needed a tool that could work alongside their existing tools and processes and that could not only handle the volume of buzz but also make sense of it all in a business context. As Microsoft builds out internal capabilities in social media through tools like Looking Glass, Radian6 provides global scale and depth capabilities today and integration opportunities for the future.

“For brands like Bing, Office or Zune, we have large inter-connected marketing and product teams,” says Lilly. “It’s really important that we’re all looking at the social conversations through the same lens. Radian6 provides both breadth of coverage and the depth to analyze and respond.”

We at Radian6 are excited about the possibilities working with the teams at Microsoft, and helping them make the most out of their social media strategies. Thanks to the Microsoft crew for bringing us on, and stay tuned as we share more about our work together in the future.