While creating a social media strategy, and discovering conversations on the social web are important for your brand, so is sharing your results with the decision makers in your organization. With help from Radian6’s widgets and Summary Dashboard you’ll be able to display your findings in clear, concise reports – making it easier to dig deeper into your data than ever before.

Interested in learning more about Radian6’s reporting capabilities? Let Product Managers Tom and Corey walk you through the process.

Radian6 TV: Report On Your Activity

Interested in learning more about Radian6? Click here to get started with us now.

The Radian6 platform can play an integral role for B2B companies, from tracking point of need conversations taking place on social media to generating sales leads.

Watch this video and learn about some of the elements unique to B2B social media and B2B sales.

During a PR crisis it is important to capture the whole story while keeping your team up to date. Radian6′s summary dashboard allows you to set up customizable widgets helping you to report on negative brand conversations that are driving a crisis situation.

Watch the latest video and learn how to use the summary dashboard to report on negative detractors.

Once an organization has been alerted to a PR crisis, the next step for many will be to respond to detractors. Radian6′s customizable Engagement Console allows you to do just that across social media channels.

Catch the latest episode of Radian6 TV to find out how the Engagement Console can help your organization communicate openly during a rough patch.

Radian6 can come to the rescue in a time of crisis by alerting your organization to negative comments on social media as they occur.

Our engagement console allows you to interact on the social web and to communicate directly with clients through one easy to manoeuvre application. Tune into Radian6 TV to find out how to identify and cope during a PR crisis.

With so much social media data flowing past our eyes every day, many companies use hashtags to try to understand their own small piece of the conversation. A hashtag is a word or phrase (with no spaces) preceded by a pound or hash sign (#). When added to tweets, this connects the conversations around a single topic. It is a functional bit of text and when you click on a hashtag in most Twitter clients, it brings up a search result of tweets with that hashtag. It can help companies watch the spread and reach of their ideas. Sometimes you see them around newsworthy topics (#jan25), companies (#radian6) or even events (#bwela).

The Good of Hashtags

Adding hashtags to tweets makes the most sense for online and offline events where you can share the hashtag with participants. Some of the best uses of hashtags are offline events because it creates an online connection of people who are in the same physical space. See our analysis of Blogworld Expo LA, based on their hashtag #bwela. If you are conducting a webinar and you want to know how many people share your ideas with their followers, encourage them to use a hashtag. You can capture these tweets in a tool like Radian6 and look at the volume of hashtag mentions, dig deeper into the conversations to understand what topics were most talked about, as well as who was talking.

Reviewing all this data lets you set conversation goals around the event. If you want to grow the attendance at future events, increasing the volume and presence of the current event draws attention to your events. A simple way to increase hashtag use is to include it on slides. Sample tweets also drive hashtag use. The data lets you see what resonated with participants. You can find influencers in the data, and see how engaged they were with the event. This can include new and known influencers. You can use your understanding of what caused people to tweet to improve for next time and reach your goals.

The Versus of Hashtags

Hashtags are used by a subset of participants talking about a topic. When tracking conversations and looking at data that supports your company initiatives, make sure you include terms besides the hashtags to get a complete picture of the social chatter. This is especially true when looking at consumer-driven events.

To social media veterans, hashtags are a natural part of how they tweet. Have you even been at an event where someone asks what the hashtag is? Less savvy presenters fumble to come up with something. If it is not something that has been pre-planned, you may not be prepared to track it. Or you may not know if it has been used for another event or ongoing conversation. It is always a good idea to plan a hashtag for any event, even if you don’t think your audience is the type to use it.

Many companies use hashtags on every tweet they put out. No matter what the tweet is about. This doesn’t create the brand awareness that they think. While straight retweets will pick up their hashtag, when they look at the data of usage, they will find that their #companytag is used almost exclusively in their tweets. This offers very little value. Hashtags that are about ideas are more likely to spread. If you encourage people to talk about a topic in your industry ask them to use a specific hashtag. This will let you promote something for the community, but also capture volume, preferred topics and Twitter users.

The Evil of Hashtags

Hashtags are open and public conversations, like most of the social web, that anyone can join. If a spammer or unscrupulous marketer sees a popular hashtag, they will start using it to promote their “offers.” In a study by Argyle Social, it was determined that hashtag stuffing doesn’t help a message spread or drive clicks.

If you are searching and tracking hashtags from a particularly large topic, like #socialmedia or the #superbowl, to find people and conversation topics, you are going to have to wade through a tremendous volume of hashtags mentions, as well as lots of irrelevant tweets. You definitely need to be prepared to do some heavy lifting, either with people or technology, but you should approach these efforts with more specific objectives and terms to make it a more manageable process.

Have you used hashtags to aggregate conversations around your online or offline events? What are some of your biggest challenges around digging into the data of hashtags? Learn more about measuring data in this month’s ebook.

In this webinar recorded the 19th of January 2012, Jeff Cohen and Kipp Bodnar, authors of The B2B Social Media Book, share actionable advice on leveraging various social media platforms, combined with the key strategic imperatives that serve as the backbone of effective B2B social media lead generation strategies.

Watch the webinar to learn social media’s specific application to B2B companies and how it can be leveraged to drive leads and revenue.

American Idol’s 11th season premiered last night on FOX and it was a social media smash. OK, so that probably surprises absolutely no one. Truth be told, I have been waiting to write this blog post since September. I was really interested to see how American Idol’s premiere would trend on social media compared to the X-Factor’s premiere in September. To keep the comparison consistent I used the the show titles and their associated hashtags for keyword search terms. At long last, here are the results.

X-Factor – premiered September 21, 2011

• Total social buzz – 66,986 mentions
• Day of premiere (before broadcast) – 212 mentions/hr (average)
• During the broadcast – 62,757 mentions

American Idol – premiered January 18, 2012

• Total social buzz – 330,004
• Day of premiere (before broadcast) – 2122 mentions/hr (average)
• During the broadcast – 287,715 mentions

To recap, Idol saw 263,018 more mentions than X-Factor’s premiere. That’s nearly 400% more mentions!

So where do you stand? Idol or X-Factor?

Many of us claim resolutions at the start of the new year. Today with social media monitoring, we can hear these conversations louder than the cheers at midnight.

This infographic takes a look at close to 700,000 new year’s resolution conversations on social media including sentiment, demographics and more. It’s a new year and everyone’s talking. Happy 2012!

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There’s never been a more exciting time to be involved with an agency. Whether you’re part of an advertising agency, a digital agency, or work for a public relations or market research firm, Radian6 has real-time solutions to help both you and your clients succeed in the social space.

Are you ready to invest in social media? Building your social media equity has never been easier. This financial services ebook contains lucrative new content to help you get started. You’ll learn how to share with customers without driving them away, how to gain valuable competitive intel, how to get through difficult social media situations and what to listen for to get real business value from social media. Soon, with a solid social listening strategy in place, you’ll be well on your way to interacting with your clients, and implementing product improvements based on the conversations you’ve heard.

Collective Bias is a shopper media agency that facilitates connections between groups of social media influencers and the brands and retailers they use everyday. In this Q&A webinar recorded December 15th, 2011, Brad Lawless, VP of Communications, and Courtney Velasquez, Director of Community for Collective Bias, answer questions about how social media has given both consumers and retailers a huge opportunity.

Whether prospective or current, students love the social web. They’re spending increasing amounts of time online, so it only makes sense for you to take your messaging to them. Online interactions give the perfect opportunity to answer questions about registration, or let sports fans know how to lend support to varsity teams. Connecting online also provides another way to develop chapters of alumni and share news about events.

If you’re already highly engaged, or a school that’s looking to dive deeper into social listening, there’s no better time to learn more.

We’re currently managing Twitter accounts for multiple products; can you help us simplify the process?
Our Engagement Console allows you to house your social media feeds in one convenient place, helping you scan your online presence at a glance. We’ve also got some handy workflow capabilities that let you route posts to specific team members – so if you’ve got a question on a product or brand, you can make sure the question goes to the right person.

We’re got customers around the world – what languages do you monitor for?
Radian6 currently tracks 17 languages, including: Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

We’re interested in tracking the success of our campaigns within specific demographics and regions – is there any way you can help us dive deeper into our conversations?
We sure can. Radian6 Insights will take your social media monitoring a step further by providing you with important demographical information, including gender, age and location. Insights also helps you break mountains of data down into manageable segments, making it easier to learn more about your niche markets.

Quite often the people who actively engage in our social listening aren’t the only ones who need to know more about the conversations being had – do you offer extensive reporting?

The Radian6 Summary Dashboard was designed to help you keep an eye on the pulse of your brand – giving you an easy-to-read data that highlights your conversation volume, sentiment, demographics and more. And if you’d like to export your data to Excel, we’ve got an Excel Add-On to help organize your data there, too.

Have more questions about our platform? Check out our comprehensive FAQ over here.

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Working within the Consumer Packaged Goods industry you have an interesting relationship with your customers, because they don’t necessarily shop at a store that exclusively sells your product. Luckily, you’ve got the social web to help you discover online conversations and interact with your biggest fans.

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We’re Here to Help

How you interact with your customers on the social web shapes their perception of your products and people. Maintaining a strong presence online lets customers know that even though they might not be able to interact with you in store, they have a forum for getting any questions and concerns addressed. Whether you’re already frequently interacting online, or looking to get started with social listening, Radian6 has a service that caters to your needs.

Provide the Best Social Customer Care

Social media monitoring is invaluable for closing the loop in the customer care cycle. An effective social listening strategy will help you answer customer questions, and address any concerns before they become a problem. Our integration with salesforce.com services’ ensures that you can discover and reach out to, those who are discussing your brand online. You can also create cases to solve all customer problems within an easy to track stream.

Monitor Industry Trends

While social listening can show you what your customers think about your brand, it’s also invaluable for learning more about industry trends. Perhaps you’re in the business of designing athletic clothes – you can use the social web to monitor discussions on popular colours, styles and materials. Online discoveries help you learn what your customers are looking for, and whether or not your competitors are providing them with this service or product.

Build an Online Community

You’re already gathering a fan base online; why not work collaboratively with them to ensure you’re offering the best products and experiences? Online communities are the ideal location to test drive new promotions and customer reward programs. These devoted followers will help you understand consumer perceptions on your loyalty programs, and give you additional insight into why they’re choosing you over everyone else. Once you’ve created your community you’ll be in the position to uncover who your biggest brand ambassadors are. We call them Influencers, and thanks to our partnership with Radian6 Insights providers you’ll be able to learn even more about your influencer’s reach and following with Klout.

Manage Crisis Situations

The social web is a dynamic space, providing users the opportunity to share their thoughts and feelings all while engaging with others. In an ideal world you’d never be faced with a crisis situation, however, when you do encounter a bump in the road it’s important to have a plan in place. Use the social web to manage customer feedback on any product recalls, ensuring that consumers are getting all the information they need from a trusted, reliable source – you.

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We’re currently managing Twitter accounts for multiple departments and locations; can you help us simplify the process?
Our Engagement Console allows you to house your social media feeds in one convenient place, helping you scan your online presence at a glance. We’ve also got handy workflow capabilities that let you route posts to specific members of your team – so if you’ve got a question for a specific store, you can make sure the question goes directly to the appropriate employee. The Radian6 Engagement Console also allows you to enable internal administration with our Superuser feature, which gives you the power to manage permissions and, if necessary, create a locked-down experience for all users.

We’re really interested in social media monitoring, but we’re unsure of whether or not we have enough people to implement an effective listening strategy.
Whether you’re unsure of what to monitor, or you’re just not sure if you have the resources to hire a new team member, our Professional Services team is here to help. They can aid you in setting up the platform, and can also analyze and report back on your data so that you’re always in the loop on customer conversations.

We’re interested in tracking the successes of our campaigns within certain demographics and regions – is there any way you can help us dive deeper into our conversations?
We sure can. Radian6 Insights will take your social media monitoring a step further by providing you with important demographical information, including gender, age and location. Insights also helps you break mountains of data down into manageable segments, making it that much easier to learn more about your niche markets.

We’re really focusing on mobile integration when it comes to our own engagement strategies – do you offer a mobile app?
Social doesn’t stop when you’re away from your desk, so we’ve created a mobile app for people on the move. Bringing key engagement functionality directly to your iPhone, Radian6 Mobile allows you to engage with your community and route posts through our workflow, no matter your location.

Have more questions about our platform? Check out our comprehensive FAQ over here. Or, get in touch with our us.

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Retail consumers love to spend time online. They’re becoming increasingly proactive, using the social web to discuss their latest in-store experiences, and whether or not they’re happy with your latest product offerings. With more and more shopping options becoming available, it’s up to organizations to line up for their customers, not the other way around.

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If you’re already online – perfect. You’re more than likely in touch with your consumers’ wants and needs and are always striving to improve their experiences with your brand. We can help you enhance your social customer care, and create online communities that will foster the growth of your company. Not online, but looking to get involved? We can help you out with that, too. No matter your current engagement level, Radian6 has a service that caters to your needs.

Provide the Best Social Customer Care

Social media monitoring is invaluable for closing the loop in the customer care cycle. Effective listening will help you identify the first murmurs of discontent, allowing you to reach out before the situation escalates. Our integration with salesforce.com services ensures that not only can you discover, and reach out to, those who are discussing your brand online, but you can also create cases to solve customer problems within an easy-to-track stream.

Build a Brand Conscious Community

Your consumers are already discussing your brand online – why not take the leap and create a real sense of community surrounding your presence on the social web? GNC understood the value of online communities by continuously reaching out to their consumers in order to effectively handle any comments or concerns. Online communities are also the ideal location to test drive new promotions and customer reward programs. You’re already gathering a fan base online; why not work collaboratively with them to ensure you’re offering the best products and experiences?

Monitor Competitor Activity

Social listening isn’t only important for understanding conversations surrounding your brand, it’s also beneficial for uncovering what consumers are saying about your competition. Interested in learning about the in-store experience being provided by a rival retailer? Maybe you’d like to find out more about customer perceptions surrounding a competitor’s online rewards system. Social media monitoring can help you uncover these stories and more, giving you a competitive edge.

Enhance Your Reporting

Whether you’ve got your social media monitoring strategy firmly in place, or you’re just diving in, it’s always important to understand the health of your brand. One of the best ways to keep your fingers on the pulse is through clear, concise reporting. The Radian6 Summary Dashboard helps you dive deep into customer conversations, allowing you to not only display your most relevant data, but to also share it with other team members.

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All the buzz about social media swarms around big consumer brands. The same is true with social media monitoring. Even though B2C companies get the most coverage, social media is actually a better fit for B2B companies because of long sales cycles, complex and expensive products, relationship selling and more decision makers involved in the process. Let’s look at how listening and monitoring apply to B2B companies.

The most common use case for social media monitoring is volume of online mentions. Big consumer brands need a platform like Radian6 to manage the flow of data, route it to the right people and respond if necessary. Reporting on this activity is also a core reason to explore this type of monitoring solution.

And one of the most common questions about social media monitoring is why do companies need to do it if nobody is talking about their brand or company. Most B2B companies are in this category. Except for the largest brands, B2B companies do not have the name recognition or the brand awareness for prospects and customers to talk about them by name on the social web. This is even more of a reason to use a robust social media monitoring solution.

5 Simple Approaches to B2B Social Media Monitoring
(when no one is mentioning your company by name)

1. Search for Your Products by Their Common Names
People talk about products online, but they use common names for them. If you understand how your customers refer to your products, you know what keywords to begin searching for. Use Google and Twitter searches to refine your keywords, so you come to a monitoring tool armed with the most relevant terms.

2. Find Your Customers and Prospects
After keyword searches bring back results, the next step is to determine where your customers and prospects spend their time. Not every social media platform is right for every B2B company. Rather than assume Twitter, for example is the optimum platform to focus on, you may discover a niche forum that is very important to your business.

3. Fine Tune Your Personas
Many B2B marketing plans are driven by a series of personas. Make assumptions about your personas’ online behavior and use social media monitoring to determine if you are right. Revise your personas based on your results. Continue to review this data at least every six months to make sure your personas haven’t changed.

4. Discover Content Ideas
B2B companies need to develop and share remarkable and valuable content with their online networks to connect with customers and prospects, and drive them back to the company website. Establish regular searches to look for awesome content ideas. Find posts that you can reference in your content or look for new ideas that can only be seen when viewing the industry as a whole.

5. Follow Industry Trade Shows and Events
Many industry events try to build a social presence by using a hashtag on Twitter, posting to a blog and establishing a YouTube channel. Track all these sources to discover people, companies and the latest news from your industry. By aggregating these conversations through social media monitoring, you can uncover trends that you would not otherwise see.

What are some other ways you can use social media monitoring for your B2B company? Have you seen success with any of these approaches?

If you are looking for some guidance with social media for your B2B company, download this free B2B social media ebook.

Jeffrey L. Cohen is a social strategist at Radian6 and the co-author of the forthcoming The B2B Social Media Book. You can follow Jeff on Twitter at @jeffreylcohen.

The software industry is full of innovators; after all, you’re in the business of being ahead of the curve. With this commitment to technological know-how, there’s no better time to enhance your involvement on the social web. We’re using our Software as a Service to help strengthen your online connections through facilitating engagement between your brand and its fans. We’re also keen on getting you in the loop on competitor developments, and helping uncover the influencers in your industry.

Agency FAQ

How can Radian6 help our agency maximize profit?

Our platform allows agencies to increase client revenue two-fold: perform previous work more efficiently and add more value to existing deliverables. Create better results in less time with our easy-update reporting capabilities and Generate more profit from existing clients with add-on offerings that will solidify their business with your agency – arguably more important than scouring for new business.

What kind of support can Radian6 offer our agency?

Let us help you help your clients. Aside from free training and 24/5 support, your agency will also be assigned a dedicated account executive who can help you create strategies to succeed in social media. Our Professional Services team – can compliment your agency’s social media efforts by setting up a social listening station or creating customized reports that will help lighten your load.

Our agency has many clients. How can we effectively manage them all through Radian6?

The Radian6 Engagement Console streamlines social media listening, monitoring and engagement, making it a piece of cake to manage many customers at once. Create several stacks to simultaneously monitor multiple Twitter handles and your clients’ Facebook accounts all in one place.

How can Radian6 help our agency pitch to clients & sell the social vision?

Agencies are unique Radian6 customers – we understand you need time to research client brands and industries in order to effectively pitch to them. For that reason, we offer agencies free 7 day trial topic profiles. This allows agencies to tailor Radian6 demos to specific clients and get a better idea of how much volume the profile will pull in. We also offer social strategy advice, ebooks and case studies to help your agency sell the social vision to your clients.

Radian6 helps us monitor our clients’ online reputation – can we make it work for our agency too?

Absolutely. Aren’t you curious to know what people are saying about you online? Simply create a separate Topic Profile to monitor mentions of your agency, your competitors and keep your ear to the ground on what’s going on in your industry. What you discover might change the way you market your agency or service your clients.

Have more questions about our platform? Check out our comprehensive FAQ here.

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Companies that are new to social media monitoring and engagement frequently wonder where to begin. This can even be a bigger challenge if nobody is talking about your company or brand.

Here are 100 examples, divided into 10 categories, of things that you can listen to and monitor for across the social web.

Social media crisis communications is an area of concern for any company, and needs to be a part of any enterprise social media strategy. Representatives of top brands shared best practices for social media crisis communications at BlogWorld LA, in the Calm Among the Chaos: Maintaining Brand Reputation During a Digital Crisis panel.

Panelists were Bridget Jewell from Mall of America, Jason Miller from P.F. Chang’s China Bistro and Justin Levy from Citrix Online, moderated by Tony Saucier from Olson. (Bridget, Justin and Jason are pictured.)

Here are 16 key takeaways from the conversation that can help guide your own social media crisis communications plan. (You can find more practical advice in the Radian6 Social Media Monitoring and Engagement Playbook.)

1. Admit fault, attack it head on and try to turn a negative into a positive as quickly as possible. Empower your teams to deal with customer issues quickly and bring them to resolution.

2. Build your community before you need it. If you have a community who trusts you already they will come to your aid if people make negative comments.

3. Incorporate face-to-face. If a customer makes a complaint or raises an issue and is still at the mall, Bridget will attempt to meet with them to assess and assist.

4. Include trained customer service representatives in your social media team. The Citrix Online team includes a customer service rep who understands the brand, the products and common support issues and knows how to respond, triage and escalate.

5. Know how and when to take the customer’s issue offline. For instance, don’t play out a long exchange on your Facebook page if you can move the discussion to email, the phone or private message. Your community will see that you responded and offered assistance, without watching the gory details.

6. Learn as much as you can about the customer when you reach out to respond. If you have information in your database about them, the products they use and their history, it will give you context that will frame the issue and your response. Integration between your social media monitoring and your customer relationship management (CRM) tool can make this easier.

7. Don’t be afraid to say, “I’m sorry.” It goes a long way, even if the issue is out of your control. If the customer is facing a difficult problem, they will appreciate your empathy even if the problem was not your fault.

8. Know who all the players are in your company who will be involved in a crisis. Make sure they know who you are and what you do so they will value your participation in a crisis.

9. Your messaging needs to be consistent across all channels, online and off. Bridget makes sure that everyone at Mall of America involved in communications, from the social media team to the call center to the security personnel, shares a consistent message in a crisis.

10. If you’re on the social media team, share positive feedback from your communities with your internal audiences, not just negative feedback. Show them the good that comes out of your social media interactions, not just the bad.

11. It’s okay to say that you don’t know the answer, or to refer customers to the right person in your organization.

12. Have a plan. Be proactive rather than reactive. Justin helped develop a communications plan around an acquisition Citrix made to ensure they knew how they would respond in a wide variety of possible situations. Make sure your plan includes specifics of how, when, where and who would communicate around potential issues. (Again, check out the Radian6 Social Media Monitoring and Engagement Playbook for examples.)

13. Keep your plan up-to-date. Every time you have a crisis situation, there will be new lessons learned.

14. Have a social media policy that maintains consistency of voice and message across your outlets. Jason pointed out this is especially important for a chain like P.F. Chang’s, or a company with multiple brands and multiple locations.

15. Listen to what your customers are saying. Use a social media monitoring platform to aggregate their comments. Use that data to improve your products, your operations and your customer service.

16. Make sure you have a social media monitoring and listening platform in place before a crisis or major event (good or bad) to ensure you can monitor and filter any comments in a crisis.

Have you integrated social media into your crisis communications? Do you have a plan in place?

David B. Thomas is Director of Community and Social Strategy at Radian6. He’s also a dad, a home cook, a music nerd and tech geek, and co-author of The Executive’s Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy: How Social Networks Are Radically Transforming Your Business. Follow him on Twitter at @davidbthomas.

We’re currently managing Twitter accounts for multiple departments, including everything from administration to athletics; can you help us simplify the process?
Our Engagement Console allows you house your social media feeds in one convenient place, helping you scan your online presence at a glance. We’ve also got handy workflow capabilities that let you route posts to specific members of your team – so if you’ve got a registration pro on your team, you can make sure all questions go directly to them.

We’ve put a lot of effort into creating recruiting campaigns to attract students from specific regions and demographics – do you have any tools that will help us see specifically who is talking about us online?
We sure do. Radian6 Insights will take your social media monitoring a step further by providing you with important demographics information, including gender, age and location. Insights also helps you break mountains of data down in to manageable segments, making it that much easier to learn more about your niche markets.

Is there potential for bringing Radian6 into the classroom? We’d love to provide our students with the opportunity to learn more about your platform.
Yes there is. Radian6 has a 60-day Higher Education Trial Program. In order to be considered as a candidate for this trial program, you must be a faculty member representing one undergraduate class, or a graduate student currently enrolled in an accredited college/university. For more information on the program, including the application form, click here.

We’re looking to increase our international recruiting efforts – what languages do you monitor for?
Radian6 currently tracks 17 languages, including: Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Have more questions about our platform? Check out our comprehensive FAQ over here. Or, get in touch with our support team.

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Whether prospective or current, students love the social web. They’re spending increasing amounts of time online, so it only makes sense for you to take your messaging to them. Online interactions give the perfect opportunity to answer questions about registration, or let sports fans know how to lend support to varsity teams. Connecting online also provides another way to develop chapters of alumni and share news about events. The conversations you can find, or the information you can share, is almost limitless. If you’re already highly engaged, or a school that’s looking to dive deeper into social listening, there’s no better time to learn more.

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The Higher Education industry already has a strong online presence, after all, your students are voraciously consuming everything on the social web. Online engagement will help you connect with your campus community like never before, developing strong relationships from the moment they walk on campus, up to their convocation, and beyond. Whether you’re looking to get your toes wet on the social web, or dive in headfirst, we’re here to help you succeed.

Connect With Your Campus

Post-secondary education is changing. While many students choose to attend classes at traditional brick and mortar schools, others are opting to learn online to accommodate their busy schedules. You’re already online connecting with your staff and students, so it’s only natural to take your services there too. Discover what topics are important to your campus community and reach out to answer any questions or concerns. Engagement doesn’t have to stop when you reach the borders of your campus. Use the social web to reach out to alumni and athletics boosters in your community, keeping them in the loop on relavant news.

Monitor Your Competition

The world of Higher Education is a competitive field, as students have so many options when it comes to choosing their post-secondary experience. That’s why it’s important to monitor what your competition is saying on the social web. Social listening can give you a heads up on what your competition is doing to attract and retain students, as well as provide you with insight on whether or not these efforts are producing results. You’re already listening to the conversations, now it’s time to make that discovered information work for you.

Listen in Real Time

The social web is always changing – students are updating their online profiles and tweeting like never before. And while the online environment creates an exciting forum for sharing great ideas, it’s also instrumental when it comes to connecting in times of crisis. Use our Engagement Console to spread messages quickly through your students and staff, while also tracking any mentions of disturbances on your campus with the Radian6 Analysis Dashboard. Thanks to their diligence in online listening, the Des Moines Area Community College was able to prevent a potential shooting, a plot that was revealed publically in a tweet.

Create a Community

Higher Education is all about creating a community. You’re starting your online engagement before your students even walk onto campus, discussing questions and concerns they have about their next step. Engagement doesn’t end when the student leaves campus for the last time. Social media can provide you with an invaluable link to your alumni, and happy connected alumni have the potential to become happy, generous donors.

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I really enjoy getting the chance to sit down and chat with our customers about their business and how they have achieved success, especially in social media. I also enjoy a good burger, so when I got the chance to spend the morning at Relish Gourmet Burgers, I was thrilled. Relish is a small business that has seen rapid growth since opening the doors to their first location in 2010, in the past year they have opened an additional three locations and have four more planned for 2012. They quickly won the hearts of their customers with engaging, energetic staff, fantastic specialty burgers, and the ability to innovate.

Co-founders, Rivers Corbett and Chef Ray Henry shared with me some of the ways they have used social media to share the energy of their restaurant over social channels like Twitter (you can find Relish on Twitter – @RelishUs). Using social media they have been able to create a community of not just customers but fans and friends.

Check back next week, as we will be posting a video of our conversation with the team at Relish. Thanks again to Rivers and Chef Ray for hosting us and sharing their story.

Do you have stories of how small businesses are using social media to help grow their business? Have you had a great experience with a small business connecting with customers through social channels? Please share!

Sarah Carver is Public Relations Manager at Radian6. She is always inspired by great customer stories. Find her on Twitter at sarahcarver12.

We’re interested in engaging on the social web, but unsure of how we could measure our online success. How do you measure the ROI of social?
When it comes to measuring the ROI associated with social listening, you might consider shifting your focus away from the value of a sale, and instead consider the life time value of a customer. Engaging with your audience on the social web will enhance brand loyalty, and encourage them to become increasingly involved with your organization – which could influence their purchasing power. Learn more about measuring ROI on the social web at our social strategy blog.

We’ve noticed that many people aren’t just using Facebook and Twitter to discuss our products; they’re also using blogs and forums. Do you cover those areas, too?
We’re happy to cover over 150 million data sources each day, including: blogs, mainstream online news, video and photo sharing websites, micromedia – including the whole Twitter firehose, forums and discussion boards, blog comments and Facebook public discussion forums. If someone is talking about you on the social web, we’re more than likely already tuned in.

We’re a B2B company that doesn’t receive a lot of brand mentions – is their still value in social listening?
Just because you’re not dealing with your customers directly does not mean that social media monitoring isn’t for your organization. B2B companies can use the social web in many of the same ways as B2C companies, including uncovering industry trends, researching target markets, and monitoring the activities of your competitors. Sure, the way you provide outreach might be a little bit different, but there’s still a lot to learn online. We wrote a whole ebook on the topic of social media monitoring for the B2B world, so be sure to check it out for a more in-depth discussion on making the most of your social listening strategy.

Get Started

The software industry is full of innovators; after all, you’re in the business of being ahead of the curve. With this commitment to technological know-how, there’s no better time to enhance your involvement on the social web. We’re using our Software as a Service to help strengthen your online connections through facilitating engagement between your brand and its fans. We’re also keen on getting you in the loop on competitor developments, and helping uncover the influencers in your industry. The conversations you can discover are endless – what are you waiting for?

Get Started

We’re here to Help

You’re already active on the social web, but maybe you feel like you could use a little help on really getting your message out there. With Radian6, you can use the social web to engage with your influencers, track industry and competitor trends, and generate more sales. And that’s all just the beginning. Take a look and see how social media monitoring can help grow your business like never before.

Connect with your Influencers

Just like in a crowded room, some voices travel further than others. We call those people influencers. Your influencers can potentially become your biggest allies on the social web, helping you put your fingers on the pulse of industry news, and spreading your message to those who it might not have reached. They’re the online cool kids that everyone wants to be friends with, and you don’t want to miss out. Want to learn more about measuring the ROI of communicating with influencers? Check out our ebook on the topic.

Track Industry Trends

While it’s important to understand the conversations surrounding your brand, it’s also key to figure out what’s trending in your corner of the software industry. Social listening can help you uncover everything from whether or not certain software features are driving more demand, or if there are discussions going on surrounding industry-wide pricing. We’ll work hard to make sure you’re never the last to know.

Monitor your Competitors

Once you’re tuned in to what’s being said about your organization, it’s time to uncover discussions concerning your competitors. Check in to see if consumers are offering up their thoughts on their most recent customer service issue with your rivals. You might even discover that your competition is discussing their latest product innovations. Social listening can help you uncover all of this information, and more, giving you a real competitive advantage.

Generate Sales Leads Online

Connecting on the social web is like hosting a booth at an ongoing trade show. You’re already hanging out online, sharing interesting content surrounding your organization and its role in the software industry. Hopefully this is helping you engage your audience in dynamic conversations about your brand – you might even uncover previously unknown groups who are discussing your products. All of these voices are potential customers – and now that you’ve located them, you’re in a great position to create meaningful sales relationships. Just think, a conversation today could be the software sale of tomorrow.

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Financial Services Frequently Asked Questions

It’s important that we have the power to monitor which members of our staff are communicating with customers over the social web – do you have team management restrictions in place?
We know security is of the utmost importance in the Financial Services industry, and that you don’t want just anyone responding to your clients online. Our Engagement Console allows you to enable internal administration with our Superuser feature, giving you the power to manage permissions and create a locked-down experience for all users.

The Finance industry faces regulations for online interactions – is social media monitoring still for us?
There isn’t a single industry or organization that can’t find some benefit in monitoring the social web. Whether you’re actively engaging with your audience, or monitoring behind the scenes, there’s something to be gained from listening to online conversations.

One important component of any great social media listening program is the implementation of a strong social media strategy. These strategies are important for filling your employees in on what can and cannot be said on the social web, and other measures that can protect the privacy of your customers. For more information on building a social media strategy, check out our social strategy blog here.

We’re not entirely comfortable engaging on the social web – are there other things we can do to get involved?
Just because you’re not ready to engage directly with your fans online doesn’t mean exploring the social web isn’t a good option for your company. Being an active participant means you have access to a forum for sharing positive stories about the difference your organization is making in your community, or even the field of banking as a whole. Once you’ve gotten your feet wet, you might feel more comfortable engaging with your audience. When you do, we’ll be here to help with that, too.

We’re interested in social media monitoring, but not sure we have the staffing resources available. Is there anything you can suggest to help with this?
It can be daunting to set out on a social listening adventure. Whether you’re unsure of what to monitor, or you’re just not sure if you have the resources to hire a new team member, our Professional Services team is here to help. They’ll aid you in setting the platform up, and can analyse and report back on your data so that you’re always in the loop on your conversations. It’s as easy as that.

Now that we’ve located our brand conversations, is there any way to learn more about the people who are sharing their stories?
In a word – yes. Radian6 is pleased to present Insights, a platform designed to take your social monitoring a step further on the social web. Insights helps you dive deeper into your data, providing information on demographics including age, sex and location. Insights provides real time, ongoing social intelligence, meaning you get the results you need, when you need them.

Have more questions about our platform? Check out our comprehensive FAQ over here. Or, get in touch with our support team.

Get Started

From a Financial Services perspective, social media monitoring is a tough nut to crack. You’re faced with potentially uncharted territory, including contending with many regulations. Maybe you have limited experience with the social web, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to start. With a good social listening plan in place, you’ll be well on your way to interacting with your clients, and implementing product improvements based on the conversations you’ve heard.

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We’re Here to Help

Discussions about your company on the social web are an everyday occurrence. Consumers are talking about their latest interactions with your employees and banking products. Dive into their conversations to uncover ways to serve them better, and interact with your clients like never before. We’re helping you bring the social back into your everyday dealings.

Explore Social Listening

Radian6 understands the rules and regulations surrounding the Finance industry’s participation in social media. We recognize that you might hesitate in getting involved with the social web, as you’re unsure about what engagement looks like, including what you can discuss online. One of the best ways to familiarize your organization with social media is through listening – hearing what your customers are saying about you and your services. Once you’re listening in on the conversations, you’ll have a better understanding of thoughts and feelings surrounding your brand.

Track your Campaigns

You’ve just launched a campaign to attract new customers and you’re interested in seeing what kind of buzz it’s generating. That’s the perfect opportunity to flex your social media monitoring muscle. Track the peaks and valleys of the conversation, getting an in-depth look at what is making your audience pipe up, or quiet down. Armed with this data you’ll have a solid understanding of what’s working in your marketing efforts, and what could use a tune up.

Monitor your Competitors

Once you’ve uncovered what’s being said about your organization, it’s time to tune into what’s being said about your competitors and the Finance industry as whole. Are your rivals engaging with their customers online? Maybe they’re rolling out a new campaign, or sales package. With social listening, you’ll have the ability to gather competitive intelligence with a few clicks of your mouse.

Create a Community

The social web is a great place to create a community surrounding your brand. Think of it as an online town hall, a forum for likeminded people to gather and share their thoughts and experiences. These get-togethers are the perfect place to test drive your latest ideas, and see how your clients feel about their banking services. Want more information on online community building? Our case study from ING Direct highlights how they were able to create a community of engaged users online.

Get Started

It’s never pretty, but crisis management is a very real necessity for your brand and its external communication efforts. If there’s conversation around your brand discussing anything from negative press, to misinformation, or potential business threats, you should be prepared to not only listen in on customer conversations, but also to respond if necessary.

With Radian6, your public relations team will have the power to dig deeper into the conversations surrounding crisis situations, providing insight into your negative brand mentions – including what’s being said, who’s saying it, and whether or not the message is spreading.

To learn more about how social media monitoring can help in your next crisis situation, watch this video with Radian6 Product Managers Tom and Corey.

Radian6 TV: Identifying a PR Crisis

Now that you’ve learned the value of monitoring social media during a crisis, discover how interacting with your customers through the Radian6 Engagement Console can streamline your communication process, creating a complete audit of your conversation trail.

Respond Using Engagement Console

Interested in learning more about Radian6? Click here to get started with us now.

Ever have a really big secret to tell people? Like you and your partner are going to have a baby? You’ve managed to keep it quiet for a month and just as you are about to announce it to all your close friends and family, your next door neighbour who has a tendency to be a little “up in your business” starts spreading your secret all over town. Now, it’s really not that big of a deal because you were planning on telling people anyways, but you feel hurt and upset that you weren’t the one to spread the news. The announcement you had planned just seems pointless now and your entire timetable is completely thrown off.

No need to fret! Just like in life sometimes competitors can reveal things about you before you’re ready to tell people. So what do you do when people break the news before you’re ready?

Breathe
It seems cliche, but it’s true. The very first thing you need to do when you think intel about you has been exposed is to breathe. Nothing good ever came from reacting too soon to a situation without knowing all the facts. Just like if your Mom & Dad were standing gasping in front of you, you would take a moment and just breathe.

Assess
In that moment that you are thinking about what you are going to do, you need to have a full understanding of how much was exposed. Before you do anything else, assess the situation and figure out:

React
So you know the answers to the questions, you know what happened and you’ve taken a moment to think about it. Now, it’s time to react. With your parents you might start explaining how you are ready for this change in your life. With your competitors you may choose to send out a public press release to get ahead of the information that was released. Whatever your decision is, make sure you are basing it off your strategy and your assessment and not a rash quick decision.

Stick to the Plan
Remember how back when you started thinking about competitive intel that you sat down and made a strategy of how you would protect yourself against having your sensitive information exposed? Well now is the time to stick to that plan and also re-assess it. Looking at that plan and this particular situation, determine what went wrong. This is where you’ll learn important things like not speaking so loud to your partner that your neighbour can hear you say “Oh my god, it’s a girl!”. There’s always places we can improve our strategies so take the time to review and revise.

As long as you learn from the experience of having intel information exposed outwardly, you’re probably going to be okay. No one likes to be surprised by information they weren’t expecting to be talking about, but we can all deal with those situations if we take a few deep breathes and think it through.

What do you think about in these situations? Have you ever had to overcome a situation when your intel information was exposed? What did you do and how did you react? What did you learn from that experience?

The grass is always greener on the other side, right? Well, it may or may not be but a peek across the fence is always worth it, whether you’re engaging in some friendly landscaping competition or a longstanding corporate rivalry. Two questions you will always consider regardless of what end of the rivalry spectrum you are at are: What are THEY doing? and What should I be doing (that they are not)? These two questions transcend anything in business including products, strategy, service delivery, and even marketing. Furthermore, regardless of what the answer to the question might be you will always fall into two distinct categories, you either lead or you follow. So which should you do? There are advantages to both, so lets explore.

Firstmover Advantage

So what’s to gain when departing from the norm?

• First and foremost you will set yourself apart by simply being different or going somewhere where others have not. For example, if you decide to use an alternate marketing strategy, possibly social media, an avenue which your competition hasn’t explored yet, the mere fact that you’re first might mean that you’ll be the recipient of increased buzz and hype around your brand, as well as having access to a whole host of new opportunities that your competition does not. The act of simply going first and doing something no one else has, good or bad, can do a lot for your brand and brand recognition.

• Secondly, if you lead the way it is highly likely that you will fill a need that currently isn’t being met, whether it is apparent or not, as may be the case with social customer service. Your competitors might be holding back for all kinds of reasons, but as this space is ever growing – and if you’ve taken the time to listen and know that your customers are asking for assistance on these networks – you can rest assured that you will add value when venturing into this area

• Finally, as an innovator you will deal with change much easier than those organizations that are consistently holding back. By overcoming one hurdle you will be closer to and prepared for the next, which will translate in your organization being more adaptable and fluid which is a trait that is becoming ever more important in a world were consumers, economics and technology are ever changing.

Wait and Learn

Alternatively, if you would rather keep an eye on the competition and hold your horses before making changes you’ll find some valid reasons for doing so.

• One advantage to holding back while checking on the competition in order to understand fully what they did, how they did it and how it was received is that you can adapt what worked and easily leave behind what didn’t. You’ll be able to learn whether to follow suit or not and as a matter of course won’t take as great a risk when doing something differently, if you’re going into it knowing that it worked for your rivals.

• This might be an obvious one but if you are comfortable with the status quo then you may not want to run the risk of getting it wrong by trying something new. As with anything, change doesn’t mean that you will always get it right so holding back might be a better choice for you until you are comfortable enough – having observed the competition – to make your move.

• Last but not least, doing something first without having the ease of checking on the competition to see how they may have fared will often mean that you use/waste more resources. Whether it’s time or money, when you’re exploring a new frontier and you do not have a benchmark you will need to invest in both much more heavily then you would have to otherwise.

So there you have it, ultimately and as with anything in life there are pros and cons and the same goes for being first or second or even third. On the other hand there is also a saying that goes something along the lines of ‘no guts, no glory’, and being a pioneer and learning as you do will go a long way in creating buzz and brand recognition, strategic agility, as well as being seen as an industry leader, as opposed to being the ‘second’ to have done something ‘quite well’.

So, where do you fall into this spectrum? Would you rather jump in headfirst? Or wait until someone else tests the waters for you? Have you experienced either scenario in your business strategy? Please share your thoughts and comments below.

Picture this: The year is 1631, and you are the proud proprietor of Ye Olde Print Shoppe in London, England. Council has just passed yet another ordinance prohibiting the stalls of fruiterers, fish sellers, tripe women, bakers, butchers, etc., from sullying your fair city’s streets, and you couldn’t be happier. A fish monger has illegally set up right outside your establishment. The smell of slightly over-ripe fish is really stinking up the joint, and you have an important order to fill. Yet another run of the revolutionary King James Bible.

You give your apprentice his assignment – responsibility for the popular Ten Commandments. You think to yourself, “Surely he can handle a bit of typesetting!”

Oh, he handled it alright. And he might have handled YOU right out of business, not to mention right out of town (this is the 17th century, don’t forget).

His error read as follows:

Seventh Commandment – Thou shalt commit adultery.

Thankfully, the transmission of news and information in the 17th century was nowhere near as transparent nor instantaneous as it is today. A trip between the nation’s two largest cities, Norwich and London, took fifty hours. For news to travel between the English Parliament in Westminster and the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh took nine days, weather permitting. Lucky for you.

We are well aware that if an error like that had been made today, say as an incorrect company blog post, or a rogue tweet by an overzealous – or overly pickled – employee, it would have been retweeted or ‘linked back to’ a hundred times over before said Master Printer had even noticed it. Social media giveth, and social media taketh away. Upsets – holy or otherwise – can happen, just don’t allow that possibility to scare you away.

Being nervous in the beginning is normal. But have some faith in what you’ve built – and those you’ve trained – as you’ve been setting up your internal social media plan. With a pre-planned Reputation Management plan in place and an in-depth social media policy drafted and disseminated to your staff, a PR bump in the road will be easily recovered from.

A study from Pew Research Center shows that Reputation Management is something that people are becoming highly aware of – 57 percent of adult Internet users have used a search engine to perform a vanity search, and 46 percent of Internet users search online to monitor the digital footprints of others. Celebrities and some high profile corporations are even taking out Twitter insurance, mainly to protect against lawsuits and legal battles around issues such as intellectual property, defamation and privacy breaches.

You might consider Twitter insurance be a bit over the top for the moment, but you still need to protect your company name and the integrity of your brand. Here are some easy and effective things you can do without breaking the bank:

• Trust: Your employees – they are skilled, intelligent, professional and presumably have a healthy grip on common sense.

• Develop: A detailed action plan – sometimes these PR nightmares happen at the most inopportune times – say, after midnight after the company party…? Have a detailed, easily accessed action plan in place as well as someone tasked with being the emergency response point person. If at all possible, don’t wait until morning to bring in your clean-up crew.

• Monitor: The web – use major search engines to set up alerts and always follow up when links are delivered. Assign someone the daily task of watching social media sites, review sites, blogs and online forums – use social media monitoring platforms if your budget allows. Keep track of where your name is mentioned daily.

• Respond: To errors in judgement immediately – explain the error or offense, and if there’s any way to fix it, do so. Just don’t sweep it under the carpet and hope it will go away. Worse yet, don’t dance around it. Social media users value the openness, contact and relationships they’ve built with organizations, and tend to not respond well to PR spin. Stepping up and saying “Hey, we goofed” will also remind people what’s behind the brand – human beings. Who sometimes make mistakes.

People can’t be at the helm 24/7. But if you adopt and adhere to a company-wide Reputation Management playbook, you’ll be able to respond to – and respect – your social media community members. And people are what this amazing new world of connectedness and conversation is all about.

What do you think? Have you thought about your organization’s Reputation Management plan? Who would you turn to or what would you do if an offensive tweet or Facebook post was causing a media firestorm? And where does your company draw the line at what is or isn’t offensive? Please leave your comments below.

Note: The Time Magazine link is an excerpt. Read the full article in the May 9th, 2011 edition.

Last week we shared our tools of the trade on sampling data for effective analysis when dealing with large data samples. Gathering the right data, and using the right tools can save you time and precious resource in the long run. To do this we’re launching a range of webinars to help you make sure that you are getting the most out of Radian6. Understand key features of the system, how to use them and in return maximize the benefits.

Whether you are undertaking social media on an ad hoc basis or monitoring and engaging daily there are several ways in which you can optimize your use of the system. Our webinars are designed to help you make the most of the investment you have made. The 30 minute sessions will assist new users, provide best practice for existing users and present the latest upgrades and development for Radian6. Our weekly webinars will cover: (more…)

When it comes to distilling large volumes of data into actionable insights many businesses are faced with a challenge. Here at 6Consulting our Professional Services Team work hard at presenting clients with a full picture of their social media presence providing detailed insights into the data. Our Analysts assess conversations by taking a representative sample of data to analyze which in turn provides an  understanding into the full data containing key information to assist in forming strategic decisions for social media.

In our ‘How To’ section we’ve decided to talk more about sampling. So how do we do it? (more…)

How many times have you received marketing emails from companies you’ve never heard of touting products you’d almost never consider buying? For each of those emails, how many times have you wondered how the heck those companies got your email address? Most of us marketing types know the story behind those random emails, but if you’re not in the business, that kind of thing can leave you wondering exactly who has access to your email address. And, if they can get a hold of that information, what else are they privy to about you?

These sorts of questions, and many more about how our personal information is being used by businesses, float through the heads of people regularly as they wander about on the web. With the induction of social media into our daily lives, those questions have exponentially increased in number, and it doesn’t take much to find someone doubting whether they should share their latest online purchase with their Facebook friends or sign up for another e-newsletter.

The increased levels of general consumer awareness and wariness about information sharing make it imperative that you, as a business, stay aware of rules and regulations surrounding customer data use and are open about your data gathering policies and any changes you make to them.

So, what do you need to make sure you’re doing to avoid breaking the rules and alienating your customers?

Know the Rules

This seems obvious, but with new social networks popping up so fast and new information becoming readily available on the web on a daily basis, the rules change quickly. Keep up to date with all regulations from your government’s consumer affairs arm regarding data gathering and sharing and consumer privacy.

Of course, it can be hard to stay updated or even understand what you should and shouldn’t be doing when you have to wade through pages of legalese. If possible, have your legal team create an easily understandable “CliffsNotes” version of those federal policies to be shared in your internal community. If that isn’t possible, work with legal team to identify the regulations most relevant to your communications and update and share that information regularly with your Marketing and PR/Communications departments and executives.

Don’t take chances with any vague clauses or statements in these policies; seek out clarification and always err on the side of caution. When it comes to federal privacy regulations, the last thing you want to be doing is skirting the line between solid and questionable data use.

Air Your Clean Laundry

It’s likely you’ve already got a privacy policy included on your website to ensure you’re covering all your bases. But when was that policy last updated to include your social media activity?

Are you collecting user information from Facebook and/or Twitter to create targeted ad and marketing campaigns? If so, have you included clauses in your privacy policy that account for that information collection and use? If your business is directed toward kids or is a financial institution, have you accounted for the additional rules and regulations created specifically for your industry?

And lest you think burying your privacy policy is a tack you can get away with, the United States Federal Trade Commission recently cracked down on a well-known brand for not clearly disclosing their data tracking and collection practices around certain branded communities and specific member involvement (disclosures were put at the bottom of a lengthy end-user license agreement).

Make your privacy policy easy to find and alert your customers when you’ve made changes to your policy. We’ve made our privacy policy easily accessible within our website homepage’s navigation and update it regularly, as needed.

Give Them a Way Out

Opting in and opting out of something is not just relegated to newsletters these days; you can give your customers opportunities to opt in or out of sharing certain pieces of information about themselves when they choose to share details about your products via social networks. Even if they choose to share quite openly, provide an opt-out option at all times. Make it easy for them to change their information sharing preferences at any time, and be honest with them about what they’ll be putting out into the world if they choose to interact with and promote your brand via social networks.

This is a quick look at what companies should be doing at a basic level to protect their customers and stay in good standing with them, as well. How are you ensuring your social media marketing efforts don’t alienate your customers and prospects? Where do you draw the line between using social media data and leaving it in the confines of your secure customer information databases? Share your tips and stories with us in the comments!

At our recent event Customer Service 2.0 | Proactive and Social, we highlighted and explored the principles behind the move towards social customer services and the impact this is having on engagement and business strategy across multiple industries. We also explored the idea that social media is less about the form of technology utilised and more about the interactions between individuals in this medium.

As the event clearly highlighted, effective communication in any medium (be it social media or otherwise) is multi-faceted and involves using facts, insight and feedback to inform on-going strategy. As such, we wanted to share with you some feedback from the event. We feel this feedback gives a valuable insight into important issues within social media customer service and the varied aims our delegates have, when embarking on their own enterprise-wide social media strategies.

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Many of you heard about the launch of Dell’s Social Media Listening Command Center, which happened yesterday at the global technology company’s Austin headquarters. For those of you who didn’t hear, go ahead and click on that link up there to get the scoop — go ahead, we’ll wait — and/or take a peek at the video above.

Dell‘s Social Media Listening Command Center is not the first of its kind — Gatorade’s Mission Control Center kicked off the development of these enterprise-wide-yet-centralized social media listening stations. For organizations the size and caliber of Gatorade and Dell, social media listening centers make absolute sense, and we’ll see them continue to pop up in the future as more companies adapt their internal cultures to really embrace listening.

These command centers are living, breathing listening grids and they’re vital to the health of the brands that install them. Why? Because social media adoption, on both individual and organizational levels, is fundamentally changing the way we share our thoughts and opinions with each other, and companies must adapt to that change.

Dell and Gatorade have tangibly demonstrated that they understand online social communication channels are here to stay, and that those channels will only become more engrained in our day-to-day lives as technology continues to develop. Their adaptation to people’s growing propensity for digital sharing and chat is to develop enterprise-wide workflow systems to harness that chatter, put it in the hands of the right internal stakeholders, and use it to improve products, customer service, and even entire business models.

This is where social media — and social business — is headed. The depth of web-based listening necessary to improve the global marketplace will only increase as more people lean on their social networks and online communities to connect, share ideas and feedback, and, essentially, live their lives. And it will be imperative that organizations of every size integrate social media listening into their business strategies, create efficient workflows to process social media data, and develop strategies for company-wide engagement.

We’re proud to be working with such forward-thinking companies as Dell and PepsiCo (owner of Gatorade) to help them weave social media into the fibers of their businesses, and we’d like to congratulate them on leading the way with social innovation. Keep an eye out for more social media listening command centers in the months to come, as we’re sure we’ll be seeing more of them.

Last Tuesday marked the first of a series of thematic half day seminars that 6Consulting will be hosting on a quarterly basis. Customer Service 2.0 Proactive and Social looked at what impact social media was having on the customer service landscape and how perceptions around service related interactions were fundamentally changing.

“Social Customer Service is generating considerable interest across major businesses in the UK. 6Consulting’s Customer Service 2.0 event provided a rounded picture of the tools that help facilitate online engagement, the business impact to anticipate customer needs, as well as best practise models and the importance of understanding the enterprise-wide implications and benefits of doing so.“

– Guy Stephens, Senior Consultant at Foviance and guest speaker at Customer Service 2.0 (more…)

When: Tuesday, November 9th
Time: 10am PST/1pm EST
Click here to register.

It’s been some time since we’ve hosted a webinar, hasn’t it? The summer has flown by and we’re seemingly well into fall (if the weather has anything to say about it, some of us are already experiencing winter). Now that the vacations, quick beach trips, and impromptu short days in the office are out of the way, it’s time we hop back on the webinar wagon and share some smart stuff with you to wrap up 2010. That’s why, in just a couple weeks, Radian6′s EVP of Business Development, Chris Ramsey, will be chatting with Forrester analyst Zach Hofer-Shall about the state of the social media listening platform industry.

Zach is a leading expert on a variety of aspects of Social Intelligence, including the technologies, services, and overarching strategy of using social media data to inform business insights, and the author of Forrester Research, Inc.’s Forrester Wave Listening Platforms, Q3, 2010 report.

On November 9th, Chris and Zach will sit down for an hour-long webinar to share their thoughts on how things are currently looking for the social media listening platform space, some of the emerging trends in the industry, top enterprise needs for listening platforms, and they’ll also share some current best practices for social media listening and engagement.

Toward the end of their chat, we’ll open up the conversation to our audience so Zach and Chris can answer your questions and address your comments. As always, those following along can share those meaty webinar bits on Twitter, and also ask questions via tweet, by using the #Radian6 hashtag.

The social media listening platform industry is growing and changing at an unimaginably fast pace, and we’re looking forward to hosting this webinar to give you all a chance to see where this space is headed. If you’ve got any questions now that you’d like answered, please share them in the comments! And join us on November 9th for what is sure to be an interesting chat.

Undoubtedly, Facebook is one of the hottest topics of conversation around social media, and an increasingly important part of social media in business.

A couple of years ago, it was an upstart social network for college students. Then it was the everyman’s social network, spreading like wildfire to teenagers and grandparents alike. And today, Facebook has taken hold as a significant and important player not just for individuals, but for companies who are looking to interact and engage with their customers online.

As a social media company, we absolutely understand the importance and significance of Facebook for our customers as well as the social media industry as a whole. So we wanted to talk with you a bit about how Radian6 approaches Facebook, and a few things you should know and keep in mind when including it in your listening and engagement strategy.

What We Cover

Radian6′s coverage of Facebook is built on Facebook’s Graph API. In clear terms, what that means is that Facebook provides us with a data stream of:

• public wall posts or status updates
• wall posts on Facebook Pages (or Fan Pages, as they’re commonly known)
• wall posts on Facebook Community Pages.

Also, a cool new feature: Facebook “likes” (from the Facebook Likes “plugin”) are now included in the “Votes and Likes” metrics on your Radian6 dashboard. Our current support is for the Like Plugin embedded on websites external to Facebook.

So if 20 people Like an on-topic piece of content where you’ve got the plugin installed, we’ll count it in the Votes and Likes metric in your dashboard.

(Note: while you’ll see Facebook posts in your search results, Facebook still requires you to log in to be able to view the public individual profile wall posts on Facebook itself.)

As it stands right now, the Facebook Graph API doesn’t include comments on wall posts. So, for instance, if someone posts a link on your Facebook wall and 10 people comment underneath that, those comments won’t be included in your Radian6 search results (even if they include keywords from your Topic Profile). It’s a current limitation, but we’re actively working on adding this capability.

As Facebook continues to build out their Graph API, we’ll continue to expand and refine the coverage that we can provide via Radian6. We’re going to continue carrying out coverage checks and enhancements on an ongoing basis, and we’ll keep you updated on how that coverage evolves.

Measuring Facebook

It’s important to note that comparing exact metrics of brand mentions on Twitter versus Facebook can be misleading, because conversations in open-access areas of Facebook only represent a snapshot of the potential total brand mentions. If a mention is posted in a closed or private area of Facebook, we won’t be able to include it in your results. As a business, it’s important to keep this distinction in mind, because it will impact the way you can measure and account for Facebook results in your monitoring and measurement activities.

A Note About Privacy

Something that’s very important to make clear: if your individual Facebook profile privacy settings are set to anything other than being viewable by “Everyone”, or if your Group is set to Closed/Secret, neither we nor any other search or monitoring provider will be able to see or find anything posted there.

Facebook is only a partially open network by design, which means that what’s visible to the outside world is dictated by the users themselves, and controllable via profile settings and preferences. For individuals, you can find those settings on your profile under Account > Privacy Settings. For Page administrators, you can adjust who can post to your page Wall your admin section, but wall posts on Pages are, by design, public. Facebook Groups can be made Open (completely public), Closed, or Secret, the last two only being visible to group members (and controllable by the administrator).

If your individual profile is private but you post to the Wall of a Facebook Page or public Group for a company or brand, that post will be publicly visible and available to Radian6 and other monitoring or search tools via the Social Graph API.

In short, Radian6 can and will only ever cover items that are classified as public, or that are posted in Facebook’s public areas.

What’s Next

We know how important it is to you that we stay on top of what’s happening in social media, and how important Facebook is to you. We’re listening, and we’re continuing to build out our coverage capabilities daily so that you never miss a relevant post.
Facebook presents a unique challenge in the social space, but we’re up for it. And we’ll continue to keep you posted as our coverage and capabilities for Facebook grow.

Have any questions about what you can and can’t do with Facebook data, or what you’re able to find via listening? Let us know. We’ll do our best to answer.

The increasing popularity of social media means that a greater portion of the business is becoming affected by it. Involvement through Twitter, blogs and social networks is no longer restricted to the realm of marketing, as customer services especially is now using social media to reach out to their customer base.

This November 30th we will be hosting an afternoon event for customer service professionals in order to discuss how using social media and monitoring software can help customer service departments improve:

• Customer service response rates
• Customer satisfaction
• Online sentiment
• Service issues

We will be sharing case examples highlighting how we’ve worked with companies to implement enterprise wide listening initiative, how we’ve worked with companies to action key insights gained as well as showcasing our software. In addition to this we will be sharing our most recent Industry Insight Report on how leading brands and their customer services are performing within social media.

We’re extremely pleased to have Guy Stephens, Senior Consultant at Foviance with us for this event. Guy will share his experience in using social media for engagement through his work with The Carphone Warehouse and other major brands and customer service departments.

For more details or to join just email Marketing (at) 6Consulting.co.uk

One of the key benefits of monitoring the social media activity surrounding your brand, competitors, and industry is that, when done right, you can identify potential customers and foster relationships with them to turn them into actual, long-term customers. If the process of lead generation and nurturing through social media monitoring seems a bit iffy to you, though, take this post as clarification.

The nuances of relationship building will play a huge role in how successful you are with this tack, but if you’ve got that part down, what’s left is establishing a process for identifying people and businesses that are discussing a problem that your services or products can help them solve. We wrote a white paper about listening at the point of need some time back, and the tenets in this white paper still ring true. We’ll review some of those tenets here, and also add to the discussion.

The Search is On

To make the most of your social media lead generation and nurturing efforts, start at the beginning: conversation searching. There are a few things you can do in your search efforts to begin honing in on the “right” conversations no matter what monitoring tool you’re using.

Most of the social media monitoring platforms available run on keyword searches. Do your homework and identify a decent list of keyword terms and phrases that are used in discussions in the industry you serve. Don’t just guess these terms; take the time to find out what they are. You might even consider surveying your customers to discover specific terminology they’re using in the online social space.

Once compiled, this list is a great starting point, but you’re not done yet. When creating your search profile, include terms that you would see related to someone voicing an issue or need that you might be able to help with. Spend some time manually searching through industry forum and community postings to get an idea of how those “point of need” communications are structured. Without those key terms identifying a need, you’re going to aggregate a greater number of conversations irrelevant to your lead generation efforts.

Be aware that your search profile will probably need to be tweaked and cleaned up a couple times before it delivers exactly what you want to see. Don’t give up on amending your search, as this is where it all starts.

Jackpot! Now What?

Getting involved in every conversation related to your brand or the industry you serve won’t be the tack that makes your lead generation and nurturing efforts here successful. Truth is, not every conversation is going to demand a response from you. Those that do, though – the conversations that specifically request input about products or advice about solving a problem – are opportunities to share information about your products or services, advice you may be able to offer, and show that you want to help.

It’s important to remember that hard selling on the social web is generally useless; badly timed pitches and interjections do little more than offend and alienate the people you’re talking to. Get involved in these conversations by showing interest in the topic of discussion. Ask questions to find out the root of the problem being voiced, and share thoughts before bringing up the possibility that your product or service is an option to consider.

Nurturing and Follow-Up

Okay. You’ve properly defined your search, you’re getting involved in the right conversations and seeing interest, and now…you’ve got to establish a process for follow-up.

Many social media monitoring platforms, including Radian6, offer integrations with some of the top CRM tools around. Create a process for tagging and filtering the leads you’ve identified on social media outlets so those leads are fed to your sales team for proper follow-up. That process should include tracking conversations that have been had up to that point (and afterward, really), classification by source, and any additional information your sales team has deemed pertinent to their follow-up efforts.

In some instances, your outreach efforts with a potential lead will sit in the bounds of social media for some time before paying off. In those cases, continue offering advice and answering questions, and keep up with their circumstances. Lead nurturing is just that – keeping an eye on your leads and interacting with them to show you want to help and that you’re interested in building a relationship. On the back end, you have to formulate an internal process for follow-up that incorporates your social media-based interactions.

Have you had success generating and nurturing leads in social media channels? If so, how? What tactics have you found successful? If not, what problems are you running into? Share in the comments!

Do you know my name?

Do you know I moved across the apartment complex two months ago?

Do you know I inquired about brand X five times before I purchased?

Do you know I purchased because I received a recommendation from another one of your customers?

Do you know that I purchased brand X for myself and gave as a gift to my husband, our two children and my best friend in Dallas, Texas?

Do you know my favorite color is purple because I bought all color coordinating accessories for brand X?

Do you know I shop online on Fridays and only shop or have physical interaction with your organization when I purchase brand Y or have issue Z?

Do you know ME?

Do you know ME whether I shop online, by phone or at your physical location?

Do you know I spoke to a customer service person yesterday via Twitter and again on IM today regarding issue Y?

I know ME and I expect if you have a presence online, offline or both, you should know ME too.

Over the past month, we have talked about forming a solid engagement strategy and how-to engage. But, before you have an exchange with someone, it is helpful to know a bit about them. Monitoring, exclusively, will not give you the insights you need to better know your customer base or community. Actively listening to customers/community will help clarify an immediate interaction, but will not give you a holistic view of their relationship with your organization.

How can you go beyond listening at the point of need to engaging at the point of need, knowing exactly who the customer/community member is and deeper context surrounding their transaction or issue?

What is missing?

The power of observation.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, to observe is:

“..to watch carefully especially with attention to details or behavior for the purpose of arriving at a judgment.”

Judgment is based on data over time. It is essential to learn the language of data to properly extract actionable insights. Do not dismiss the need to monitor or passively listen before engaging with your community. But realize there is an extra step between monitoring and listening. Observing. Use the time while monitoring to understand the people within your community. Just as an anthropologist would, study the behavior of the community in their natural habitat without the direct influence of your organization. Observe their habits, conversations and circles of trust.

Data tells a story. It is your job to observe and find the patterns and connections that matter so your organization can answer, “Do you know ME?”

How do you take the data you glean from online monitoring, observation, and any active listening between you and community and weave this information into existing data infrastructure?

While social media as a corporate communications channel is gaining ground, it’s still seen as a rather new and novel medium. As a result of this, and because there is a level of uncertainty with regards to its benefits, there seems to be a large demand for case studies and practical examples of corporate social media use.

With this in mind we will be sharing a number of case studies on our Blog over the next couple of months. First up, we highlight how we worked with Kellogg’s UK who were looking to roll out a social media strategy across their business.

To begin Kellogg’s sought to understand, in detail, what was being said about their brand and four of their main product groups; Coco Pops, Special K, Crunchy Nut, and Rice Krispies Squares. Working with 6Consulting, Kellogg’s launched a listening and monitoring initiative. The insight gained through this was then used as a basis for future cross departmental social media involvement. (more…)

The Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 Index highlights the 100 most capitalised companies publically listed on the London Stock Exchange. These companies are widely considered to be the most influential and are revered across the business world. However, success in business does not always equate to success in the mind of the public.

Achievement in the public sphere is difficult to quantify. While revenue, profit and volume of employees are all solid and commonly accepted measures of business performance, these figures do not correlate directly with success in the public’s eye.

Companies should be aware of how the public perceive them in social media: conversations online can go viral and tarnish a company’s reputation over the long term. Large corporates’ reputations can be quickly impacted if they have no effective social media strategy in place to protect them.

While traditional market research can be used to gain a degree of insight into the public consciousness, it is time consuming and never perfectly representative. Social media monitoring tools such as Radian6 allow for the collection of data in real time, enabling analysis of large volumes of relevant public conversations.

The 6Consulting Solution

6Consultings Professional Services Team analysed mentions of five FTSE 100 companies in social media for Q2 (1st April through 30th June 2010) in follow up to our earlier work on the FTSE 100. The number of mentions of each company in social media was measured using Radian6. Mentions of the major corporations made up the search terms, rather than subsidiary companies or products. Sentiment analysis was manually assessed by 6Consulting’s social media analysis team to provide insight into the public perception of the chosen companies.

The following companies were chosen for monitoring due to their involvement in recent media stories:

• African Barrick Gold - Recently added to the FTSE 100
• British Airways – Suffered at the hands of striking cabin crew
• British Petroleum (BP) – Criticised for the Deepwater Horizon oil leak
• British Sky Broadcasting Group (BskyB) – Rejected a buyout offer from News Corp.
• The Royal Bank of Scotland - Recently posted improved year-on-year financial results

Through sentiment analysis, a Social Net Promoter Score (SNPS) for each company was calculated.  This single figure metric devised by 6Consulting highlights public attitude towards an organisation expressed through social media and has evolved from the Net Promoter Score methodology.

The Results

Unsurprisingly, BP had the largest number of mentions in social media of the five companies, being mentioned 1,831,873 times over the monitored period. This is an extraordinary level of mentions for a single company. However, large levels of mentions and revenue do not mean public sentiment is necessarily positive:

Fig 1: Table showing the five companies in order of their SNPS (revenue figures from corporateinformation.com)

The above table highlights that although Africa Barrick Gold has the lowest volume of mentions and revenue of the five companies; it is more positively regarded in social media compared to the other companies. Much of African Barrick Gold’s positive sentiment was generated though buzz surrounding their addition to the FTSE 100 index.

The terrible score achieved by BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil leak is the worst of the five. However, note that three of the five companies attract more comments from detractors than promoters: BP’s situation as a large corporate struggling in the public eye is not unique.

British Airways and The Royal Bank of Scotland both attract criticism from social media users. The airline suffered due to sympathy expressed towards striking cabin crew, while RBS was still attracting negative sentiment after its near collapse in 2009.

Sentiment expressed towards BskyB was 90% neutral. Social media users spread news of the company without expressing much sentiment towards the broadcasting corporation.

Fig 2: The five companies in terms of revenue, SNPS and number of mentions

The above chart further highlights a rough correlation between high revenue and criticism in social media. The size of the bubbles relates to the number of mentions the company received, the position along the horizontal axis represents the company’s revenue, while the SNPS of each company determines their vertical position.

High grossing companies on the FTSE 100 index should take stock of what is being said about them online as social media continues to grow in importance and influence. The continued growth of social media suggests it will ultimately play a role in the success of a company. Public reputation is difficult to salvage as The Royal Bank of Scotland has discovered, a year on from its near collapse.

Radian6 shares our own processes for engaging in the online world with our Social Media Monitoring and Engagement Playbook. This playbook will give you a taste of what engagement looks like for a company that lives and breathes through the power of the social web. Because this is our internal playbook, it features processes that lean heavily on the use of our dashboard and Engagement Console, and is also tailored to help us achieve our own goals for social media engagement.

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about social media governance, but what does this actually mean and what impact does it have on businesses? While governance is often shied away from in our online world of unstructured information, increased control or ‘governance’ of social media is not necessarily a bad thing. Controls are needed, whether this is with regards to what you say on paper, in emails or within social media, should be irrelevant. The question is; how can companies manage social media governance effectively and efficiently?

Social media governance simply put is the control a company has over social media usage by itself or its employees. While the FINRA (the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) 10-06 Regulatory Notice on social media involvement for regulated businesses has created some buzz, social media policies, procedures and guidelines are gaining in popularity all around. The benefit of effective social media governance transcends industries.

Social media can be daunting for companies; potential record keeping requirements would easily tip the proverbial scale when it comes to approving a business case for it. As a shared medium, often across an entire organisation, social media initiatives understandably require a certain degree of consistency.

Ensuring this means infinite record keeping and tracking: what have employees said, to whom and where. The perfect controls call for a balancing act that mitigates risk whilst allowing the social media brand ambassadors enough flexibility to properly do their jobs. Inexperience in addressing this has the potential of becoming a very time consuming Excel driven affair. Realising that there are tools out there that can help track and record is often half the battle but not always considered.

As social media governance and compliance becomes more prominent in the UK it has the potential to help rather than hinder businesses, regulated or not, to adopt basic rules of engagement for social media as well as effectively manage ongoing campaigns. Clients and consumers will benefit because this will mean that social media participation steadily increases amongst businesses.

The act of uniformity and on brand engagement however should not become a burden which ultimately prevents companies from conversing and engaging, especially smaller ones for which using social media is not only a competitive advantage but part of their business model.

Olivia Landolt

Marketing and Community Manager

@6Consulting

On the 6th of May voters took to the polling stations to elect their M.P.s. The result was one not seen in the UK since 1974; after all the campaigning, ‘Clegg-mania‘ and ‘bigotgate‘ the result was indecisive; a hung parliament.

Prior to the election, political and market analysts were either promoting the idea of a hung parliament giving good cause for electoral reform, or denouncing the result for fear that political uncertainty would have a negative impact on the economy.

So, we have had a good week to get our heads around the idea of David Cameron and Nick Clegg working together running the country. What do social media users think of the coalition? Do they express a positive or negative sentiment towards the current hung parliament?

Radian6′s automated sentiment analysis tool allows the user to survey and assess a large sample in real time or over a specific date range. The social media research that 6Consulting conducted covered posts between the 6th and 17th May. This immediately follows the hung parliament result and covers the period when the coalition government between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats was formed.

In terms of sentiment, over the monitored period there were more positive posts about the election result than negative ones. The chart below highlights the disparity between the two:

Figure 1: Sentiment expressed towards a hung parliament 6/05 - 17/05

4,397 posts were automatically analysed for sentiment towards a hung parliamnet:

• 64% were deemed to have a positive sentiment,
• 33% were deemed to have a negative sentiment.

There were over twice as many posts expressing a positive sentiment towards a hung parliament. Prior to the election, some traditional surveys had suggested that the public were evenly split in terms of sentiment towards a hung parliament. This changed following the result and when the coalition government was established.

What are these social media users saying? Word clouds highlight frequently used words in a selection of posts. Those expressing positive sentiment said:

Figure 2: Frequently used words in posts with a positive sentiment towards a hung parliament

We can also see the frequently used words included in posts with a negative sentiment towards a hung parliament:

Figure 3: Frequently used words in posts with a negative sentiment towards a hung parliament

A word which stands out in posts with negative sentiment is ‘uncertainty‘. This was a major concern for market analysts prior to the election, but is not such a large issue for social media users following the result.

Where in social media have people been discussing the hung parliament? Blogs were the most dominant hosting platform, closely followed by micro media (predominantly Twitter).

Figure 4: Popular media types for hung parliament discussion

The media types are quite varied; blogs and micro media are at opposite ends of the social media spectrum. Where blogs allow for the author to express their view at great length and detail, Twitter is restricted to 140 characters. So while social media users were making short, passing comments about the prospect of a hung parliament, they were also composing longer tracts on the situation.

Social media played a positive role in the election, being a place where the public could comment on and discuss aspects and events throughout the campaigns. Moving forward, social media users remain interested in the result, closely following where the new coalition government will take the country next.

David Barber

Data Analyst at 6Consulting.

Twitter: @davidbarber6c

Jessica Watson is your typical 16-year-old. She loves the beach, reading, cooking, and sailing. Lots of sailing. In fact, Jessica is currently on schedule to break the record for the world’s youngest person to sail by herself, unassisted, around the world, in her 34-foot yacht named “Ella’s Pink Lady”.

Her story is an astounding one, not only because of what it’s made of, but also because of how she’s chosen to tell it. In typical 21st-century-teenager fashion, Jessica – and her family and brand managers – are using multiple social media channels, including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and her blog, to keep the world updated on her progress and color in the details of her incredible undertaking.

Unsurprisingly, the response to Jessica’s journey has been massive and polarized; people either commend her for working toward such a huge achievement or tell her she’s too young to be hitting the seas alone. No sooner had she started her trip than her supporters and detractors came out in droves, leaving hundreds of comments, both positive and negative, on her blog and in other various spots around the Web. While the majority of the comments left for Jessica cheered her on, her parents understood that not all of the feedback would be so supportive, and they, along with Jessica’s management, wanted a 360-degree view of what was being said about her.

To manage the flood of commentary and keep on top of conversation, Team Jessica – which includes digital agency d.tail Noisemakers (in partnership with Tonto Digital and Elixir Digital) – recruited Radian6’s Australian outlet, Social2CRM, to create a monitoring strategy they could live by for the duration of Jessica’s trip. By thoroughly monitoring the conversations about Jessica, her management and family are able to make informed decisions about when, where, and how to respond, and where Jessica should respond, as well.

“Google Alerts are great, but we needed a better media monitoring tool to thoroughly keep track of posts and understand more about the post than simply where it came from and the content,” said Jessica Murphy of d.tail Noisemakers. “Every week we export reports reflecting the number of posts, sentiment, media type, trending topics, etcetera, from Radian6, and we add our own social media analytics and insights to deliver the report’s to JW’s management and her family.”

In addition, if any posts stand out during a given week, the folks at d.tail Noisemakers forward them on to Jessica’s management to make them aware of potential issues.

While this tack sounds fairly typical of your modern brand management use case, the added depth to Jessica’s story is that her managers and family use these media platforms and the monitoring strategy to encourage her as she completes this, by definition, lonely voyage. Her team is also monitoring the stories coming from mass media outlets, and continually making sure that she receives only information most relevant to her since her bandwidth is so limited.

The value of monitoring and managing brand reputation is largely magnified when the processes are applied to a “brand” inadvertently created by a young girl taking on the epic task of sailing around the world by herself. Via their listening and monitoring strategies, Jessica’s family and management have been able to gain perspective on how people perceive Jessica and the goal she’s aiming to achieve, jump in to correct misperceptions and uninformed commentary, and make sure that the odd inappropriate comment is taken care of before it turns into something bigger. Because of the reports she receives, Jessica is able to respond directly to comments and feedback, and build relationships with those interested in her story by answering their questions and recognizing their support.

As of Tuesday, March 16th, Jessica had been sailing for 150 days and had just passed the 17,000-nautical-mile mark of her 23,000-nautical mile journey. With approximately 6,000 nautical miles left, Jessica is poised to wrap up her trip at her starting port of Sydney, Australia soon and will be writing a book about her journey upon her return.

Content for this story contributed by Leena Wood, Business Development Director for Social2CRM Ltd., in Sydney, Australia. Social2CRM is a social media analytics & social CRM strategy company and main reseller partner for Radian6 that provides social media analytics tools, support, and training to the Australia and New Zealand markets.

The creators of the famed P90X workout program are using social media listening and monitoring to gauge the success of their traditional advertising campaigns and new media outreach on the web, and track word of mouth online in the form of influencer support and mentions.