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From time to time, we get the question “what’s the risk of not having a social media monitoring tool?” The question reveals a perception that “social media is just an add-on to other media outlets”. It’s not. Social media has a different set of rules and is reshaping entire markets.
With social media, people are engaging and interacting around context, not necessarily personal relationships. Whereas we used to connect around place (neighborhood, community, schools, associations, etc.) we now link to online personas that share our intellectual interest and emotions. For many, traditional media is no longer the main source of information. Increasingly people turn to social media looking for “someone just like like me” and consequently, many blogs and forums discussions are more important in shaping opinions and perceptions than traditional media outlets.
Likewise, PR and marketing campaigns are no longer about one-to-many communication by distributing press releases and pushing “call to action”. Via social media monitoring tools, companies connect and interact with people that have expressed interest in a particular topic.
Still, the strategy of reaching out to people of influence has not changed. PR and marketing efforts still try to connect with “trust agents” that are likely to pass on a particular message to their networks. In effect, successful campaign management is engaged in one-to-one-to-many communications. The PR or marketing message gets forwarded from one-to-one-to-many if it connects with the interests of the person receiving it, AND if it provides value to his/her network.
The main challenge for companies using social media is therefore the blurring between marketing and communication. Marketers want to use it to sell, communicators to build relationships. Of course, social media is very much about being a real member of a community and providing value, rather than just chasing the next sale. That increases the number of people a company has to deal with, requiring more time and investment in building relationships.
The effect of social media monitoring and interaction will have a profound effect on the PR and marketing industry as we know it. PR and marketing efforts is increasingly about connecting with real people and because everyone is involved in a network, it’s not just up to the people working in the PR and marketing departments. A well thought out strategy will leverage the connections of the entire organization, leaving a more profound, valuable and documentable impact than any traditional campaign could ever hope for.
Want to start listening in on social media conversations? Sign up for the free trial of the Imooty social media monitoring tool today.
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Last week, Kristoffer was featured in an interview at Krawattenträger, a blog on social media marketing. Apart from talking about Imooty’s development over the past years, he was asked how Imooty uses social media for marketing purposes. The answer is that we haven’t done much of that (so far). The best ROI for our target audience has proved to be good old direct mail and followups per phone.
Many companies seem to be embarrassed admitting to this. Sure, there are many cases where there’s reason to cringe at opportunity lost by not following a social media marketing strategy, however, it also not for everyone.
First step is obviously finding out where your customers are likely to hang out. If you’re a B2B service, it probably won’t make sense to pursue MySpace users. Secondly, the effort required to convert “fans”, “contacts” or “friends” into paying customers can be considerable so there needs to be someone in charge of community management. Then, the million dollar question, what’s the social media marketing budget? It’ll definitely not be enough registering a profile here and there and wait for magic to occur…
Trying to do too much will inevitably end up with a lot of things being done poorly. Don’t try being everywhere all the time, focus on delivering content that your audience will find meaningful.
To conclude, there’s no sense in rushing into social media marketing just for the sake of it. Research whether it makes sense for your product or service, find out where your prospects are, how they interact and assess what your cost is going to be.
Already do social media marketing and want to assess your ROI? Register with Imooty.eu for a free trial today!
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Looking back at 2009, it was decidedly the year to get started with live search media monitoring. If you don’t know what “live search” is, think Twitter.
Never understood what Twitter was all about? Well, then think about this: If I was to go on a little R&R skiing vacation in Bad-Gastein (Austrian Alps), I could do one of two things: Check Google for pages mentioning Bad-Gastein, or search Twitter for the same term.
For the better part of 2009, Google would return a bunch of Bad-Gastein sites optimized for selling travel packages, hotels, spas etc. That’s where live search media monitoring comes into play. Although commercial service providers are relevant for my planning, I’d first of all want to know what the snow conditions were like, preferably from some unbiased source. The hotels, skiing resorts and service providers are unlikely to give me that, which is what makes people so exited about Twitter. It returns real life impressions from people who are there right now!
Google is of course not passively sitting back and has already struck a deal with both Twitter and Facebook which includes search results from them alongside their index and adwords.
This has significant PR implications and companies increasingly need to pay attention and interact with social media users. If a customer service representative is stonewalling customers the word will soon be out on Twitter, which in turn will reveal an unfavorable impression in Google search results. On the flip side, speedy interaction and online reputation management may have the opposite effect.
In other words, now more than ever, it pays to set do live search media monitoring of company and product names. And not just proprietary names, other keywords associated to the products and services should be monitored too. For my Bad Gastein example, it would make sense to monitor, “Skiing vacation in Austria”, “Skiing in Hohe Tauern” and “Austria ski resort guide” too.
For a comprehensive live search media monitoring system, take this opportunity to try out the FREE Imooty.eu trial.
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An important element to getting information about your competitors is engaging in media intelligence and market research. Why? Because all companies have a communication strategy based on differentiating their company name and brands in the market!
Therefore, keeping an eye on your competitors investment in media exposure, will be a key component for understanding the market intent.
Media expenditures are the result of a carefully agreed and well thought through decision making process. It can be traced via the marketing and communication departments, all the way back to the company’s board of directors meeting. When analyzed properly, the information will reveal clues about your competitor’s overall market strategy.
Accordingly, media intelligence can be used to find answer to the following questions:
-Which line of business is being pushed the most? By measuring media exposure for the different products / services over time, one can establish the competitors strategy (or lack of one) for each line of business.
-What segments are they targeting, and how? By looking at where the competitors products / services appear, such as in online newspapers, blogs, social media, forums, portals and bookmarking sites, one can assess the investment size that was allocated for each market segment populating those channels.
-What is the emphasis of the communication strategy? Relationship to the brand, experience, building a stronger reputation or call-to-action? If the media campaign is aimed at enriching the relationship / experience with the brand, the intention will be to create a stronger bond with consumers and to grow brand equity. Reputation building on the other hand, will not only focus on the brand, but also include the organization’s relationship with society. Lastly, a dominance of call-to-action exposure will reveal the intention of rapidly gaining market share.
Systematic collection of media intelligence will enrich both short- and long-term knowledge of your competitor’s commercial intentions. Needless to say, it is will be important to compare this knowledge with your own brand monitoring.
Start harvesting your media intelligence with Imooty.eu today!
Media intelligence : Analyzing how your company name or brand rates in online reviews, vs. those of your competitors’, most definitely belongs on your media intelligence to-do list.
Or does it?
The New York Times article, “On the Internet, Everyone’s a Critic But They’re Not Very Critical” reports that the average online review rating is 4.3 stars out of 5. That’s of course far away from being even remotely close to the “bell curve”. How come the average distribution of statistical data is so far off? Does media intelligence practices play a role here?
The article seems to indicate that yes, they do. Printer paper, boots and dog food in particular have bloated online reputations and the same can be said for hotels being reviewed on TripAdvisor.com.
However, media intelligence practices, such as a manager’s puffing up the average rating of this own product or service, is not the only factor. Someone is also minding the store. Several independent Amazon reviewers for example, suspect that the online megastore is involved in selective review vetting.
Translation: Negative reviews are simply deleted in order to sell more products. Ed Keller, CEO of the Keller Fay Group, has found that ca. 65% of word-of-mouth reviews are positive, whereas only 8% are negative!
At the end of the day the question then becomes how “good” is a good review. Do you have the strength to give a 4.3 review its real (average) value in your media intelligence matrix?
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The web is increasingly the place to make a buying decisions and online reputation management has become routine for many businesses. Potential customers have to get a positive first impression of a company, product or service when doing online research.
The effect of a positive reputation is obvious, consumers associate trust and confidence with the brand thereby directly impacting company growth and profitability. But what happens when a prospective reads a negative comment about a brand? Exactly the opposite. A negative mention of a company reduces consumer confidence and translates in lower revenue and profits.
But isn’t this outweighed by another favourable review? Unfortunately not.
Although the majority of purchases are made off-line, recommendations from other consumers is the most important factor in making purchasing decisions (source TNS and eMarketer). According to research on Ebay and Amazon merchants, the positive/negative ratio is about 10 to 1. Translation; you need 10 positive reviews to outweigh 1 negative. Or better illustrated with a quote from Warren Buffet; “It takes 20 years to build your reputation and five minutes to ruin it”.
On the web, rumors, gossip and bad news in general, spread like wildfire. There is no longer a geographic limitation to distribution of content and negative reviews can be deadly to a company’s bottom line. This is why online reputation management is important.
So how do you make sure that potential customers receive a favourable first impression when researching your company, brand, product or service online?
First, by monitoring online press articles, blog posts, social media reviews, pictures and video uploads as they relate to your company’s product and services.
Secondly, it analyse and document the development of search results as they relate to source type authority and relevance.
Thirdly, influence search results by cultivating your own online assets, namely your official website, blog, micro sites and customer review forums.
Visit Imooty today to get started with online reputation management and to set up your online monitoring service.
Many still think of business intelligence as secretly spying on someone, surveying and somehow unfairly obtaining information about a competitor. Well guess what, if you’re to stay relevant in the market place, its your duty to know what the market is up to!
Welcome to the information age, knowledge is power and anyone doing business online will have to get used to it. Quick. The good news is that you don’t have to subscribe to an overpriced media monitoring service to find good business intelligence anymore.
Does democratized business intelligence applications sound better?
It used to be that business intelligence applications were reserved for large corporations with fat budgets. Armies of people were scanning newspaper articles and listening in on radio & TV programs looking for particular brands, names or commentary on particular issues. Obviously quite a labour intensive process, which is why we can now talk about a democratization of these services.
So what is behind this trend? Well, increasingly, publications are moving online and information searches are being automated. Meanwhile, speech recognition software makes the creation of transcripts possible. This facilitates automated audiovisual searches too (more to come on this).
So, what can you do with business intelligence applications? Limited knowledge of potential new revenue streams will obviously impact your business and these tools will give you a concrete possibility to access important updates on your industry. Knowing the different cycles and where to look for key pieces of information automatically gives you an edge; changes in regulations, promotions, acquisitions etc.
You’ll also want to know a bit about your competitors, who are providing similar products and services as yours? Location, size, offer and if they could represent a threat. Or is there a possibility of a strategic partnership? Sure, you’ll be tempted to ignore the competition, but sooner or later you’ll have to deal with it, one way or another.
You can also use business intelligence to find out about your target customers. Who are they, what are their likes and dislikes, what websites are they currently visiting, what’s their budget?
This information will allow you to tailor your product to them. The more needs you can fill, the higher likelihood for repeat business.
In short, by being aware of the latest trends in your field you’ll find the advantages and disadvantages of each. This is information you can act on! Listen, learn and turn business intelligence into new revenue streams.
Give the Imooty business intelligence application a try today!
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Imooty attended Berlin’s 4th conference multimedia start-up’s yesterday. We were pleased to present our mobile news application at the conference, which is a forum for multimedia and technology start-ups to network with prospective investors. It took place in the former DDR movie theater “Kosmos” in East Berlin.
This year’s motto was to collaborate and succeed in a time of economic crisis and Mr Kaczorowski, Director of Internet Business Solutions at Cisco Systems AG, held the keynote address. He told us how Cisco, one of the world’s largest networking equipment and network management suppliers didn’t had to cancel its annual leadership conference. Instead, new ‘live size’ video conference applications enabled them to organize a 3 day online conference for top level management world wide. Later, we were pleased to share Imooty’s collaborative mobile news features with the conference participants.
Another presentation by Dr. Martin Kupp, from European School of Management and Technology in Berlin, dealt with the fundamental question: how to stay longer on the market? The Queen of pop, Madonna would serve as an example for success as her biography is a textbook example for marketing and PR strategies.
In short the reccomendations were as follows;
- Move with the flow and endorse new technologies; Madonna boldly promoted MTV’s use of music videos already in 1983.
- Break some rules; Madonna has questioned sexual and religious tabus her entire career.
- Blend with the up-and coming, Madonna has collaborated with young artists and got good coverage as she kissed Britney Spears in the MTV Video Awards in 2003.
As for the exhibition, we had our own stand somewhere in the middle, presenting Imooty’s Media Monitoring solutions. As expected, the financial crisis dominated the general mood at the conference, and proved to be an excellent occasion to present Imooty as a concrete way for companies to save money on online reputation management services in trying times.
And the Gummy Bears at our stand, courtesy of Profund, FU, was a huge hit among fellow exhibitors as well as investors.
Create your online monitoring tool and start following mobile news today!
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Blaise & Jasper waiting for a goal
Imooty is pleased to announce that Jasper Dencker-Hahn has joined the Imooty team. Jasper has 20 years experience in the media monitoring field and will assist Imooty in business development. His most recent engagements include Mediaclippings, Picturesafe and Xerox. To celebrate the collaboration we invited Jasper to Olympia Stadion to watch his favourite soccer team, Werder Bremen, play Hertha BSC. An excellent game which ended with a 2-1 favor for the home team. With his characteristic optimism Jasper maintained that Werder were not giving its best because of preparations to the UEFA cup!
Set up your free online reputation monitoring system with Imooty.eu today!
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Last week Imooty was awarded a Ruban d’Honneur for its business intelligence application at the European Business Awards! We were nominated in the Business Innovation of the Year category.
The Awards ceremony took place at the Westin Excelsior in Rome where about 200 business leaders and esteemed guests showed up. We were awarded the Ruban d’Honneur by former President of Romania, Mr Emil Constantinescu.
From 7000 entered companies, 99 Ruban d’Honneurs were awarded and 10 overall category winners announced. Reaching this level of recognition is a major achievement for our young company and we look forward to participating again next year.
Try our business intelligence application for FREE today!
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