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Brand monitoring 2.0; Feeling increasingly overwhelmed by the never ending stream of information? Prefer sticking your head in the sand and wait for it all to go away?

The good news is that with the new media outlets, new tools emerge to leverage value from this endless flow of information. Learning how to use such tools can save time, avoid online reputation issues and help identify new business opportunities.

Lets start with the time management issue. Sure, there’s times you just want to browse around, check out some mainstream news or funny videos, but when it comes to specific monitoring activities, focus is the name of the game. Unless you have a clear idea of what you’re looking for, and a strategy for what to do with the data once located, you’ll quickly get distracted.

By identifying keywords that are important for your business, you will be in a position to find conversations about your brand, competitors and industry trends. Next step is to filter out the useful information and decide what to do with it. Oftentimes, brand monitoring data will be forwarded to a colleague in customer support, who will take action, addressing unhappy bloggers or forum participants. Positive mention will be of interest for the person in charge of SEO link building and the PR and marketing department. Other data, such as competitive intelligence and market trends, will be of interest for the R&D department.

Over the last months Imooty has developed a tool facilitating this type of work. Through a social media listening dashboard, users locate information on keywords across different social media sources and save posts to their media library. Users create projects, delegate responsibilities and define milestones, creating a sense of accountability when dealing with online media intelligence.

Want to take the Imooty tool for a test drive? Sign up for a free brand monitoring trial today!

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.

Why monitor social media keywords?

First, because search engines have turned into reputation engines. Today, people use search engines to “shop around” and check a brand’s reputation before making a purchasing decision. Locating discussions around your brand and identifying important opinion makers can avert brand attacks before the reputation is affected.

For example, media mointoring can lead you to spot negative comments in a blog or forum discussion, putting you in a position to interact directly with the dissatisfied customer. A proactive PR effort is the best medicine against crowdsourced social media complaint movements and on the other hand, locating positive mention is equally important. It too can be crowdsourced and distributed via social media, generating a number of back-links from fans or supporters of your brand. In turn, back-links and bookmarks will increase the visibility of positive brand mention in search engines.

Second, keeping an eye on what your competitors are up to, is always a good idea. Monitoring how they invest in media exposure will give you clues about their overall market strategy: By looking at where their brands show up (industry journals, newspapers, blogs, social media forums, portals, bookmarking sites etc.), you can assess their investment size and which market segment is being addressed.

Also, by measuring media exposure for different products / services you may establish what their strategy is for each line of business. Systematic media monitoring of your competitors social media keywords will enrich both short- and long-term knowledge of their commercial intent. That is valuable market intelligence when you fine tune your own social media marketing strategy.

Third, defining keywords that generically describes your products or services will enable you follow industry news and trends in social media. Whereas it normally takes several hours  to collect and categorize data, a media monitoring dashboard will dramatically reduce the time required for locating valuable information…

In locating social media keywords, you first need to define your monitoring goals. Is it measuring ROI on online PR and marketing efforts? Online reputation management and locating competitive intelligence? Tracking industry trends and buzz? All of them? In which languages? The classic phrase is “garbage in, garbage out”. You are only as good as your data, and your data is only as good as your algorithm for getting clear about what your social media keywords are going to be.

Looking for a media monitoring dashboard? Try Imooty’s free media monitoring trial today!

In a context of online reputation management, we refer to crowdsourcing as social bookmarking or collaborative tagging. So what does that have to do with brands and brand monitoring? Well, these days, pretty much everything. The latest example comes to us from Sears, a large department store chain in the US:

A couple had just bought a freezer from a Sears store in Dripping Springs, Texas. It would be delivered directly to their home free of charge. When the Sears truck arrived, the family dog, Toot, ran out to investigate the new visitor. As the truck was about to a stop, a loud yelp was heard. Toot had been run over and died shortly thereafter.

Understandably, the dog’s mom was upset and went to see the store owner. She wanted to bring closure to the tragic event. The owner apologized, but went on to say that it was not Sears fault. It was the couple had let the dog out in the yard. This did not help the woman to find closure and when she got home, her husband was unhappy about how Sears had treated her.

He called the store, the owner repeated that it was the couples fault, the dog should have moved. He would have been wiser in offering an apology without placing the blame on a distraught customer.

The couple bought a domain name, SearsKilledMyDog.com and created a website telling about their experience. Once live, they forwarded it to their friends and family, and posted it on Facebook. As with any viral story, the response was immediate. Within 24 hours, their website was generating heavy traffic, and the tragic tale was trending as number 1 on Reddit while becoming a Twitter phenomenon via The Consumerist.

At this point Sears customer service entered to execute online reputation management and active damage control. High level executives called the couple personally to apologize and offer restitution for pain and suffering. The couple felt they had been heard and the SearsKilledMyDog.com website was taken down. Next, Sears added their voice to the conversation raging at The Consumerist. They requested to add a response in the article itself;

“We are very sorry about the loss of the dog of a devoted Sears customer. As soon as we heard about this (which was at 5 PM CT on Dec-11-2009), our team acted swiftly to contact the customer who purchased the freezer from our Hometown Store in Dripping Springs, Texas. In fact, Will Powell, our business unit President, spoke to the customer just before 7 PM CT on Dec-11-2009 and extended our apologies and the customer graciously accepted. As a symbol of our deep regret for the accident, we offered to reimburse him for the cost of his dog as well as to refund the original sale.”

After the update, Sears identified the people with most influence who had Tweeted the article and sent them a link with the update. This enabled 3rd parties to post an update to the article via their own accounts, adding online reputation management credibility since such re-tweets would not come from Sears directly.

The conventional definition of crowdsourcing is that it is the completion of tasks that normally would be performed by in-house employees or contractors, and out-sourcing them to a random set of people (that’s the crowd). The Sears story shows how the term applies to online reputation management too. With engagement, sincerity and personal interaction, Sears was able to turn the negative crowdsourcing around to a positive.

Feel like getting started with online reputation management? Sign up for a free Imooty.eu trial today!

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!

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.

Interest in Imooty’s online monitoring tool has picked up significantly over the past few weeks. As we launched the BASIC service in October, we were targeting the small and medium sized enterprise segment, however, we were soon approached by large companies looking for a user friendly environment to collect media intelligence.

Over the next few weeks we will test our online monitoring PRO features in a private Beta. The new version is scheduled to launch commercially in March of 2010. Imooty PRO will include a online monitoring team platform, semantic search and a information categorization tool. Please drop us a line if you’d like to participate in the Beta!
Looking back at 2009 we collected a wealth of practical experience from which we will benefit (hopefully) in 2010. In terms of theoretical knowledge, the most valuable read was without a doubt “Getting Real” by 37 Signals, mandatory reading for anyone developing an IT tool…

Want to start with online monitoring and don’t know how? Go to Imooty.eu and register for our free trial!

An important element of Online Reputation Management is developing a social media policy for your employees. Social media behavior can certainly  influence how your brand or company is being perceived.

Traditionally, creating a “policy” focuses on restricting action, i.e. outlining things that cannot be done. However, the whole point with social media is engaging your customer! Therefore, in the interest of promoting engagement, focus on what contributors CAN do.

First, make sure that the idea of community is well understood. The idea is to participate in a network where you can support others that in turn will support you. It should be a place where people will be comfortable with connecting, sharing experiences and asking for advice.

Transparency will play a major role in establishing trust and finding the balance between personal and professional information will be the main challenge. Still, transparency does not mean unrestricted sharing of company trade secrets for example. Employee’s are obliged to protect confidential information.

Also, make sure your employees understand that they will bear full responsibility for what’s being contributed. There’s no implied right to say stupid things under a disguise of “self expression”. Sure, it’s all good to share your opinions online, however, contributors need to consider each audience and ensure that statements will not be misunderstood as narrow minded or discriminating.

Specifically, contributors need to understand that what their social media activities will be part of the company’s overall online reputation management. Their actions will influence how they are being viewed within the organization, as well as how external parties will perceive company culture. Make it clear that their activities will be part of  your company’s overall social media monitoring efforts.

Finally, provide value to your community! Many companies seem to have a hard time speaking about anything else than their products and services… Find topics that connect to the bigger picture, such as general industry news, developments and FAQ’s.

Want to try Imooty’s Online Reputation Management tool? Sign up for a 4 week FREE trial at Imooty.eu!

Online reputation monitoring has become a standard tool in a PR industry constantly adjusting to change. One commonly hears that new tools and practices have everything to do with changes in technology. But is that really true?

Sure, technology has pushed a paradigm shift on traditional media. Long gone are the days when radio, TV and newspaper’s had a monopoly on expressing opinions. However, sudies show that the main change taking place is sociological.

PR professionals are faced with the task of reaching out to a new generation of youngsters that grew up online. Their perception is one of suspicion to anything that smells like “official” opinion or advertising. Forget about conventional press releases, their opinion-makers are bloggers and fellow members in online communities. They are media savvy, value honesty, transparency and engagement.

In order to reach an online community, you have to join in as an exited and engaged participant - welcome to the new PR, a.k.a. community management!

As a PR consultant you will advise community managers (a full time in-house position) on how to conduct online reputation monitoring, participate in community forums discussions and interact with bloggers. Look for a community manager that has:

• ability to reach out to people, “step into the other person’s shoes” and build trust
• deep knowledge of product/service details and problem resolution skills
• an understanding of the organization’s social media goals and ability to communicate strategically to achieve them

In other words, it’s not the geeky knowledge of all the latest social media tools and platforms that makes for a competent community manager. Social media is all about people skills and being able to execute according to strategic goals. More than anything, this means investing in someone who will refrain from responding reactively and with impulse.

Have you started with online reputation monitoring yet? Register for a free trial with Imooty.eu now!

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!

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