-Who’s in charge of listening?
-Who’s in charge of deciding whether something is relevant?
-What happens when there’s a problem?
-Who is in charge of responding?
-What is the engagement deadline?

These are all policy decisions and need to be associated with a specific social media tipping point, i.e. the threshold when a social behavior tips, and start spreading like wildfire.

For example, to determine whether something is wrong or controversial, set a daily limit of how many negative postings are allowed before you flag it. Then, once that threshold is reached, who deals with it?

As mentioned in a previous post on proactive social media monitoring here at media-monitoring.info, it’s not desirable, nor feasible to engage with everybody with an opinion. In fact, whether to engage or not is a policy decision too, i.e. determining what level of pull the person has with your core target group. Don’t be afraid to pick and choose who to interact with, it’s by engaging the most influential opinion makers you’ll have the most impact!

Finally, sharing quality content and answering questions is a positive way of engaging with people online. It’s well worth investing in creating a company blog, white papers and videos. Use them as reference points for your online engagement and keep the conversation going by sharing your expertise.

Register risk free for Imooty’s social media monitoring tool and define your social media tipping point today!

So, when monitoring the Hilton Hotel in Paris, Imooty uses advanced text recognition to eliminate the Paris Hilton mentions from the search results. But how do we do that? Initially, we feed the software with selected articles that clearly are about the Hilton Hotel in Paris and Paris Hilton, the artist. Having learned what the two categories look like, the software can start to automatically separate them from one-another.

Named entity recognition, pretty cool tool, is what that is.

The sheer amount of social media data to go through is what makes this problem a real issue. People now share common interest and experiences with like minded strangers and the total amount of digital information in the world double 2 times EVERY DAY!

What used to be called Public Relations, has become Community Management. Gone are the days of one-to-many communication (mass media) when getting a message out there was to get a journalist interested enough to consider doing a story. Social media on the other hand, is a one-to-one-to-many format and to keep track, you need more than a fancy way of counting online mentions.

The future is in analytical applications that educate users about things they don’t already know. It’s about gaining knowledge of the unknown, combining the data of the past with strategic solutions that help you move forward. Together with Yukka GmbH, Imooty offers interpretation of large data pools by way of computer linguistic tools.

Do you already use a monitoring tool and are looking for a smarter way to process information? Try our free media monitoring trial or drop us a line at info@imooty.eu.

The reason is simple; “opinion making” and “agenda setting” transformed completely somewhere along the way from the one-to-many mass media paradigm, to mainstream’s adaption of interactive Web 2.0 channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

Opinions are today less formed as a result of carefully crafted press releases distributed through classical media channels (press & broadcast). The Web 2.0 “share with a friend” or “re-type” functions allow for viral distribution of information and conversations that also reflect on a cultural change in our society: Online sharing of experiences have become an important way of self-expression. First, providing valuable information to “friends” or “followers” can gain a community member status. Second,  the ability to “rant and bash” can warn of a bad product or service…

These two dynamics, the promotion of good, interesting or funny information, vs. the warning function is what online reputation management is all about. Online communities are both a potential target group, and an important source of feedback revealing customer experiences.

To locate this information you’ll need more than Google Alerts and other B2C search engine tools. Sure, they deliver information, but in an unstructured form that makes it very difficult to make any sense of it.

Professionals use semantic text recognition software to locate and comprehensively analyze their company name, competitive intelligence and the latest industry trends. Not only are they able to track who, where, when, and what kind of opinions circulate; they also improve internal communication and knowledge management with virtual project management and calendar functions.

The advantages of proactive online reputation management, as opposed to a defensive PR-in-crisis strategy are significant. To get started you need find some people for your community management team (read more about that here) and an online reputation management tool.

You can register for a free trial with Imooty right now!

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The announcement came during a workshop session called “From Start-up to sustainable Business” where a panel of entrepreneurs, investors and coaches discussed the challenges faced by young businesses. In this setting, the Imooty and Yukka co-founders had the opportunity to pitch the development of their common service.

Stefan Kupferberg, Yukka GmbH & Kristoffer J. Lassen, Imooty.eu GmbH & Co. KG

On stage, Stefan gave some insight to how the collaboration came about; “We met by chance here at the Multimedia Congress exactly one year ago. At that time we were surprised to discover that Imooty already offered the end-user tool that we wanted to develop. Imooty on its part seemed exited to learn that Yukka was in the process of developing semantic tools it needed to improve its service…”

Aided by Yukka’s software, Imooty will add a more efficient and qualitative superior data management system to its media monitoring tool. In brief, the Imooty data index will be processed by Yukka’s semantic text recognition technology. This includes automatic language recognition and consolidation of duplicate- and topic related entires, ultimately improving the end user experience.

Imooty.eu GmbH & Co KG, founded at the outset of 2009 offers online media monitoring tools, scanning real time opinion makers from main stream- and social media sources. The company was awarded the German Ministry of Economics and Technology Multimediaprize 2008 and a Ruban d’Honneur as Business Innovation of the Year, at the European Business Awards 2009.

Yukka GmbH was also founded at the outset of 2009 and offers analysis of unstructured data. The company combines best practices from artificial intelligence with computer linguistic methods, delivering a service that facilitates organization of content in a accurate and time efficient format.

Moderated by Ulrich Walter and Uwe Seidel from VDI/VDE-IT, the entrepreneurs, investors and coaches joined in a lively discussion to exchange practical knowledge on how to cope with lack of experience, finance- and growth issues.

Adding new subtitles to videos has become a popular form of satire. Perhaps you’ve seen Bruno Ganz portraying Hitler in the movie “Der Untergang”? In the original he’s going bananas realizing that he’s about to loose WWII. With new subtitles however, he’s lamenting everything from the state of Twitter to the shortcomings of the iPad.  But now Constantin Film AG, the owner of the movie rights, has had enough of Hitler jokes.

Via YouTube’s contentID system it has uploaded the clip’s audio and footage, instructing identical clips to be removed. Specifically, the YouTube media monitoring tool compares Constantin’s movies with new uploads, deleting all un-authorized videos.  ContentID and “take downs” is nothing new of course, one of the exclusive rights afforded copyright owners is after-all the privilege of controlling distribution.

Still, there’s no rule without exception and in copyright it’s called the “fair-use doctrine”.  Fair use recognizes that a system allowing for sharing and referencing of ideas stimulates public discourse and benefits society as a whole. Paraphrasing and quoting of literary works has long been acceptable as a matter of public policy because it assures authors the right to their original expression while encouraging others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work.

Accordingly, for purposes of criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching and research, copyrighted material may be used without infringing on copyrights. But YouTube’s ContentID and media monitoring tool doesn’t distinguish between use and fair use. Needless to say, that quickly becomes an issue for “free speech” which from the perspective of public policy is more important than making sure individual privileges are upheld by intellectual property laws…

Interested in finding the latest new on IP law and fair use? Find out with Imooty’s media monitoring tool! Free speech guaranteed!

The problem with Google is that the search results are based on a variety of factors including your own search history. Obviously, if your search history is irrelevant to your new query, you’re unlikely to get any good data.

Also, Google’s secret algorithm determines the relevance and authority of links, which for monitoring purposes is inappropriate. For example, you’re likely to miss out on obscure, but relevant industry blogs, that don’t play by Google’s SEO rules…

Next, you’ll find it’s one thing to locate the information, but something completely different to get a grip of the data. How do you handle your social media monitoring search results? Not with Google alerts, that’s for sure.

So where to start?

First, define which social media platforms you’d like to pull information from. Where does your market segment hang out? Slumming around on My Space, Friend casting on Facebook, or Tweeting on Twitter?

Next, define your keywords. Say you’re a lawyer looking for new clients, you’d want to use some keywords describing your field of expertise.  If he’s providing intellectual property (IP) services, he’d want to monitor anything related to “patents”, “trademarks” and “copyrights”. But he’d then get lots of noise from competitors marketing their IP services!

By simply adding additional keywords, such as “pirate”, “infringement” or  “question” our IP expert would narrow in on individuals with a particular problem… That way, he’d reduce the number of search results dramatically, spend a lot less time going through irrelevant search results, and find those with a specific issue to resolve.

Depending on the answers to the above questions, you can either choose an agency to do the job for you, or try one of the do-it-yourself social media monitoring services.

Worst kept secret: Choosing the do-it-yourself option will save you big time!

If you want get down to business right here, right now, sign up for Imooty’s FREE 4 week social media monitoring trial!

Well, since the SEC filing on April 16th, Goldman appears to have gone into damage control mode. It looks to be one of  the most controversial financial fraud cases in recent times. The charge is that the banking giant mislead investors by not informing clients about some risky hedge fund investments that ended up causing substantial losses…

So how does this affect Goldman’s reputation overall and does it make sense for them to engage in active online reputation management ?

No, in this case it doesn’t. Although an SEC filing would spell major problems for almost any businesses BUT Goldman, (trading partners become caustic about transacting with SEC fraud ’subjects’), it is unlikely to become an issue for them. Sure, the ongoing case and speculations is going to put a dent in how the firm is being perceived publicly, but does that really make a difference at the business end of things?

Goldmans clients are afterall bankers whose perception of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ barely extend beyond profit and losses. With $3,5 billion in profits for last quarter, Goldman is good and the online reputation management team has little to worry about.

Still, if you’re not Goldman and are looking for a cost effective tool, read some of our online reputation management articles and sign up for the FREE Imooty trial.

To summarize; Greenpeace took issue with Nestlé’s use of palm-oil as a key ingredient in many of its products, among others, the well known Kit Kat chocolate bar (Have A Break, Have A Kit Kat). The need for cheep palm oil drives deforestation and destroys carbon rich landscapes. Specifically, burning of rain-forests and peatlands to clear land for palm oil production releases significant amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere while disrupting wildlife habitats.

Enter the Greenpeace viral video campaign: A 60 second video clip is posted to YouTube showed an office worker having a Kit Kat break. Opening the chocolate wrapper, he finds an orang-utan finger inside. Message; give the orang-utan a break, stop Nestlé buying palm oil from companies that destroy the rainforests.

Nestlé’s response? Notifying YouTube that the visual identity of their brand had been infringed by Greenpeace. Effect: The video is taken down and supporters of Greenpeace feel censored. Next, they upload the video to other social media sharing sites. What’s more, rather than being discussed on blogs, activists now move the debate on Nestlé’s reponse to their own Facebook page. But wait, its Friday! There are places to go, things to do, people to meet… for Nestlé’s social media monitoring team.

Meanwhile angry comments flooded the Nestlé Facebook page. Response to criticism was slow, and when it came, it was reactive, focusing on defining rules for the discussion participants, rather than addressing the issues raised. The forum participants only got more agitated and soon enough, the discussion moved beyond the Greenpeace activists community, attracting mainstream and environmentally conscious Facebook users.

Lesson; When negative reactions surface, your social media monitoring team has to catch it. A wait and see attitude will only leave you to respond with reactions and that’s no way to show initiative. Early on in this controversy Nestlé did for example announce that it was ending its relationship with the palm oil supplier in question. However stuck with an seemingly inexperienced (and unprofessional) social media team, Nestlé got caught in a reactive response pattern, letting this announcement drift by without barely making a dent in the discussion boards.

Conclusion; If you encourage people to interact with your company through social media, you have to be there and be prepared to respond when the s#*t hits the fan… Social media is a two way street, so you can’t choose just to include the positive and sensor the negative. AND; There’s no TGIF for a social media team with a job to do. Social media monitoring tools were created for a reason, do not ignore them just because there’s a weekend coming up…