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!

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!

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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