July 29th, 2010
We will be speaking on Day 2 of the Conference, on 25th August 2010 at 1.45pm
Social Media Conversation Analytics – What you should know about Engagement, Influence, Reach and Sentiments
• Fundamental changes in communication creation and content distribution due to Social Media
• Why Online Conversations are important
• Insights from Conversation Analytics
• Technology and Trained Professionals to ensure high volume and accurate analysis
• Tying back insights to fundamental business goals
Main Conference: 24 – 25 August 2010
Venue : Anson III & IV, Level 2
Time : 9.00am – 6.00pm
The event will be held at the M Hotel, Singapore.
Other speakers at the conference include senior executives from Dow Jones, BBC, Barclays, Intercontinental, Vocanic, Burson Marsteller.
See you there!
Tags: Corporate, Event, social media intelligence
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July 28th, 2010
Corporate Voices must be Real to be effective
We might be living in a global village called the World Wide Web, but quite the contrary, the Internet gave us a place to embrace individuality, express ourselves and be free to be who we really are. Social media has become a repository of diverse opinions, interests and knowledge – a liberation of the mind that is impossible just a few decades ago.
This seemingly holy ground has been invaded by what Robert Paterson calls in his blog the “corporate voice”. It’s not the Internet’s conscience. Rather, it is the monotonous voice inside your head that tries to sell you products without variation in tone, approach and style. It is the conformist corporate voice that defies every law of online freedom by feeding you with structured press releases instead of creative, useful content. It is the same corporate voice that lacks personality to stand out in the crowd.
Let’s look at it this way. The corporate voice is actually afraid of showing its real self online because it does not want to be hated by others. Typical human behavior, isn’t it? But this typical behavior also has typical effects. It drives people away. At worst, it makes you go unnoticed. As a social media marketer, you don’t want that to happen to your brand.
This leads us to a possible dead-end. How can the corporate voice show it’s real self online without compromising its company image? But what kind of corporate image does the corporate voice really want to project? What is the corporate voice’s real self anyway?
First, the social media marketer should think how he wants the brand or the product to be perceived. Cool? Reliable? Definitely not boring. The corporate voice’s real self can be created through standards set by the company. Discuss with everyone how they want their brand to be perceived by people and plan how to better achieve this.
Give your corporate voice the personality overhaul. Enough with the press releases. Nobody reads them anyway. Instead, avoid being distant with the target audiences. Present your brand and product in a way that can be connected to their everyday lives. Don’t be afraid to have a fun or humorous corporate voice if you are selling a comedy show.
Take for example the Vans blog . They sell street shoes to teenagers right? They also have one of the most successful corporate blogs because their corporate voice is full of spunk, just like their shoes. That is what being one’s real self online is about –embodying what one’s product or brand is all about.
Sometimes, just being honest and sincere is enough, too. Listening and attending to consumer voices, being there when needed, and plainly showing that you care are the best qualities a corporate voice’s real self can have.
Tags: Branding, Digital Strategy, PR
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July 20th, 2010
By exclusive invitation, Brandtology will be presenting at the Estee Lauder Digital Media Day in New York on 19th August 2010. We are extremely honoured to be selected from thousands of digital service companies in the industry to share our expertise on conversation analytics with hundreds of executives in the Estee Lauder Companies Group.
We can’t wait for the day to be here! Will be posting up pictures of the event as soon as we can!
Tags: Digital Strategy, Event
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July 16th, 2010
According to a recent McKinsey & Company survey, online community members visited Web sites nine times as often, stayed five times as long, and represented 65% of sales. A 2006 survey of midsize and large companies suggested that 89% of them had adopted at least one of six community-building tools, such as blogs, wikis, social networking, or content-tagging. This is to say that the wide gap of social media reach between it and the consumers is getting slimmer. The fact that community management has played an undeniably significant role in attaining these figures stands strongly.
How does community management supplement the need of consumers for more reliable and accurate concepts? Community management isn’t just online issues management and discussion moderation anymore. It’s a far more fundamental business role, one that ties together responsibilities from a number of different places, both online and off.
Community management has evolved in its sense from basic online engagement where listening, monitoring, and getting involved in discussions online are the driving mechanisms, to touching and supporting many of the other areas of the organization to deliver content, provide insights and feedback, deliver subject matter expertise, and act as a bridge both inside and outside the organization.
This perpetuates the idea of making a community the central resource for information and intelligence that can help people do their jobs better as questions and topics that customers are interested in related to social media are tackled. Community management becomes a channel for sales, customer service and communication in that it functions as a hub for many different disciplines integrated with online and offline efforts such as customer/client service, PR, marketing, business development, building relationships, creating contents, responding to conversations about the brand and the content, ensuring input/feedback gets channeled to the appropriate internal functional group, managing tools – mostly social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) and blogs, and planning and developing strategies for increasing engagement and conversion.
All these, however, sound hypothetical without guidelines tailored for people involved in achieving the goals for community management. So, to catch some relevant ideas, Michael Brito, VP for Edelman Digital, discussed the three lessons to consider when managing a community :
- Embed within your community – Spend time getting to know others in the community and engage in simple and personal conversations.
- Don’t just focus on monetizing – The most important strategy to drive revenue for a business is to build the community, earn members’ trust, and delicately ask for their permission to market your service.
- Don’t just listen, get the community involved – Building a strong loyalty is not just listening but also acting and embedding yourself within the community and becoming a trusted voice there.
The major goal here is to provide infrastructure and management that drives awareness and a sense of connection to the brand with tens of thousands or millions of customers. Customers benefit greatly by interacting and building relationships with other customers, as well as getting introduced to affiliated product and service providers who can help them maximize their value. To end this note, William Azaroff (who pioneered ChangeEverything.ca) aptly mentioned that social media, when executed well, engenders great trust among the users and participants. He added that the beauty of social media is that it spills over into people’s lives, because people are in the driver’s seat.
Tags: Digital Strategy, Insights, social media intelligence
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June 30th, 2010
At the very beginning, cellular phones were large bricks we used to call other people, a new tool of communication. But as time passed and consumer electronics improved, mobile phones continued to get smaller, stylish, and ultimately more useful. Well, the hottest things in the market now aren’t called smartphones for nothing.
Consequently, the market for smartphones has become a large, anything-goes battlefield for cellphone makers, each trying their best to capture the essence of the ultimate smartphone and put it in a box. As technology continues to improve, the demands of consumers also continue to be greater. And with every mobile phone brand trying to meet these demands, there is almost always a mobile phone model that suits our style and needs.
Using the May 2010 data of Brandtology Mobile among English-language channels, issues regarding mobile phones can be monitored. Data from international English-language channels including the United States and Singapore shows that bloggers are the most active netizens when tackling the monitored mobile phone brands. These include Apple, RIM, HTC, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, and suggest a growing culture of product testing and reviews of mobile phones offered by these brands.
Operating System
May 2010 Brandtology data shows that blog entries and reviews on new smartphone models basically focus on operating systems and overall physical design. For instance, one blogger complained about Google Nexus One and commended HTC Incredible when tackling Android phones, giving emphasis on faster and more ergonomic user interface employed in the latter model. The same blogger also had difficulties using Google Nexus One as a professional phone and preferred a BlackBerry.
Another blogger also expressed disappointment with the Motorola mobile phones, citing how the brand is slow in developing its operating system, effectively making the phone brand lag behind major competitors. The company’s apparent concentration on the United States market is also criticized as European and Asia-Pacific markets are left out by Motorola.
Service Providers/Carriers
The carrier by which a phone model operates is also a hot topic for netizens. For markets like the United States, negative views are given to phones that are exclusively available on AT&T (Apple iPhone, for instance) because of the highly saturated 3G network that hinders the full utilization of smartphones. Verizon is seen as a better service provider with a better 3G network. Keeping this in mind, those who are not eager to buy a particular phone model end up choosing mobile phone models based on their preferred carrier.
Applications
Applications available for download are also a point of discussion for most bloggers. Apple iPhone applications, although largely popular, are criticized for its “Disneyland” quality where relatively safe and Apple-approved contents are the only ones allowed for download. In contrast, the Android platform has a more free approach not only in its choice of applications but also when it comes to application developer policies.
Picked up by most netizens are the feud between Apple, Adobe and Nokia. While the Apple-Nokia patent lawsuit focus on Nokia innovations supposedly used in several Apple products, the Apple-Adobe feud stems from the lack of flash support on Apple devices, which continues to hinder the viewing of flash videos and applications.
Apple’s refusal to allow the use Adobe’s flash-based application developing tool for Apple iPhone is also criticized, as Apple is seen to be forcing their products on consumers.
Customer Support
Another important issue for netizens is customer support, especially for smartphones that can be very complicated to use at times. A netizen, for instance, has been continuously complaining on Twitter about the poor customer support from Motorola.
HTC’s abandonment of the HTC-Singapore Facebook page as a customer support outlet also received many backlashes from netizens. Aside from disappointment from netizens, HTC-Singapore was perceived to be “anti-social” and “confused” on how to answer queries and address consumer complaints. This emphasizes the importance of using social media as a way to address the concerns of mobile phone users, especially with the amount of time spent by users online.
Truly, there is more to a mobile phone than meets the eye.
Tags: Branding, Buzz, Competitor Intelligence, DCMS, Digital Strategy, Industry Study, Insights, social media intelligence
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June 24th, 2010
Global Online Intelligence Leader, Brandtology releases Digital Conversation Management System v2.5 with enhanced measurement and tracking capabilities
24 JUNE 2010 – Brandtology, a global online intelligence service provider has rolled out the latest version of its Digital Conversation Management System (DCMS). The DCMS v2.5 comes with a comprehensive set of metrics to aid global brands and agencies in measuring key aspects of social media involvement, such as engagement, reach, influence and sentiments.
The various social media metrics newly introduced in the system will enable brand managers and consumer insight teams to grasp an overview of all subjects being monitored (be it their brand, competing brands or their various product lines) in the social media space and discover market leaders and laggards.
For instance, the ‘Engagement’ metric quantifies the content creation and response level of a particular subject. The number of conversations unilaterally initiated, as well as the number of relevant comments and responses are taken into account in determining their relative engagement as compared to other subjects in the entire category. Thus, a brand that pushes out boring articles methodically without garnering responses will fare very poorly on the engagement front.
Similarly, the ‘Influence’ metric measures whether conversations being made are by key opinion leaders online, thus translating to response generation and consequently readership. On the other hand, when measuring ‘Reach’, we look at how deep and wide the conversations relating to a particular subject ‘travel’ among influential channels online. A high reach score indicate the ability of a subject to spread related conversations far and wide. Last but not least, the ‘Sentiment’ index looks at the average net sentiment score of all conversations within the subject. More details on each metric can be found in Appendix A.
Commenting on the new DCMS v2.5, Eddie Chau, CEO of Brandtology said: “As brands divert their focus to social media marketing and consequently their budgets, there is a need to seek a more quantifiable manner of measuring the ROI of their activities on the social media platform. In response to feedback from our clients and partners, we have developed this new metric system for the purpose of such analysis.”
Besides the social media metrics section, the new system features five other new components such as an account profiling statistical overview, enhanced Social Media Equity charts to enable comparisons over time, conversation thread trend charts, a bookmarking feature to allow efficient workflow management and last but not least, a new chart sampling function unique to Brandtology.
By combining proprietary crawler technology to extract high volumes of relevant conversations from influential channels with trained social media analysts who recheck a portion of these conversations Brandtology is able to provide highly relevant and accurate insights. The new chart sampling feature leverages on this unique model to provide clients the option to toggle between the entire raw data set and rechecked conversations to show share of voice charts with near 100% accuracy.
“Due to the high volumes of conversations in countries with a large netizen base, such as USA and China, this chart sampling feature will allow clients the flexibility to manage and draw insights from large volumes of data but still be able to produce highly accurate charts for key categories for management reporting,” Eden Lau, Managing Director of North Asia, Brandtology, opined.
Apart from new feature, menus in the new DCMS v2.5 have also been reorganised into more intuitive sections to facilitate navigation and extraction of vital data required – namely Trends, Insights, Channels, Influencers and Social Media Equity. In addition, an FAQ section and tooltips have been added to explain the various data sections.
“With the new DCMS v2.5, we are confident of going beyond simple data collation to providing analytical insights that can integrate with strategic business processes and directly contribute to our clients’ bottom line,” added Kelly Choo, Business Development Director of Brandtology.
For more information and a demo of the new DCMS v2.5, please contact:
About Brandtology
With more than 140 staff in 12 global locations, Brandtology’s business and brand online intelligence services enable global brands to manage and glean invaluable insights from consumers’ conversations. Using proprietary technology, processes and trained professionals, Brandtology is able to provide a high degree of accuracy and relevancy in multilingual analysis, unlike any other automated monitoring tools. Astute global organisations utilise Brandtology’s intelligence in multiple functional areas such as sales, marketing, PR, media planning, customer service and product development. For more information, please visit www.brandtology.com
Appendix A – Detailed explanation of Social Media Metrics
More details on http://www.brandtology.com/blog/dcms-v2-5/
a) Engagement ( 0% – 100%)
The engagement metric quantifies the content creation and response level of a particular subject. The number of conversations unilaterally initiated, as well as the number of relevant comments and responses are taken into account in determining their relative engagement as compared to other subjects in the entire category. Thus, a brand that pushes out boring articles methodically without garnering responses will fare very poorly on the engagement front. Likewise for a brand that has low activity levels and relies on spill-over buzz from other articles which primary focus is not on them.
b) Influence ( 0 – 100)
Conversations by key opinion leaders online or what we term as influencers are gauged on their influence level. Their influence score is derived based on various parameters such as the total number of posts made and replies to their posts. The median of all influencers discussing a particular subject is then presented as the influence of that subject.
The higher the influence score, the more powerful the conversations relating to a particular subject is in terms of generating comments and consequently readership levels.
c) Reach ( 0% – 100%)
The voice of a brand may be concentrated within a few key sites or virally discussed across various influential channels online. When measuring reach, we look at how deep and wide the conversations relating to a particular subject ‘travel’ among influential channels online. A high reach score indicate the ability of a subject to spread related conversations far and wide.
d) Sentiment Index for the Subject ( -100% – 100%)
Sentiment index looks at the average net sentiment score of all conversations within the subject. This index denotes whether the average sentiment of all buzz relating to a subject is more positive or more negative.
Tags: Analysis, Branding, Buzz, Channels, Competitor Intelligence, Corporate, DCMS, Digital Strategy, Event, Influencer, Insights, Marketing, PR, Regional, Reports, social media intelligence, Social Media Monitoring
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