Just how good are social media monitoring tools?

Following some recent investigation into Social Media monitoring tools, I found this interesting article from Daniel Riveong at e-Storm:
http://www.emergence-media.com/2008/04/social-media-monitoring-broken-conversations-broken-tools/

I think he actually has a well made point. Tracking the buzz within the blogosphere and other social media is one thing, but these tools are still growing in their capabilities.

What they current have a particularly difficult with is following the dialogue that takes place over several sites or sevices. These conversations are similar to family members that change and take on new personalities depending upon their environements and influences. All comments and discussions may well be relevant, but they are also getting increasingly complex to follow, especially as new methods appear (e.g. who used http://www.twitter.com, http://www.friendfeed.com or http://www.plurk.com a year ago?)

However, don't over-do the measurement though, as this article from Commetrics highlights.

Social Media Monitoring & Analysis

Having recently read the Aberdeen Group research paper on Social Media Monitoring and Analysis, I was asked by a client about its usefulness (before they read it themselves).

Now Aberdeen Group papers are usually written in a fairly dry manner, with terminology that can initally baffle the inexperienced (e.g. their use of the term "laggards"), this one is no different. However once you have read a few you get used to it (almost).

The paper does contain some very useful information about social media measurement as well as observations and insight picked up from those they have surveyed in the entertainment, PR, retial and other market sectors.

A service like this (e.g. Magpie's Brandwatch) is useful for managing your company's online reputation and if the report says:

"61% of Best-in-Class companies currently deploy social media monitoring and
analysis solutions"

....perhaps you should consider if yours needs to do the same?

The Corporate Social Graph

I have previously mentioned the individual's social graph, the relationships a person has with others and how to represent this.

However the relationships a company has with its influencers does in many ways resemble the relationships individuals have. It must therefore possible to do the same for a company or brand. But what are the differences?

Here's my suggestions on how they differ:

1. As a company is made up of more than one person, the nodes that make up the graph must therefore be greater

2. As a consequence, the connections between nodes must also be greater (but not uniformly)

3. The frequency that these connections change at will be different from an individual's graph (if only because very few individuals have their own marketing or PR function)

4. The type of connections will be different.

For example, a connection between two people (nodes) will be based upon family / friendship - usually a positive connection. However collective sentiment about a company / brand / product will be extremely broad and range from the positive to the negative (I don't know anyone who is hated as much as some companies)

Michael Myers has come to a similar conclusion and also calls this connectivity the Corporate Social Graph. He goes on to state that any company not having one will soon be at a disadvantage... and I couldn't agree more!

Social Media Analytics

Marketing has become more of science and less of an art, mainly by the ability to produce a decent amount of quantitiative and qualitative data.

Just recently social media analytics tool Brandwatch has been monitoring the buzz from the gaming community. They've been tapping into the collective sentiment of users of PS3, Wii and the Xbox.

Being able to monitor a specific niche section of a community is a very useful step in understanding who your influencers are and what they are talking about (Blu-ray apparently)

Marketers and relationship managers now have the information to create a new albeit refined art... learning what to do with that data!