Social Media Monitoring Tools: What Do You Do With The Information?

Social media is measurable. Isn’t that the mantra everyone talks about? I think everyone would agree that social media is a little easier to get your hands around as to where the lead originated as opposed to traditional media. I sometimes think there’s too much info out there.

Social has several tools to help you measure and monitor your activities and hopefully help you take action. My question is collecting data is one thing, but what you do with it (or not) makes all the difference.

Are you looking at where your referral sources are? Are they from groups on LinkedIn that you belong to or from places like Stumbleupon? If they are coming through search, which engines are picking you up? What key words/phrases are being used?

emarketer.com recently had a post on How Social Media Marketers Can Make the Most out of Monitoring Tools that I thought was interesting. They cited a June 2011 study by RSW/US and Web Liquid of Senior Marketers. Not surprising, Google Alert was the most popular tool being used by them. It was good to see that marketers were indeed using these monitoring tools to take some sort of action. See the chart below.

Ways US Marketing Executives Are Using Their Social Media Monitoring Data to Make It Actionable, June 2011 (% of respondents)

Tracking is the first step, but it needs to be followed by actions. What are you doing with your social info?

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How Are You Monitoring Your Competitors?

Yeah I know you have your eyes on your major competitors. You have your salesmen and distributors feeding you information , but have you used the tools on the internet to see what the social network is saying about you and your competition?

Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part lll said, Never hate your enemies-it affects your judgement. Pretty good advice don’t you think?

You probably keep your eye on your big competitors, but what about similar manufacturers that sell similar products in several markets you’re in? How about your suppliers and distribution partners? It doesn’t take much to get something working from off shore. This is good info and should be integrated into your marketing plans.

Here are some tools that may be useful:

Social Media Monitoring Tools

– Google Analytics: http://www.google.com/analytics/

– Klout: http://www.klout.com/ (Growing service for monitoring general online influence by using Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and YouTube…will be adding more social media at a later date).

– Facebook Insights (Found on the right hand bar of your Facebook Page.)

– WordPress stats http://www.wordpress.com (Provides blog views, post views, etc.)

– Hootsuite Built-in analytics (http://hootsuite.com//)

– Ow.ly click summary (Proposal report to monitor progress.)

– Netvibes: http://www.netvibes.com/  (Tracks trends and sends alerts. New social pack allows for monitoring and analysis side by side.)

www.Compete.com (Tracks unique views on websites; good for checking blogs with their own domains.)

http://www.quantcast.com/ (Much like Compete.)

– Bit.ly shortens links and tracks clicks

http://www.semrush.com (Search your URLs and find detailed keywords, competitors and recommendations for advertising.)

http://grader.com/ (Grades different social media activity.)

What are you using to monitor your competitors?

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Social Media: Will Be Focus of B-to-B Marketers in 2010

According to a recent study completed by Alterian in their 2009 annual survey (get the full report here), social media will become the focus of marketers in 2010. This should come as no surprise to us in the B-to-B marketplace where budgets are still tight and management is continuing to demand accountability for marketing efforts.

The survey covered 1068 marketing professionals. The respondents came from Europe (36%), from North America (62%) and from Asia Pacific (2%). Here are the highlights:

  • 66% will be investing in social media in the next 12 months.
  • Of those investing in social media, 40%will be shifting more than 20% of their traditional direct marketing budget towards social activities.
  • 67% feel social media is either critical or increasingly important to their success.
  • 36% are investigating social media monitoring tools.
  • 51% are moving from a campaign-centric direct marketing to a model of multichannel customer engagement.

Commenting on the survey results, Alterian CEO, David Eldridge, said, “2010 marks the start of the digital decade for marketing. Untargeted and irrelevant marketing techniques are now redundant and the results of this survey show many in the industry recognise this. The one thing to remember, however, is that investment in Social Media Marketing is futile without adequate measurement.”

Eldridge concludes, “Engaging with customers is becoming paramount and the yardstick by which we measure those brands that survive and those that don’t. Marketers now need to appeal to the individual and engage with customers on a one-to-one basis. The easiest way to achieve this is by investing in Social Media Marketing and Social Media Monitoring, and by embracing the web.”

So what are your plans for 2010? Are you going to embrace social media? I’d like to hear what you’re planning on doing.

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