When not doing that he helps clients with customer and employee engagement, customer experience, social media and digital marketing issues. Do check out his blog or connect with him on Twitter @adrianswinscoe.

Our industry focus starts with the financial sector and, in particular, the high street banks.

As a result, we started a social media monitoring exercise from December 16th 2011 to March 16th 2012. Our objective was to investigate:

• Who in the UK retail banking sector is using Twitter as a customer service channel?
• How responsive are banks on Twitter  for customer service and customer related issues?
• Are banks listening and responding and to what degree?

Through our listening exercise, we found out a number of things. Firstly, we discovered that customer service plays the dominant role in Twitter activity across all banks, validating its importance as emerging customer service and contact channel. (see chart below).

Note: this chart shows the distribution of Twitter mentions and the issues/areas that they related to across the banks surveyed. As we can see, the customer service element plays a leading role in the use of the platform.

Secondly, that Twitter is not unlike any other customer service channel and that responding and responsiveness to the customer are key to building engagement.

Lastly, our data capture and analysis has allowed us to construct a Response Index and league table for the main UK Retail Banks showing the level of responsiveness of the bank to a query regarding customer service and customer related issues.

It is a broad index and one that we aim to expand to include more banks, then repeat and refine on an ongoing basis to include, where possible, issues like time to respond and sentiment etc.

Both first in the rankings and direct with their responses, our initial findings suggest that First Direct is the most responsive bank on Twitter closely followed by Barclays and Lloyds TSB.

Surprisingly however, given its stated focus on customer service, Metro Bank is the least responsive bank on Twitter to queries regarding customer service and other customer related issues. Furthermore – rather aptly, regarding their performance in the Responsiveness League Table - Metro Bank failed to respond when asked if they would like to comment on our findings.

Let us know if your experience fits with our League Table findings and how you think we should be refining our analytics, or what else you think we should be measuring.

If you are interested in seeing the full results you can get a copy by clicking here.

Today we have a top-up of ten more facts, in case you were getting withdrawal symptoms from our incredible content. Enjoy.

Facebook users are a private bunch: 44% have deleted comments others have made and 37% have untagged themselves from photos. The other two-thirds are still hungover.

LinkedIn is the best qualified social network: a healthy 50% of LinkedIn users have a bachelor’s degree or higher. The other half claim they do too.

There are 2 million companies on LinkedIn. An estimated 185 have more than one employee.

Just 29% of Google+ users are female. That’s almost a third of a user.

Like our hometown of Brighton, Google+ is flooded with students (about 20%) and nearly all of them are tech workers. It’s a sexy place to be.

A worrying 83% of Google Plus users are inactive. 17% still have the sign-up tab open.

Over 3.5 billion tweets are sent out by mobile each year. That’s a lot of sexy invitations from girls that want to hook up and/or give you an iPhone.

Sadly, almost half of Google+ users are single. This figure is roughly 50% accurate.

About 168 million DVDs’ worth of data is consumed every day online, three quarters of which is not safe for work.

40 million visit Twitter, 22 million visit LinkedIn, 20 million visit Google+,17 million visit Pinterest and 172 million people visit Facebook every day.

Combined, that’s around 271 million times the amount of visitors to MySpace each day.

There are 532 million status updates written each day. It’s infinitely fascinating how the weather sometimes changes and supremely annoying that Facebook sometimes makes iterative improvements, isn’t it?

• Convert 30% of enquiries through their new Concierge service into sales.
• Deliver outstanding customer service.
• Research opportunities for targeted advertising.

Read the full case study here.

Which companies are at the forefront of social media? One that started in 1850 may not be your first guess, but the truth of the matter is that American Express has proven to be a pioneer.

Not only are they leading the banking industry, but one could also make the argument that there are few companies outside of Silicon Valley who have adapted and embraced social media as heavily as American Express.

But even if you’re not a Fortune 100 company, there are still quite a few things you can learn (and adapt) from AmEx’s social media playbook.

Rule #1: Be useful

Driving down the I-5 freeway in Los Angeles, you will see the city’s largest outlet mall with a massive video billboard that flashes “Follow us on Twitter!”

Considering that this is one of the busiest freeways in the US, it’s downright pathetic that after years, they haven’t even accumulated 2,000 followers. Then again, it’s not the least bit surprising.

Why? Because social media needs to serve a purpose. If you want to be followed, give people a good reason to do so. Simply saying “follow us” isn’t exactly a compelling reason, right?

On the other hand, American Express actually makes their social platforms useful. For example you can Tweet your way to savings:

• Sync your eligible American Express Card with Twitter
• Tweet the special offer #hashtags to load exclusive Cardmember offers directly to your Card
• Save with an automatic statement credit when you make a qualified purchase in store or online with your synced Card

You can read more about it here. Take a look at some of the recent offers:

Are those good enough reasons to engage? I would say so, yeah. In fact, even though AmEx cards have good cashback rewards in and by themselves, I’ve heard from many on the forum who say it was actually their Twitter deals which finally sold them on filling out an application.

Rule #2: Be everywhere

Sure, most companies have Facebook and Twitter, but AmEx goes way beyond that. You will find them actively embracing almost every major social platform.

For example, check out their YouTube channel. Not only are they consistently updating it several times per week, but their content is both entertaining and does a good job cross promoting their credit cards. Here’s a perfect example:

When it comes to Foursquare, AmEx has been a smash hit with both consumers and businesses:

• Consumers: Just like with Twitter, you can sync your credit card with Foursquare to score coupon-less savings on shopping, dining, entertainment and more.
• Businesses: They are appealing to their small business cardmembers by using Foursquare to promote local companies.

The lesson? Embrace multiple platforms and use them strategically to appeal to as many of your current (and potential) customers as possible.

Rule #3: Be bold

As the old saying goes, there are two types of people in this world – followers and leaders. American Express clearly falls in the latter group. They aren’t afraid to be bold and try new things in the social landscape. We’ve already discussed a few of the ways they are entering unchartered territory.

Why is this important? There are a couple reasons:

• First-mover advantage – You don’t need an MBA to know how much of an edge this can give your business.
• Innovation – You can’t do the same thing over and over and expect different results (that’s the definition of insanity). AmEx doesn’t know if every one of their social initiatives will pan out and be a success, but by being innovative and trying different strategies, you can bet they will continue to dominate.

Don’t just sit on the sidelines. Your company can’t win the game if it isn’t playing in the first place.

The Sizzle: Lady Gaga. The Fri-Up: Pottermore. The Sauce: Toky-glo

The Sizzle

• Lady Gaga hits 20m on Twitter
• Facebook reveals vulnerability on mobile (Video)
• Sony forecasts end of loss streak
• US phone companies report loss of contract-based subscribers

The Fri-Up

Pottermore

Since 2005 we have been developing one of the world’s leading social media monitoring tools. We service customers from all across the globe, ranging from FTSE 100 companies to SMEs. Brandwatch helps them discover, understand and respond to comments made about them on the web, in real time.

The role is focused around our existing PostgreSQL and HBase infrastructure, with key aspects of the role being

• Maintaining and tuning the application data stores.
• Proposing and implementing further enhancements to improve speed and availability.
• Working with the development team to streamline their usage.
• Participating in the infrastructure support rota.

Ideally we are looking for the following profile:

• Strong commercial experience maintaining large multisite databases on *nix platforms.
• In-depth knowledge of PostgreSQL, including its replication mechanisms.
• OLAP experience (or some other BI or scientific analysis approach on larger datasets).
• Knowledge of the wider data storage/retrieval landscape, including the various NoSQL systems and MPP databases.
• Coding experience in Java, Python or within stored procedures
• Linux systems administration experience.

If you meet three or more of these then we would be interested in talking to you.

We expect this role to suit either an experienced DBA looking to move into big data analytics, or an experienced linux SA looking to specialise into database administration.

Interested candidates should send their CV and a cover letter, including salary expectations, to steve@brandwatch.com

STRICTLY NO AGENCIES

Anyway, so this weekend we added a couple of new features to the Brandwatch app. The main upgrade we’ve been working on is threshold alerts, a smart system for alerting users to changes in data.

This means that we can now let you know whenever mentions of your brand start going off the chain. For example, we keep a track of how much people are talking about us in Brandwatch.

In March, everyone and their dog were talking about us online. We knew why this would be, as we had recently announced our $6m investment, but what if we hadn’t? How long would it have been until we noticed the surge in mentions?

It was with this mind-set that threshold alerts was designed, so users could be notified of unusual or unexpected peaks in data volume.

You can set up your threshold alert in the same way you’d set up a regular email alert. The next menu will prompt you with a number of options.

Here you are able to add any email address you’d like to receive the alerts, and they don’t even need to be Brandwatch users (even though we give all clients unlimited users for free).

That way, you can send your mum automatic messages when people suddenly start talking about her. You’d be best advised to keep it about business though.

You can define what percentage increase the data will need to undergo for Brandwatch to notify you about and also play with the specific filters that you want to isolate the alert to. This is so that you can state that if the amount of people discussing your brand increases by say, 250%, you will be alerted to it.

Define the Type, Author, Twitter, Site and Site Visitor filters (or leave them as they are if you like) to refine your data, name the alert and then save that beauty.

You can then sit back and wait for Brandwatch to warn you when your criteria have been met.

When creating a new query, you’ll now also get the chance to setup an auto threshold alert for a value of 200%, which you can then modify in the ‘manage alerts’ menu later on if you’d like to change it.

Once the incoming data hits the threshold you’ve set, you’ll receive an email.

The email shows a description of what triggered the email as well as an accompanying topic word cloud.

It also lists the most recent 5 mentions and a link to the app, an option to download the data or delete the alert.

One other upgrade we’ve made to Brandwatch is our new-look mentions pop-up. You now search within the window to find the portion of the mentions that you’re looking for at a quick glance.

There are now new ‘sort-by’ options too, so that you can rank the mentions in order of mozRank, blog comments, site visitors, forum comments or Twitter followers.

You can still export data and change the views as you could before, so don’t panic. If you have anything to add or ask about these features, let us know in the comments.

Since 2005 Brandwatch have been developing one of the world’s leading social media monitoring applications. We service customers from all across the globe, ranging from FTSE 100 companies to SMEs. Brandwatch helps them discover, understand and respond to all comments made about them on the web in near real time.

We have built a team of the brightest developers and built our own web crawler, text analysis engine and web-based user interface.  Working closely with the rest of the QA team and software developers, you will play an active role throughout the whole development process.

Your main duties will be:

1. Work with the developers to understand new requirements and functionality
2. Create and execute manual test plans, using a combination of web browsers
3. Create, execute and maintain automated test scripts
3. Report issues and help developers to resolve them
4. Ensuring Release deadlines are met
5. Maintaining the regression suite of test scripts

You will need:

1. A good (1:1 or 2:1) university degree
2. Good understanding of  QA processes (BDD, Agile or similar) and the wider development life-cycle
3. Previous hands-on experience of Selenium WebDriver, Cucumber or similar automated testing software
3. 3 years + commercial web-based testing
4. Intermediate knowledge of a range of web browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari) and operating systems (Windows, Linux, MacOSX)
5. ISEB\ISTQB Foundation Level Certificate
6. Great communication skills and attention to detail

Experience of the following would be advantageous:

1. Usage of Test Management Tools (HP Quality Centre or similar)
2. Familiarity with Ruby
3. Experience with JIRA or similar

What we’re offering:

* Salary up to 35k, depending on skills and experience.
* Private health insurance
* Monthly and yearly bonuses
* New, modern offices with free drinks and snacks
* Based in central Brighton

Start date: ASAP.

Interested candidates should send their CV and a cover letter, including salary expectations, to lee@brandwatch.com

STRICTLY NO AGENCIES

You will be responsible for:

* Outbound lead generation

* Attending trade shows and networking events that may take place outside of standard business hours

* Developing your professional network

* Responding to inbound leads
To close business you will:

* Qualifying leads inline with the Brandwatch sales process

* Be able to understand and articulate clients needs

* Understand the Brandwatch product and demonstrate how Brandwatch can meet these needs

* Understand the competitive landscape and position Brandwatch vs competing products

* Understand the social media landscape and keep up to date with industry trends

* Deliver system demoes online and / or in person

* Manage the product trial process

* Work with the wider team to deliver briefs or other pre-sales activity as needed

* Communicate in an honest and ethical manner

Reporting into the VP for North America you will:

* Report on your sales and lead generation activity

* Keep your sales forecasts up to date

* Highlight key opportunities and involved other team members as needed

* Have experience in Salesforce or other sales systems

* Be well organized, self motivated and focussed

* Be comfortable working independently and in a team

* Have excellent written and verbal skills

* Have a Bachelors degree or higher

* Have a minimum of 2 years experience is social media, PR, marketing, research or CRM products and / or services sales

* Languages are an advantage

* Already utilize social media both personally and professionally

* Understand that the sale is the start of the client journey, not the end

Travel may be required.

If you think that this is you please send your resume with a short cover letter explaining why and send it to seb@brandwatch.com? Please also include a link to your Twitter handle and LinkedIn profile.

Why apply to join Brandwatch?

Successful candidates will be working with a young, energetic and rapidly growing company. We offer unlimited commission structures, a great health and vacation package and taking a break on the office Wii. On completion of a probation period successful team members will spend a week in our UK head office.

Brandwatch believes strongly in staff development and are looking to hire people who have the potential and desire to build a career with the company.

Please do not call or connect with us via LinkedIn at this stage. We are not accepting resumes via agencies at this stage.

Brandwatch is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Reporting to the CEO, the Vice President of Marketing is responsible for developing and executing a clearly defined marketing and communications strategy in a manner that supports consistent business growth and enhances brand equity and awareness. This position is responsible for planning, organizing, staffing, training, and managing all marketing functions to achieve the Company objectives of sales, growth, profitability, and visibility while ensuring a consistent marketing message and position consistent with the corporate direction.

Responsibilities

• Create, manage, coordinate and execute all marketing strategies and implement tactical plans that meet and exceed company expectations
• Develop messaging and deliver it to increase brand awareness
• Lead and manage Direct Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Online Marketing, Event Marketing and Internal Creative Services
• Achieve targeted results and ensure timely and effective execution of marketing tactics and programs
• Analyze, evaluate, plan and execute on both existing and potential marketing activities and strategies. Develop benchmark criteria to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing programs
• Conduct and analyze market research to determine competitiveness
• Measure the effectiveness of the marketing department and implement improvements as required
• Identify, interpret, and capitalize on marketing trends
• Managing the Marketing budget
• Coach, mentor, and raise the team’s ability to deliver and exceed expectations while creating opportunities for succession talent
• Develop and prepare key messaging and presentation material for senior management
• Work closely with Merchandising, Product Development, Sales and other Senior Executives to create demand and recognition for the Company and its products

Job Requirements

• 10 years with 7 years in progressive Marketing roles at the senior management level
• University degree or college diploma in business, MBA preferred
• The ability to mange multiple, complex priorities within demanding timeframes
• Proven ability to lead a proactive marketing organization and ensure accountability for results that maximize contribution to business objectives
• A track record of performance excellence meeting targets and objectives
• Strong analytical, planning, forecasting and budgeting/financial skills
• Excellent communication and negotiation skills
• Possess a Marketing and customer service orientation
• Respectful and outstanding leadership skills that motivates staff to exceed expectations
• The ability to articulate a vision and strategy in a way that inspires and motivates a team and focuses their energy on achieving business goals

Please send applications to Hannah Tregear – hannaht@brandwatch.com