On the other hand, news that the Dutch brewer was sponsoring an illegal dog fight irked many. Pictures of the infamous event were circulated over the internet- the brand was under fire from Heineken enthusiasts and canine lovers. People got furious that anyone could have the gumption to sponsor such an event. They started conversation threads and mass messages that caused the brand to take considerable heat. Both consumers and admirers of Heineken posted queries on the beer maker’s web page repeatedly and asked for an explanation. They finally received an official statement that the pictures doing the rounds online were the result of an unfortunate coincidence. Heineken hosted an event the night before, and that they didn’t actually sponsor the dog fight. Heineken banners were not taken down from the venue, and this space was then made use of as an arena.

The message came a tad too late, since by then  users had built up too much  steam to let go of the hard feelings they had built for the beer manufacturer. Posts and blogs went viral and the internet doesn’t forget that easily.

In both the instances, social media played a vital role. Both for extolling and incarcerating an entity, when people wanted to propagate something good, or while standing up for a cause, they chose the web 2.0. The social media is indeed a potent concoction with viral tweets and posts as its arsenal. Viral marketing has totally evolved into a seamless network of people with its propagating centers spread across the world – internet users being the conductors. Comments and conversations that span over the social network, unlike news articles do not have a sense of time and feel to them; they are hence never considered things of the past. Someone looking at a post made by a blogger a year after it was published would still be able to relate with the author’s emotions. The same applies to the discussions in the social medium. And for the same reason corporate bodies indulging in online customer engagement need to know the crests and troughs of web engagement. It would all boil down to a single solution- Tracking. With a plethora of organizations tapping this opportunity and offering their services for listening social media chatter, it is actually the corporate that are on the gaining end.

A public event organized in central India might attract the attention of a user located as far as West Virginia or Outer Mongolia. For the same reason, it is almost unpredictable to detect a lone hotspot. There are multiple. The viral nature of social media can bring in the right results by a little bit of showcasing but when left unchecked, can cause a disastrous outcome altogether. This brings us to the art of managing a promotion’s message and keeping it intact and unadulterated: Campaign management.

In the Web 2.0 age, campaign management too has evolved further, if not wholly mutated. The age old notion of defining a target audience, creating an advertisement and measuring the campaign’s impact no longer stands good. The elements of engaging and constant tracking have kicked into the conventional campaign management process and this change has now become a crucial part of it. Old spice for instance has done an admirable job in their “Should your man smell like an Old Spice man?” commercial series. The video sequences produced by the company were actually responses to user comments and queries on Youtube. Through the videos, and with a load of help from Isaiah Mustafa, Old spice was able to keep away message distortion and ridicule at bay, thereby keeping the consumer sentiment intact.

Social media when harnessed properly can make a campaign as mighty as David’s pebble and produce gargantuan results.  However, when left unbridled, the same can prove to be as fatal as the arrow in the mighty Achilles’ heel. Think of the ‘Kolaveri di’ song that hooked the global audience, with over 50million views on Youtube. It was a result of careful planning and strategizing by creative strategists at ‘Jack in the box Worldwide’, that turned the comical carol into an instant craze- even though not many understood the language or the lyrics. Think of it this way – a person’s ability to popularize something as mundane as a bilingual nursery rhyme through viral marketing is no mean feat. Over the cyberspace arena, where the mighty and the mean fight for their turf, the real question for corporate is “to be or not to be…”

- by Sarath Chandra

The other day, I came across a blog on social media captioned: ‘Shares or Likes –Which one is important?’ The author opined that both are important as Likes and Shares both give insights about one’s consumers. He mentions that ‘Liking’ a Facebook Page is a form of permission the person gives which lets a brand keep talking with people and ‘Sharing’ means people are proactively telling the world about how great you are. As much as I agree with this in principle, I would like to differ from the qualitative reasoning. Yes, Likes and Shares do indicate brand performance, but is it true for all cases or for all the brands?

Alone, each stands for what it is. But true insights are garnered only when we combine all of these to reach a legitimate meaning. An insight needs to be supported by the rationale of logic and mathematics/statistics, not just the viewpoint of an individual. We can break down active comments and analyze them as minutely as we want, but passive expressions may or may not be a gold mine of what we think.  Timelines, perceptions and opinions- How to measure them?, should we give an 80:20 weightage to active and passive? Do we consider the passive part accumulated over time with active comments?

Equations and statistics can be applied to each alone. But bringing all the three requires maintaining consistency in different factors of the equations and consistency we have not. A Like cannot be equated easily with a Share or a comment. It is like a comparison of apples and oranges There could be sentiments attached to a like, share and follow or it could just be a response to visionary stimulus or it could mean nothing at all (just an effort to please someone else).

I see a link shared by a girl whom I’m trying to impress, I Like it. I once bought a Nike shoe, my friend shared a link about Nike and I Like or Share the post for the sake of that long forgotten shoe. I once watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory. I am not sure if I am going to watch that show again but since all of my peers are talking about the show, I become a Follower of that show on Twitter just to be in the loop. So can we treat “Like, Shares and Followers on the same level as an active comment where I watch the show and express my opinion about the episode, actors or the plot?

The other thing about passive expression is that the mechanics of Likes and Shares is inherently biased. It’s there to reflect the happy thought but what about the genuine haters? How do you deal with negativity, when there is no means to express it passively on most major social media channels? How do you end the sharing of a video you dislike? (And no, not sharing something isn’t the same as feeling that it’s sharing should be stopped!) There are simply no buttons for Dislike or “I don’t follow you”. Many times I have liked a post on Facebook just to see that Unlike button and click on it… personal satisfaction! J

Why I talk about biased nature of social media sites is because a possible answer to the previously mentioned measurement problem lies here. What if we had options where we could Dislike or Unshare or “I don’t follow”? Then each of the above parameters could be measured within themselves just like active comments. Passive expressions would get a voice both qualitatively as well as quantitatively. Each would stand alone yet each would contribute to the whole. An organization would know where they stand in each of these parameters and can shape their future strategies better.

But the question is would you as a company like to face the moment of truth and click onto your Facebook page to that heart crushing number of dislikes?

*The title of this article has been inspired by Dave Kerpen’s book, Likeable Social Media

- by Ujjwal Deep Rai

Slowly, marketing and advertising began to bother us amidst our interaction. Although initially we were annoyed, later, we realized that we had to accept it, as it was not only beneficial in bringing improvements to the brands around us but also acted as a medium for brand awareness. Consumers could now post their grievances on the company page, rate the brand performance and share reviews with friends. Brands now had to be on their toes about what is being spoken about them and in addressing issues and grievances.  Thus, this emerged as a win-win situation for marketers and consumers as this helped in driving business through push and pull strategy.  Hence, “Customer is King” is true as marketing goes backward providing more customized products designed literally by consumers (from what they have spoken).

Now Facebook has introduced a new feature, rather a phenomenon called the “Timeline” which literally challenges to change the perception of brands by helping them showcase their history, products and solutions. Brands can now post pictures, videos, start campaigns and engage people a lot more than before. The Timeline feature can be a great opportunity to increase a user’s time spent on a page. Many big brands such as Redbull, Toyota, CocaCola have already experienced high engagement levels through targeted marketing to the right audience. For example, have a look at Toyota USA’s timeline brand page, where it promotes its RAV4 with posts like “Want to watch cute cats and learn about RAV4? Save time and do both at once! Click now!” Guess what it got? 313 shares, 1058 likes and 127 comments mostly reading mixed comments “I love the cats, I want RAV4 now!!

Also, weird as it may sound, you are now allowed to declare ‘war’ on any product, person or company that has a presence on Facebook.  As soon as one has declared someone or something an enemy, they appear on one’s profile on the enemies list, visible to other users of the application.

From an individual perspective, this might be an unwelcome concept, promoting hatred and a little sadistic. However, this concept can provide the consumers with the liberty to bring to light their unpleasant experiences with certain brands or service providers, unless competitive brands don’t misuse it. Whether Facebook will continue to authorize such an act is still under question, but if it does brands do need to watch out!

- by Sraavani D Rao

One of the key selling points of social media research in comparison with primary research is that the role of the researcher is passive. Here, there is no danger of the researcher leading or biasing the respondent by his questioning or presence, as could very well happen in primary research. Thus, the appeal that social media research holds for our clients is mainly due to the fact that the consumer views   in this space are largely voluntary and uninfluenced. But what happens if this very premise is threatened?

A common client request that EmPower sees is the identification of key opinion leaders in specific markets, based on their online presence, activity levels and follower base. Companies want to identify these opinion leaders and engage with them in order to turn their activity to the company’s advantage. Now, assuming that corporate investment in social media research continues to grow in the next few years, more and more companies will be in a position to identify and engage with the online opinion leaders in their domain. And if this activity snowballs, it will lead to a situation where a lot of the social media space is taken up by bloggers and commenters who owe their allegiance to various corporations. Thus, large portions of the consumer opinions voiced online will no longer be independent and unbiased.

What does this spell?

This means that corporations who rely on social media research to understand consumer views and get feedback about their own brand will see an overly rosy picture, heavily influenced by their own activity. For instance, the  marketing department of a large corporation would engage some opinion leaders to evangelize their new product online. The market research team of the same corporation, which could be located in a different facility or even country, would commission a study on the popularity of the new product and find out that social media response was highly positive. This would be conveyed to the marketing department who would redouble their efforts, thinking it is a strategy that works. Neither department would realize that the picture they see is actually skewed because of their own activity levels!

However, at some point, social media users will realize that the place which they had so far relied on to get accurate and independent opinions was no longer unbiased. To counter the activity of such evangelists, they will form cliques and push back through their own responses and their dislike buttons. Many disenchanted users will even leave such forums and seek out other spaces. Thus, there would still be many opinion leaders online, but they would no longer be influencers.

These opinion leaders would be talking to an increasingly shrinking audience pool, thus becoming less valuable to the corporations who partnered with them. As the influencing power of such leaders reduces, companies may even start questioning the very need to invest in social media research.

What can be done?

Companies need to ethically self regulate the level of engagement they plan with online opinion leaders. Outright evangelism of their products, using these people as a medium to create a buzz based on inaccurate information (such as starting a rumor about the features of a soon-to-be-released product to create a pre-release hype), making biased recommendations, deliberately disparaging competitors,  would  have to be avoided. They should also ensure that all information given out by these influencers must be accurate. A user may still accept information from a biased source as long as it is true.

The other stakeholder here would be the hosts of such social websites. They would effectively be the victims if such a takeover by evangelists happened and their users left them. They would need to have moderators who would be alerted if, for example, a sudden wave of positivity is seen surrounding a brand. All discussions would need to be monitored and measures for other users to raise a complaint should be put in. A good example here would be the owners of mouthshut.com who released a statement a few months ago, stating that they had witnessed a sudden slew of positive reviews about a leading café brand over a period of just 2 or 3 days and had investigated the matter to ensure that all these came from genuine customers only.

Regulations on corporate activity in the online space should also come in, to ensure that the larger society of netizens are not misinformed or led astray.  For instance, the FDA has proposed that anyone associated with a pharmaceutical company who is active in the social media and is posting views or answering questions about the company’s products must reveal his relationship/affiliation with the company in his post. Moreover, he is not allowed to step in and answer unless there’s a query specifically about his company or its products and not in case of a general query about the market. This would make sure that people know who is talking, and make suitable allowances for the recommendations mentioned.

These are the proactive measures that can be taken by the parties directly involved. Now what about social media research companies like EmPower? What reactive measures can we take? For one, we would need to take the extent of our research one step further. While analyzing a consumer comment, we will need to ascertain that he is a genuine user and not acting on behalf of someone else. In order to do this, we could do some basic checks like, is the person talking only about a single product or brand? Has he also been active on other discussions about the same market? How is he reacting to subsequent queries? Is his tone when mentioning a particular brand overly positive, but without justification?

At some point in time, this could even lead to a need for social media researchers to abandon their passive role,  step in and shoot off a probing question to unearth such ‘suspects’, thus blurring the lines further. Let us hope that day is far.

- by Gowri Kishore

Mobility: According to Gartner, midway through 2011, more people accessed the Internet from their mobile devices, than from their PCs. As society continues its drive towards instant access to information, mobile websites will dominate how consumers send and receive information. Social Media offers real-time information exchange capabilities that give mobile apps a huge competitive advantage over the PC in this scenario.

Channels: The world’s leading hardware research firms are of the unanimous opinion that Social Media will explode faster than before given the advent of new channels like smartphones and tablets. It is projected that these NEW kids on the block will outclass PC and laptop sales as early as 2012 or 2013. This can only mean more power to Social Media.

Reviews Rule: Product reviews and consumer opinion will become consumers’ preferred method of learning and sharing opinions about products and services. The customer wants his information instantly, and tends to trust feedback from peers.

Beyond Creation: Aggregation and Curation:
Creation: Building a website and designing the various methods of delivering content, i.e., text, videos, audios, etc..
Aggregation: How the website offers access to all information to the customer.
Curation: Organizing aggregate information in a way that is relevant, coherent and easily accessed.

Companies will explore building a social layer into their existing IT systems or work with one of the new vendors that are continually popping up to create their Social Media presence. Those companies that are able to rapidly create effective aggregation and curation will have a significant competitive advantage in their respective industries.

Education: Organizations will need to train their employees on Social Media use much like they did when the company transitioned over to computers in past decades. Many individuals do not understand how to use Social Media, and as it is further inculcated into our collective society, organizational fluency will be imperative; those companies that ignore the uses and benefits of Social Media will be at a serious competitive disadvantage.

Regulation: Regulatory bodies across nations have so far adopted a “wait and watch” approach in their guidance on the dos and don’ts in Social Media. However, this might not continue at the same pace, in the future, given the sheer velocity of adoption of Social Media across the masses.

Corporate Policy: Along with developing corporate wide fluency in Social Media, companies will have to develop policy and procedures for its use. Development and implementation of guidelines for etiquette, use of materials, and acceptable use of the media will gain traction in 2012.

Applications: Social Media is providing new applications and hence, is generating increased interest. The latest success seen from Social Media, as an example, is identification of potential kidney donors. Such successes will only elevate the importance of Social Media and fuel rapid growth in its usage across both individuals and organizations, regardless of size, location and format.

Commerce: Social Media will start playing a pivotal role in facilitating commerce, whether it is in the form of online retailer visit sharing, group buying prompts, reviews sent from mobile apps, direct marketing or through purchase of game-based currency. This is another growth trajectory that will get increased attention in the coming years.

It should therefore come as no surprise, that Social Media is poised to explode at an exponential rate; these are just a few of the trends that will have significant impact in 2012.

As we embark on our work-life journey, most of us avoid the former and search for the latter. We shift across jobs, towns, levels, specializations as we search for that elusive goal. Organizations struggle to engage people and people struggle to be engaged.

I have been thinking about this for a while and I thought it is time for us at EmPower Research to try and break those molds. But how?

I struck upon this idea, stemming from my own inability to dance and a colleague offering to help me in that regard. The more I thought about the idea, the more I liked it. If we can learn something new, have fun at it and help break our constraints of self expression, then why not? So “My two Left feet”, a program of dance for the challenged, was born. This is for those that cannot dance, those who do not know how to, those who simply do not have the confidence or the time to do so.

As part of Life 360, we began the “in-house” dance lessons program. What a response! Some loved it, some hated it, some said ‘not for me’, some laughed while some just ran! Whatever it was, we started this program 3 months ago and our classes have been growing from strength to strength. We finished a bollywood dance and are onto the dance with the attitude- hip hop.

There was something more than learning a skill in these classes. Personally, it was a welcome break from the stress of long working hours along with the chance to interact with people across the organization. The faces that I see in cubicles became names and fellow participants for me. The silos we built as part of our life gradually disseminated. We developed a strange kind of kinship out of our common struggle to learn from a very competent teacher. It brought commitment to schedules beyond work- I have had people plan their work for the day in order to attend the sessions. It brought a sense of relief in our busy lives and above all loads of joy, health and vitality.

Organizational learning anyone?

We are now bonded as a dance group with aspirations to perform in public. I am sure this effort will become larger than all of us some day. Until then, we will keep dancing away those blues.

Thank you my dancing group and our teacher- Meghana…

“It is very difficult to know what the consumer thinks” – a classic statement from any devotee of marketing especially consumer behavior. To solve this, you conduct primary research, focus group interview, etc; spending more than what is enough to feed a third world nation. Today, the same demand is being made from a market researcher – to know more about the consumers. The only difference is that the consumer is shouting out loud to tell you what their behavior is. Yes, you are right … they shout in all the social media platforms – blogs, forums, comment section of the online media, twitter and above all Facebook. I, being a professional in this field of understanding consumers, am obliged to respect their words  … each and every word, however unstructured they are. Thereafter, my endeavor is to find a pattern, report it to the entities that fulfill the wishes of consumers (they can be the Cokes, P&Gs of the world). In turn, the producers/ manufacturers will align their products accordingly and create messages for the consumers which they are able to relate to. Why not? The input came from the consumers, right???

Okay, I spoke about the inputs from the consumers, which let me term as “consumer to business”. We at market research/consulting firms harness this data and empower the businesses. Now the other side of the coin is that the business needs to convey the same to the consumer. Let me term this “business to consumers”. Today, in most of the television advertisements of repute, you will notice a Facebook link at the end of the ad. This is really to invite the consumers to the Facebook page of the brand and get involved in a discussion with them … not necessarily sales or after sales … but something more than that. The business is trying to build a relationship with the most imperative stakeholder – the consumers.

I shall not talk about the content part of social media though I understand that this is varied in nature and the most important component for any social discussion to survive.  However, from a business perspective, I can definitely see a “consumer to business” and “business to consumer” model utilizing the power of social media not only as a platform but also as a means to an end. When I say platform, I can read pieces about all the biggies, be it technology giants (IBM, HP), market research companies (Nielsen – nmincite), IT research firms (Gartner, Forrester). They are making their necessary moves realizing the inherent power that this channel of communication has.

Now, the most matured approach is the integration of social media with the rest of the CRM components – call center data, mail, KYC data, etc. This approach is termed as “Social CRM”.

In business scenario, “Social CRM” is the area where most are concentrating, trying to reap the maximum out of it. This is evident from the fact that Gartner predicts that ‘Social CRM will surpass $1 Billion by End 2012’. I do believe that this is only the tip of the iceberg and let me end by saying that the show has just begun!

-by Arunava Talukdar

Companies are now able to directly reach such a large number of consumers that they can instantly receive feedback on several new products that would have taken far longer to test through traditional, in-person focus groups. Additionally, due to the number of consumers these companies can now reach through social media, the volume of feedback that they receive is far greater, and necessarily more representative of the population. When looking outside the business sector, one sees social media’s influence on interpersonal relationships as a movement generating resource that has never been experienced before. Within the past few years, social media has evolved and expanded in many different directions, and that evolution is sure to continue.

Social media is now the newest and fastest growing resource that companies have for gathering data about their customers and potential customers. Because it often acts like a large, continuous (albeit informal) focus group, social media can be mined for candid reactions and thoughts concerning brands, industries, trends and consumer behavior. The power generated by the consumer’s voice reaching out through these channels cannot be ignored. This vast trove of customer information is a resource that businesses must learn to exploit if they are to remain competitive in today’s marketplace. But the sheer volume of it can be overwhelming, and sometimes too much information is barely more useful than none at all. In order to harness the utility of consumer data, businesses need to capture the most useful data, and also determine what portion of the total universe of information is being captured. To accomplish these goals, social media tracking tools need to be continuously updated and refined to keep pace with changing social media platforms. This is no easy task.

Three points are critical to understanding how to capture useful social media data:

Social media is now an indispensible component of any media analysis. To take a snapshot of a brand, one must review what is being said in traditional media channels, broadcast media channels, and now social media channels.

There is no feasible way to capture and analyze all social media content available on the web.

When analyzing social media, a tracking tool is essential to corral all the social media data that is available, as well as filtering this data at a level that is manageable so that relevant data may be put to good use.

Social media chatter is collected from blogs, microblogs (e.g. Twitter), social networks (e.g. Facebook, Google+, and MySpace), chat/opinion forums, message boards, customer reviews, reader comment sections, and video/image-sharing sites. Several social media tracking and analytic platforms are already available. These products can be used to assist in the aggregation, filtering and analysis of the overwhelming amount of data that is available on social media. Some top players in the U.S. market are Radian6 (recently purchased by another industry leader, SalesForce), Sysomos’ “Map tool”, Alterian’s “SM2 tool”, Collective Intellect’s “CI Insight”, and Lithium’s “ScoutLabs tool”. Traditional media services like BurrellesLuce and Vocus have also released social media tracking products. Additionally, knowledge service companies have begun implementing social media tracking solutions of their own, as EmPower Research has done with its “EmI tool”. The market for social media “listening” is growing, and the technology has followed.

For any popular brand or topic, there will always be challenges concerning the volume of data that you will receive following a social media search. Is the content relevant? If so, to what degree? Challenges also arise when product or brand names have alternative, commonly used meanings. For example, a simple search for the toothpaste brand “Colgate” could return thousands of posts related to Colgate University. But searching only for “Colgate toothpaste,” could exclude a large portion of the relevant data. If you are only interested in toothbrushes, you may also need to wade through post after post specific to Colgate’s toothpaste product. These issues can often be worked out with some advanced search filtering. Adding Boolean logic strings can narrow your results to what is relevant without losing too much of the overall set of data.

Another issue with social media is the “spam” that appears in results. A search may be set so that relevant data returns for Colgate toothbrush results are possible, but the user will not be able to avoid the coupons that are returned as results for this product. The same coupon could appear in your results hundreds of times, thereby skewing your top line data. These same coupons could contain positive phrases, such as “great deal” within them that will also skew automated sentiment analysis results. For these reasons, human analysis will always be an important step in an overall analysis of the social media landscape surrounding a product.

A further challenge associated with using social media tracking tools is that the pricing model of many of these tools is based on volume. Businesses are hard pressed to find a service that charges a flat fee, as opposed to a volume-based pricing model. This becomes problematic because there is an enticement for companies offering social media tracking tools to provide quantity rather than quality when delivering results. Under these models, they may not have enough incentive to lower the rate of irrelevant data.

One of the main reasons why tracking tools are needed is that businesses can avoid having employees read through piles of irrelevant data. The volume can often be unmanageable. Thus, the tools that add most value are those with sophisticated analytics that can break down and organize the useful data. Using the Colgate example, a search for Colgate toothbrush could return 10,000 results, 8,000 of which have been automatically tagged as neutral sentiment by a tracking tool, 1,000 as positive, and 1,000 as negative. If the user is looking to address any shortcomings of the product, as well as dig deeper into consumer demands, a tool will allow the user to dive right into the negative sentiment posts and get to the root of consumer complaints.

The need of businesses to efficiently sift through large volumes of data to find relevant information is creating a need for the evolution from “generic listening” to “purpose-driven” listening tools. Due to the unwieldy nature of the data volumes currently generated through the existing social media listening tools, we will likely see new products emerge that focus directly on certain industry sectors. As an example, a tool could be developed that retrieves data solely related to customer service issues, allowing businesses instant notification and a direct channel to respond to unsatisfied customers and maintain brand reputation. Another example might be the tools that tier results based purely on influence weightings of the social media authors. This will allow businesses to target any necessary outreach to those whose voice is heard the most.

Collecting social media data over long periods can also bring challenges when using social media tracking tools. Several new sources may be introduced to the tool at a time. There could be a large spike in data from one month to the next, but does this mean your brand is getting more recognition, or did the tool simply obtain new sets of data? If the tool does not provide transparency as to what channels it is searching, the subscriber cannot know.

Accordingly, a subscriber will want to know as much as possible about where and how a tracking tool collects data. What blogs is it searching? What outlets exist across different regions? What percentage of Twitter feeds is the tool receiving? Is there a regional discrepancy in the number of outlets searched? This information needs to be available to the analyst in order to enable an informed evaluation of results. For example, without this type of information, an analyst might see that 95% of the social media chatter around a brand is originating from the U.S. In reality, however, the tool’s ability to capture foreign sources of social media may simply be very poor, and the volume of data from other countries may go unnoticed by the tool. The analyst could, thus, be led to a false conclusion.

Consequently, when incorporating social media findings into an analysis, it is not enough to just cite the tool that was used. For a complete view of the findings, an analyst needs to describe the tool’s capabilities. Ideally, the analyst should be able to show out of x number of total blogs on the internet, data was collected from y number of blogs. Or out of the entirety of Twitter, z % of Twitter feeds were considered.

To display the contrast between the differences of data collected between social media tracking tools, below are two different views of top line analytics from an identical search covering a (relatively short) one-month period:

The above chart shows that the same search terms may return very different results across different tools. Accordingly, this type of data must always be reviewed with the capabilities of specific tool in mind.

In addition to the universe of social media sources that are accessible, other key characteristics of tools are the automated sentiment analysis that they provide, and the ability to cover data across multiple regions. What one often finds when evaluating tools is that, for expanded geographical coverage, there is frequently a sacrifice in the sentiment analysis that is provided. Tools in the market with the best sentiment analysis use natural language processing (NLP) technology. Other tools employ a rules-based approach to sentiment analysis. A rules-based approach will target words that are tagged as negative or positive and assign sentiment accordingly. A sentence that reads, “I hate my teeth so I use Colgate,” would be tagged as negative in a rules-based approach to automated sentiment analysis. With NLP, hate would be associated with “teeth” and not “Colgate,” so this would be tagged as neutral sentiment for Colgate. The drawback with NLP is that it is heavily reliant on language conventions, and consequently extremely difficult to set up across different languages. As a result, these tools will often limit content to English language only.

Currently, it is best to have a social media tracking tool based out of the region that you would like to monitor. The organic nature of how social media is generated, and the audience it often aims to reach, is still provincial in many cases. Companies that are closest to social media content and culture will have the best knowledge of outlets to search and how best to search them.

The perfect social media tracking tool in today’s market would be able to address each of the challenges that have been discussed above. The precise characteristics of an ideal tool specifically vary depending on a company’s needs, but there are some characteristics that any good tool should have:

(1) An intuitive, easy-to-use interface is important. In many instances a tool will be sold over a short demo/trial period, and the user must be able to learn quickly how to retrieve accurate and relevant results. In the fast-paced industry of public relations and market research, the ability to run quick, ad-hoc searches or volume checks is critical.

(2) The tool should have advanced analysis features such as in-depth demographics, the ability to manipulate different cuts of data, the ability to perform searches within returned results, and in-topic comparisons which help social media anlaysts provide more detailed, robust reports.

(3) Automated sentiment analysis is a major selling point when dealing with large volumes of data. Any sort of analytics that help the user get a quick, high-level view of the data with accuracy will always be useful.

(4) Most businesses would not want to subscribe to a separate tool for each region they would like to cover. Therefore, a broad range of sources across many regions will bring customers from all over the world. This is especially crucial for those tracking global brands.

(5) A flat-rate pricing model is preferable to volume based pricing because it allows the user to experiment with different searches without worrying about skyrocketing monthly fees when not enough search filters are set.

(6) Transparency about the sources from where data is collected is important for an overall analysis of that data. The user should know the percentage of Twitter feeds that the tool is receiving, be able to access a list of blogs that can be viewed within the tool, have the ability to suggest additional sources to be added, and receive alerts when large amounts of sources are being added or removed to prevent false spikes in volumes.

At this time technology alone cannot deliver the purpose-driven results that were touched upon earlier. The most successful way to use any tool will be with a mix of technology and human analyst interaction. A trained analyst can review all available data and focus results for any purpose-driven goal prior to a report reaching the end client. At EmPower Research, our analysts are able to custom tailor social media reports to any client’s needs. Also, by employing several tools currently in the market, as well as our own EmPower Media Interactive (EmI) portal, EmPower Research is able to tailor the necessary tools and analyst expertise to each project. With so much raw data available, a trained EmPower analyst is the best method of turning chaos into meaningful marketing intelligence.

-by Ben Potter

How many of us understand the meaning of ‘count your blessings’?

I’m sure a lot. But do we ever adopt this philosophy in our lifestyles?  In our daily struggles and trials, we often forget the beauty of life and the living. We forget that we can’t substitute material things for love, kindness or friendship. We fail to realize that generosity gives rise to joy; joy gives rise to calm, and the mind that is calm is filled with happiness; how it is impossible to create a better world without inner change that results from selfless service.

Our visit to Santosh Charitable Trust made us take a step back and understand what we had been missing.

As part of our CSR initiative, Life 360, we aim to contribute to various CSR events, drives and campaigns as well as create social awareness among all employees and elicit support.

Santosh Charitable Trust, which is located in Bangalore, India, provides destitute and orphaned children with an opportunity to realize their fundamental right to a better life. We reached there around three in the afternoon to find forty kids of all ages and backgrounds eagerly waiting for us. We received a warm welcome from the children and were treated with a colorful display of talents. This was followed by a small quiz and games which were thoroughly enjoyed by all. Next, there was distribution of gifts and a treat of delectable snacks. The entire time was filled with such fun, laughter and joy. We had some of the most memorable moments and didn’t even realize when the time came to leave.

Hats off to the trust founder Mr Issac who has done a great a job in providing the kids with not just home and education but a hope to live a better life. His courage and determination in running the trust is truly inspiring for us all.

To tell the truth, those ‘little bundles of joy’ were the ones who taught us lessons with their endless smiles and eyes full of hope. They brought home the real meaning of hope and how we give up on it. How hope may not be a plan but it definitely gives the direction.

It was indeed a wonderful experience and I look forward to many such visits in future. If it wasn’t for our CSR initiative, I, perhaps, would never have realized what I had been missing until now. All that time spent with those children reminds of a quote I read years ago:

“It doesn’t matter what car you drove or what house you lived in, but the world might be a better place because you were important in the life of a child.”

-by Saranga Sharma

My colleague Anupama, who heads the group, and I were sitting the other day, trying to work out the goals for the group and one of the first questions that we asked ourselves was – What would be the RoI of InnoLabs and how are we the innovation engine for the organization?

RoI in the traditional sense would have been measured as the sales generated out of the products that was developed. What about the methodology and solutions developed, tools,  whitepapers worked on, POCs generated and even productivity measures generated? I would call it the innovation engine.

So let us go back to the basics – how important is R&D to a social media research company? Social media is an ever-changing landscape powered and driven by technology- so clearly there is a need to be on the ball here. So on a scale of 1-5, where 5 is very important – R&D for EmPower Research would be a 5.

R&D is important and the standard model of RoI measurement does not apply, then how else do we measure RoI and at the same time sustain innovation.   Let us look at the basic roles that R&D plays in our organization.

1. Commercialization of ideas
2. Hold on to position of thought leader through commercializing methodologies, generate Proof of concepts to build credibility for new research areas
3. Improve internal operations through better tool implementation

Commercialisatioz of ideas

R&D needs to have its ear on the ground to hear clients and sales team talk about nebulous concepts and be able spot the opportunities in them and convert to products. In short, “an outside in” view of the company is needed. Close ties with client facing groups for opportunity spotting and rationalization of the hottest trend to sustainable opportunities needs to be done. Once the potential client opportunities are identified, we need to look at internal competencies as well as client applicability to roll it out to market. An example would be the Moms Purchase Intent Index that was developed. Others would be the brand tracking solution and corporate reputation tracker.

Sustaining thought leadership

This is probably the core R&D people would warm up to. Brainstorm, generate beautiful ideas (sometimes divorced from reality), work around data, find those hidden connections and present these thoughts to clients/ client facing groups. These methodologies and POCs have a long term horizon for sales conversion and build the evangelist platform. No quick RoI here. Have you seen the factor analysis white paper on social media data?

Improving internal operations

The R&D group needs to be custodian of technology and tool assessment within the organization. Organizations in the growth phase need to take their idea and use technology to create a solid IP-able proposition. As a smaller company, we have shorter time spans and releases to be on top of the market through our EmI tool. We have also implemented several smaller tool quick fixes in the data collection process that saves the delivery time anywhere between 10% – 40% savings in effort.

The above three functions do a great job of fueling the innovation engine. At the same time, we have kept the RoI at a simple level now. We measure it as the following simple parameters- number of people touched within the organization as a result of the productivity improvement activities, actual amount of savings in projects for those improvement initiatives, web statistics of our site for the methodologies and white papers, number of queries we get for the same and the actual sales conversions among clients. So the RoI spans the entire spectrum of increasing awareness, purchase intention and actual spend.

For the R&D group to be effective, the group also needs to be able to build credibility through cutting edge work and create the value for the organization. Once the value has been created, the next step is to  interface with sales and delivery organizations and create this pipeline with good ideas and implementable solutions, while showing short term value to retain the interest. By creating these pockets of success at the ground level we are able to sustain a workable model for innovation.

At EmPower Research, we incubated the group with the research division helping generate products such as the Moms Purchase intention index,  STRANDS methodology etc. before we moved to a centralized group to service multiple divisions.

Since R&D is a cost center to the company, the model that works best is to have a combination of short term and long term employees that contribute to core R&D and business unit related activities.

If you want to know more about InnoLabs – please write to innolabs@empowerresearch.com

If you work at EmPower Research and would like to contribute to the research process of the organization, please contact Anupama Muraleedharan at manupama@empowerresearch.com

-by Priya Venkataraman