• 10 Key Awareness Metrics to Track – Amber Naslund

• 5 Tools For Monitoring Social Media – Ask Enquiro

• How PR Pros Are Using Social Media for Real Results – Mashable

• Manage your statistics without becoming one: 10 easy but vital steps - Katie Paine

• The fast food approach to social media – Mack Collier

• 20 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools to Find Your Brand’s Social Mentions – Steve Farnsworth

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The survey polled MENG’s nearly 2000 senior marketing members on the marketing concepts, buzz words and social media strategy.

Top Findings:

- A Rising Tide: 66% of marketers are more optimistic about business opportunity in 2010.

- Burning Down the House: Social media remains hot with 70% of marketers planning new social media initiatives in 2010.

- Ready for their Closeup: “Mobile Marketing” and “Social Media” officially made the top-10 concept list for the first time.

- Close to the Vest: Marketing executives are more likely to employ internal employees for their social media initiatives than outside firms.

Too much of a good thing

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• Six Elements of Effective Social Media Benchmarking – Chuck Hemann

• Six Degrees Of Social Media Monitoring – BrandSavant

• Let’s Talk Social Media Monitoring. (Listen In!) – Fresh Squeezed Marketing

• Essential Tools To Monitor Online Reputation – David Wallace

• Social Media Buzz Monitoring and Analysis Tools – Great Progress, Lots of Opportunity – IK On Innovation

• 8 Social Media Monitoring Tools – Onflow Interactive Blog

• Social media monitoring tools – we take a test drive – RMM

• Use Google Reader as Your PR Monitoring Tool – Bill Rice

• Roundup: Social Media Monitoring Tools – New York Times

• Social Media Monitoring Tools In Action: Radian6 vs Alterian / Techrigy SM2 – Alex Poulos

• How To Measure Online Brand Popularity – ROI Consultancy

• 5 Reasons Online Metrics Matter – Samir Balwani

• Do PR Agencies Need Filters? – High Talk

• The Brand Dashboard: A Window to Relevance – Brian Solis

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• For companies, real time is not fast enough. Companies need to be able to anticipate what customers are going to say and do, in order to keep up. Although Motrin responded to angry mom’s within 24 hours –it was too slow.
• Companies are unable to scale to meet the needs of social. No matter how many community managers Dell and Comcast Cares hires to support, they’ll never be able to match the number of active customers. They need tools, and they need them now.
• Customers don’t care what department you’re in they just want their problem fixed. Dooce’s support problem with Maytag quickly became a PR nightmare –had the support group known she was an influencer (and what it means), they could have serviced her better.

• Measuring Social Media with Web Analytics, Part 1 – Search Engine Watch

• 5 Ways to Prepare for a Social Media Disaster – Blogging Innovation

• Define and Refine: 5 Steps to Build Better Searches – Spiral16

• Using Social Media for Competitive Intelligence – Sysomos

• Brand Monitoring is Not Research – Tom O’Brien

• Two New Surveys Validate Companies Adoption of Social Media -Valeria Maltoni

• Sexy Numbers: Measuring ROI in Social Media Campaigns – Reve News

• Top 15 Free Services To Monitor and Track Your Brand Online – To Muse

• Measuring digital PR – Marcom

• When Crisis Attacks – Scott Monty

• The measurement quagmire – what matters most? – Valley PR

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Marketers expect to allocate nearly one-fifth of their total marketing budgets to social media in the next five years. The projection shows a five percent increase from just six months ago. These numbers  may continue in their climb as marketers become more aware of the opportunities afforded by social media and as they gain more experience in running successful campaigns.

• ROI: How to Measure Return on Investment in Social Media – Brian Solis

• Social media measurement: Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand tweets and Three reasons why the “experts” are wrong about social media measurement from Mark Schaefer

• Considering a Social Media Monitoring Investment? Ask Questions First – Beth Harte

• Social Media Monitoring Industry Survey – Jason Falls

• The minefield of social media monitoring – Corp Comms

• Social Technology Buyers Matrix: Broad vs Specialized vs Do It Yourself – Jeremiah Owyang

• Putting the Public Back in PR Measurement – Valeria Maltoni

• The 10 Social Media Metrics Your Company Should Monitor – Social Media Today

• Metrics For Tracking Social Media Engagement – User Driven

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The executive summary of their 2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report is available in PDF format. Hopefully it explains why less than half of marketers are measuring the lead generation of their social media programs…

• Why Are You Wasting Time and Money with Radian6, Scout Labs, SM2, or Other Social Media Monitoring Tool? – Steve Farnsworth

• Social Media Metrics: Count Thank You’s, Not Click-Throughs – Mark Drapeau

• De-fuzzing social media measurement – Jeremy Swifen

• Measure outcome not output – 101 but worth remembering – Mike Love

• A couple more items on the “new” AVEs – Why some PR people deserve and get a seat at the table and others do not from Katie Paine and Weighted Media Cost: the Holy Grail of Metrics from PR News. Plus AVE, Still an Inaccurate Yardstick from Matt Donahue at Dow Jones.

• The Hammer and the Scalpel: Lessons in the Evolution of Social Media Metrics – Digital Insight

• Do you want Kevin Smith talking about your brand? – Synthesio

• One Simple Way to Measure Social Media ROI – Stephane Leduc

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You can read all about their methods, results and other science-y stuff in this PDF.

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Their findings:

* Shock and awe – Stories with a surprise or twist were popular, but awe-inspiring pieces were sure to be sent around. Researchers found that articles which made the reader appreciate the vastness or complexity of the world were by far the most shared.

* Practical makes perfect – Financial, medical and domestic stories were also popular choices to share via email. People love to send information that is useful to their friends and family. Product reviews, tips and advice, local openings and events – readers shared information that made a difference in their everyday lives.

* Mixed feelings – Articles with a positive tone were popular choices to share…but so were articles that revealed a threat or inspired fear. People love cats rescued from trees, but also want to know if there’s a burglar in the neighborhood.

* Longer and smarter – Longer articles were more popular than quickies, but this may be related to readers’ preference for in-depth coverage. Researchers were surprised at the popularity of science articles, even those with heavily technical content.

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What it means to you:

Your audience is made up of human beings. They want to learn. They want to feel things. They want to share experiences.

It’s common for businesses, especially the older and more established, to keep a distance between the inner workings of the company and their clients. There are lots of reasons for this – they think the details are boring, they want to protect proprietary info, they’re focused on doing “real work.”

Well, as Apple can tell you, there are true benefits to connecting with your audience. In addition to increasing visibility, it’s an opportunity to improve customer loyalty and – by using the tactics above – having those loyal customers share your information with others.

You don’t have to give away the secret sauce, but share some of what is going on with your business. Close a big deal recently? They will be happy for you. Have a setback or a hard decision to make? They will be sympathetic. Share tips on using your products or an in-depth explanation of a new technology.

And don’t be limited to what you’ve done so far. Want to inspire a little awe of your own? Tell customers how you envision the future of your industry or tackle a controversial topic that affects your business. If you share real information and opinions on your business, your readers will share them too.

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