Media140 will be the UK’s first micro-blogging event, bringing together the worlds of print, broadcast, online and social media together to debate and discuss the impact of new micro-blogging services such as twitter and how they are changing how news is being sourced and consumed.

The non profit event to be held at Iris Digital on the 20th May is being sponsored and supported by Sky News, Telegraph, Iris Digital, Sun Microsystems, 6Consulting, Tweetmeme, Winston & Strawn Bootlaw, Times Online, Capital Business Media and Gorkana.

With speakers from mainstream media including BBC, The Times and Sky and their new media counterparts from Frontline Club and TechCrunch with a number of respected technology critics, commentators and academics scheduled to attend.

This event shows how the industry is starting to look across commercial boundaries to debate the impact of emerging trends such as twitter as the advertising and publishing markets feel the strain of the recession.

Early bird tickets are available from £35 at  www.media140.com

“Being part of this is important as it is an opportunity for us to discuss what twitter and similar services will mean for industry going forward. Critical to that is that this event is independent and non profit allowing a neutral platform for discussion.”

“The twitter storm is with us and I had originally planned to run this event informally to raise money for Mencap as part of a charity run. As I started to talk to colleagues in the industry it started to grow organically and has shown how the industry is keen to debate these trends early and find ways to empower their businesses rather than shy away from them. ”

“Twitter is and will continue to be one of the central tools we use to locate, engage and collaborate with clients, the industry and subject matter experts.  From a news resource to a customer service platform, Twitter and similar services are set to continue there meteoric rise.  We are pleased to be a part of this important event.”

‘Our world. Your Move.’ addresses challenges ranging from conflict and mass displacement to climate change, migration and global financial crisis. It is now celebrating 150 years since the battle of Solferino, where young Swiss businessman, Henry Dunant, took action to organise civilians to help thousands of wounded soldiers.

The International Federation will use Radian6 to help it find, and take part in, online conversations revolving around humanitarian related topics. This will allow it to directly connect campaign messages with the people that are discussing key and relevant issues online, on a global basis.

Additionally Radian6’s real-time monitoring capabilities, will help the campaign team to quickly spot emerging crises or new issues trending across the world, something that is a huge undertaking without a specialised service. Radian6 will automatically collect conversations of interest to the International Federation, pointing and tracking viral and influence metrics, allowing them to be quickly classified, analysed, sent to specific campaign members and where necessary, responded to.

Paul Taylor, Managing Director of 6Consulting, understands the value of the work carried out by International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. ‘We are very pleased to be involved with an organisation that provides such essential assistance to vulnerable people in desperate times,” he says. “We are proud to be supporting this cause and look forward to furthering its efforts throughout the ‘Our world. Your move.’ campaign cycle and beyond.’

“We know that global communities are passionate about humanitarian issues,” says Zach Abraham, Campaign Manager for the International Federation. “That’s why it’s so important for us to explore every possible channel of communication and to connect with people that want information or to find ways to work with us.”

“Social media is becoming an increasingly important tool. We know it provides opportunities to contact people who it would previously have taken a lot of effort and ingenuity to find.  Working with 6Consulting and Radian6 means we can be instantly alerted to conversations that revolve around relevant issues. This will provide us with a great opportunity to help our community find the resources and information it needs.”

###

About the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

Founded in 1919, the International Federation comprises 186 member Red Cross and Red
Crescent societies, a Secretariat in Geneva and more than 60 delegations strategically located to
support activities around the world. The Federation’s vision: We strive, through voluntary action,
for a world of empowered communities, better able to address human suffering and crises with
hope, respect for dignity and a concern for equity.

For more information on the ‘Our world. Your move” campaign, which is done in coordination with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), visit online at http://ourworld-yourmove.org.

All 6Consulting’s work is underpinned by a passion for social media.

Editors’ contact:
Sarah James, 6Consulting
Phone: +44 (0) 207 923 5616
Email: sjames@6consulting.co.uk
Website: www.socialmediamonitoring.co.uk
Twitter : @6consulting

6Consulting, a leading social media monitoring company which brings the Radian6 platform to the UK, announced today that it has relocated its headquarters to a new City of London-based office.

“The move is the direct result of expansion within the company and is an important milestone for our business,” says 6Consulting Managing Director, Paul Taylor. “We had reached a critical mass and needed a new location that can accommodate our growing team and better serve our customers by being in central London.”

The City office features the latest technology for collaboration with 6Consulting’s customers and partners, including a dedicated training facility which has been designed for both client and staff demonstrations. During training sessions, clients can explore the full benefits of the powerful Radian6 platform and related 6Consulting services.

CEO, Matthew Brazil, adds, “We can now fully demonstrate the value we bring to our clients through the social media industry. We could not have taken 6Consulting to the next level without the incredible support our customers have given us and the hard work of the talented 6Consulting team.”

The office also provides a workspace for employees that enhances the flow of ‘real-time’ information that clients are increasingly requesting. Brazil concludes: “This high-quality workspace will help us continue to attract and retain the most qualified talent in the industry.”
6Consulting’s new address is 74 Backchurch Lane, London, E1 1LX
Ends

About 6Consulting:

By combining an understanding of different business departments with innovative technology skills, 6Consulting is enhancing the ‘Social Media Monitoring and Engagement’ projects of many leading brands worldwide.

6Consulting helps brands listen to conversations in social media. It does this by providing access to its carefully selected SaaS (Software as a Service) partner Radian6, helping agencies and corporates conduct complicated interrogation seamlessly on large data volumes. The Radian6 system operates in ‘real-time’ and the user experience is enhanced by its award winning design, all of which sets Radian6 apart from the competition.
All 6Consulting’s work is underpinned by a passion for social media.

Editors’ contact:
Sarah James, 6Consulting
Phone:        +44 (0) 207 923 5616
Email:        sjames@6consulting.co.uk
Website:    www.socialmediamonitoring.co.uk
Twitter    :    @6consulting

“Whatever industry sector you are in, social networks are becoming an increasingly powerful medium,” says Paul Taylor, Managing Director and Co-Founder of 6Consulting. “We can help brands ‘listen’ to ongoing conversations that can have a direct impact on their business.

“We do this by providing access to our carefully selected SaaS (Software as a Service) partner, Radian6. Working with our clients to ensure that the service is specifically targeted to their needs, we actively monitor all forms of social media including blogs, video sharing and social networks, forums, opinion and review sites, image sharing sites, microblogging platforms, online mainstream media and others as social tools advance. All of our work is underpinned with a passion for social media.”

Based on the volume of commentary and general sentiment monitored, companies can quickly decide whether or not to pursue social media as a channel to reach customers, as well as help to realign any anomalies in brand perception that may become apparent.

“Brand Audits are becoming extremely popular,” continues Taylor. “Organisations new to social media receive a quick but comprehensive, summary of where their brands, products and services are within the social web. It is also an extremely useful tool to help companies manage their brand image on an ongoing basis.”

Radian6 has already seen success in the electronics industry, one of the most ‘buzzed about’ and anticipated topics online. Professional and domestic users alike are continually discussing brands, products and services online in their hundreds, and the audience reading this commentary on a monthly basis runs to several thousands.

One company that has used social media monitoring to great effect is computer giant DELL, which took up the opportunity to not only to monitor the buzz online prior to a product launch, but to hear how the community drove the conversation, its expectations and anticipation.

DELL was able to strategically add to the online conversation with bits of product information or corrections about misinformation. It was careful, however, to allow the conversation to happen as organically as possible. As the programme developed and the reports were returned, DELL learned that its product held a distinct competitive advantage.

“By setting up topic profiles on both Inspiron-related keywords and those of competitor’s products, we learned that customers who were contemplating a purchase of a mini notebook were foregoing competitor’s products in favour of waiting for the new Dell Mini 9,” says Geoff Knox, Supervisor, Global Operations for DELL’s Community Team.

Before the Mini 9 was officially released, mentions of the notebook averaged about 200 posts a day up until the month before the launch. Using the Radian6 topic trend graphs, DELL saw a steady increase in mentions during the 30-day lead-up, and during the week before the release, with mentions spiking at around 2,000 per day. “Monitoring the social web allowed us to join the conversation in a completely relevant way,” says Knox.

[ENDS]

About 6Consulting

6Consulting has evolved from a management consultancy background. Its experience comes from integrating software systems across sales, marketing and customer service departments for some of the world’s leading corporate organisations.

By combining an understanding of different business departments with innovative technology skills, 6Consulting are enhancing the ‘Social Media Monitoring and Engagement’ projects of many leading brands worldwide.

Radian6 has officially unveiled 6Consulting as an Authorised Solution Partner to provide local sales, support and training services to the UK market.6Consulting have evolved from a leading Management Consultancy in Sales, Marketing and Customer Service transformation to well-regarded Social Media Monitoring and Engagement strategists.

Benefits to Radian6 customers in the UK:

•    6Consulting have in-depth knowledge of the UK market and a deep understanding of Radian6 and Social Media - and as such 6Consulting are able to provide more focused guidance in social media monitoring and engagement strategy and tactics

•    Local resources eliminates time zone difference between UK and North America, providing more efficient support to our customers

CEO/Founder of 6Consulting Matthew Brazil said “We are delighted to be bringing the Radian6 platform to the UK market.  We currently work with a number of corporate, advertising, PR, brand and media clients – all of which have expressed interest and excitement supporting this partnership.”

6Consulting provide strategic guidance on the importance of social media monitoring, understanding that different organisations should be integrating different social techniques into overall business strategy.

CEO of Radian6 Marcel Lebrun said “The UK market is of great importance to us as a number of our Global partners have offices in the UK.  6Consulting are leading UK based Social Media Monitoring and Engagement Strategists that can not only support sales, support and training of the Radian6 platform but provide high level strategic consultancy to both Advertising/PR Agencies and Corporate clients.  We are thrilled to be working with them”

The burning questions for many are how bad will it get? will our business survive? will I keep my job?  Economic downturns, although negative,  do have plus points.  Think about it, as pricing for travel goes up people drive less which means less petrol, less emissions and a respite for our planet.  Less flights overseas which means more audio and video conferencing a plus for companies in this space and of course better for the environment, less train travel which is good for anyone that suffers a daily commute having to stand squashed into a large tin can!

There are ways to win in an economic downturn, it affords us the opportunity to restructure our businesses and focus on that which is important, ‘ROI’.  I watched a great video from Gary Vaynerchuk yesterday on ROI, a truly inspiring chap, perhaps we should get him to give traders and shareholders a pep talk before the markets open on Monday!?

ROI - Return on Investment.  A hugely important question to ask around any activity a company performs.  So if you are in marketing put all of your upcoming campaigns on the table and for each one ask these questions:

1. What is the purpose of this campaign?
2. Who are we targeting?
3. Can we measure the effectiveness of this campaign?
4. Will this campaign generate revenue? how will you know any revenue increase is due to your campaign?
5. Does this campaign make the job of selling easier and more effective?
6. Can I show definite ROI figures?

These are general questions, businesses should be asking many more but If you can’t answer these simple questions with any clarity then stop what you are doing!  Build campaigns that are trackable, measurable and most importantly show an ROI.

What other questions should businesses be asking?

Two weeks ago I had the worst case of MANFLU! anyone has ever had. Or at least that is how it felt, it was much worse than the strain of flu either my wife or children had suffered from but thankfully I have survived and feel much better.  Throughout this illness I started to wonder just how many other people were in my predicament.  With that thought in mind I fired up Radian6, created a topic profile to search the social sphere for conversation threads around ManFlu!

Almost immediately I felt better, hundreds of other people were actively talking about their ailments.

1. Blogs – 579
2. Tweets – 201
3. Videos - 8
4. Images - 11
5. Mainstream News - 8
6. Forum Discussions – 180

You can see from the trend graph below that up until 24th September we moved along at about 10 mentions per day then it exploded peaking on October 2nd.

There is a great opportunity here for ‘Flu Remedy Purveyors’ to listen, learn, engage and help!

For those of you reading this that are not quite sure just how bad ManFlu is, please watch the short video below.

]]> http://www.socialmediamonitoring.co.uk/blog/2008/10/social-media-monitoring-tracks-manflu/feed/ http://www.socialmediamonitoring.co.uk/blog/2008/10/social-media-monitoring-tracks-manflu/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/socialmediamonitor/~3/z8ab4Xxesj8/ http://www.socialmediamonitoring.co.uk/blog/2008/10/the-social-media-sales-funnel/#comments Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:39:42 +0000 mbrazil http://www.socialmediamonitoring.co.uk/?p=382

As a business 6Consulting have moved away from the traditional pick the telephone up and bash it sales model. Trust me, from an ‘X’ Sales Director this has been quite the leap for me. OK I instigated it and created the model, but convincing others it is a superior sales model has not always been easy.

Before people jump on me and say you can’t sell without picking the phone up and talking to people I must state that we DO talk to people on the phone, we just generate enough relevant inbound enquiries that we do not need to make cold calls.

The Social Media Sales Funnel is all about generating inbound communication, brand awareness, referrals and more. So how does the funnel work?

Before any sales funnel is created you need some activity, here is a breakdown of that activity:

1. Blogging
2. MicroMedia
3. Images
4. Video
5. Mainstream News
6. Forums
7. Our own websites
8. Channel / partnerships
9. Events and Speaking engagements

In a nutshell we perform activity in the above 9 areas and have a clear documented strategy for each. It is this activity that feeds the funnel. We do not purchase data, have teams of outbound sales reps or scripted sales activity. Rather we search, listen, learn, engage, co-create, knowledge share, network, post, tweet and more. It’s a new spin on selling, taking the old methodologies and updating them for a networked world. Its soft selling, not hard or cold selling, its meeting people at their point of need and being on every network, everywhere!

It’s Engagement Selling!

Like a traditional sales model we attribute activity targets within each of our 9 key areas, from this we can assign KPI’s, measure the activity and calculate an ROI on that activity. We don’t just measure ROI in terms of revenue, and this is an important aspect of Social Media Engagement Selling, we measure levels of engagement, awareness of our brand, revenue and more.

By adopting this model we are also able to offer leaner, smarter, quicker more responsive sales, support, training and consultancy. We can keep our overhead low as we don’t need masses of salespeople, technical staff or other. Our staff churn rate is virtually zero and we don’t need to spend thousands on marketing or pay per click campaigns. We engage with relevant people, offer help and advice, share knowledge and ultimately turn a bigger profit than if we had an older more traditional sales model.

The businesses of tomorrow will need to be lean, smart, responsive, engaged and relaxed about control of their brand. They will need to embrace the new channels customers and potential customers are demanding they participate in, so be smart, use this economic downturn as an opportunity to make your business better, not just for you, but for your audience as well.

Listen, Learn, Personalise, Engage, Communicate all words used at the Tory party conference. In fact everything I have seen so far not just in politics but business and life in general over the past few weeks/months is pointing towards the need to listen to conversations (I did think we were already doing this!).  If listening is important, understanding how, when, where and on what level to engage is equally as important.

It is no secret that I am an avid follower of politics and have a love/hate relationship with the political establishment.  Indeed not long before I started 6Consulting and throughout its first 12 months I seriously toyed with the idea of giving up business altogether and heading into politics but I still keep my hand in as the Vice Chairman of our area association having regular meetings with District, Local and Parish councilors, property developers and holding a number of public meetings.  For as long as I can remember I have fought for local people to have a voice in shaping their community and for open, honest, transparent dialog from councilors to the public they serve.  It has to be said it is this quest for openness and transparency that perhaps restricted me being appointed as a local parish councilor as the old, somewhat set in their ways hierarchy did not like my idea of being open!

So over the last month or so I have watched with morbid fascination the different political party conferences whilst working (gotta love technology!) from UKIP, Liberal, Labour and now Tory. My days have had a mix of nodding in agreement and shouting at the PC (well live stream actually) saying ‘Is it really that hard to listen?’, is it really that difficult to understand that we live in a different more connected world now.  Social media, the internet and all of the clever, exciting new platforms it has brought us are not a cure all for everything, but what they have given us is the ability to make our voices heard and connect with likeminded communities in a quest to discuss issues, ask questions and proffer advice.  Like I said ‘Online’ is not a cure all and I do have concerns that our youth can only speak in abbreviation and that technology has caused them to have an underdeveloped communication lobe.  However, conversations online have huge, monumental importance to each and every one of us. Conversations in the social sphere have:

1. Influenced my purchasing decisions
2. Accelerated my learning
3. Connected me with a smaller world
4. Recommended solutions
5. Made me money
6. Given me a platform to be heard
7. Amplified my voice.
8. Shaped my business.
9. And much much more

Do we really need to make the case for listening? Surely it is a standard business philosophy? Isn’t it where we get phrases such as ‘Voice of the customer’ and ‘The customer is always right’ from? Surely every business understands the need to listen why else would we have focus groups and market research? So we understand how to listen right? Or have we built a set of rules on listening? If you run a focus group it is on a small cross section, we take the figures and extrapolate them, we do the same with surveys.  We have these things called ‘Think tanks’ or as we like to say ‘Me tanks’ that guide decisions on everything from product packaging to the latest crazy political idea.  Businesses and politicians have become so used to listening to the few and making decisions for the many that the wisdom of crowds has been lost.

At the same time as focus groups and ‘Me Tanks’ started to run out of steam, importance or relevance so Social Media began its rise.  Businesses and Politicians now have an unprecedented never before seen opportunity to really listen, to gauge the mood, feelings and ideas of the crowd.  So it amazes me that people talk of listening but actually do it through ear muffs! Giving us lots of uh huh, ummm, like it, very interesting noises but then do nothing, nothing! with what they have learned.

So it would seem that we DO need to educate business and politics on the art of listening but most importantly once you have listened, dissected, analysed and graphalised (that’s a made up word!) that information you need to engage.  Yes, that’s right join the conversation.  I said join! Not control, manipulate or try to bury. So here are 5 things to get you started.

1. Listen – but listen to more than one person, stop extrapolating so much!
2. Learn – what is being said, why is it being said
3. Analyse – Do your dissecting, putting into boxes and graphalising here.
4. Participate – that’s right, get involved, have a conversation but please try not to control.
5. Co create – why not take a leaf out of lego’s book and co create with your community, it could be fun, save you a ton of cash / make you a ton of cash!

The above is not a complete list, it’s a snapshot, a fraction of the things you need to do, but please, at the very least begin the listening process.

I gave a speech at CaMedia last week on Conversations in the Social Sphere. I say speech it was more of an extended Q&A session where the audience participated rather than just spectated. We discussed what Social Media is, the numbers using it and why businesses should be listening and engaging.  A number of very interesting points were raised about listening namely that Social Media Monitoring can look a little like eaves dropping, snooping or bugging peoples conversations.  One comment was “what concerns me about social media monitoring is the concept of listening to peoples conversations, it’s a bit like sitting in a restaurant talking about Tesco’s and how messy or expensive the products are and turning round to see a Tesco employee with a clip board taking notes”.  I understand the fear people have about being spied on and the very mention of a political party using social media monitoring certainly worried the audience.  However, we all enter into conversations online clear in the knowledge that what we are doing is open, transparent and searchable by anyone.  Indeed the reason many of us engage in social media communities is to gauge opinions and thoughts of others.  We actually want our voices to be heard.  So rather than social media monitoring being big brotherish or Orwellian it is an application we the public should expect big business to have.  We want to use our megaphones and force businesses to meet us at OUR point of need, we are demanding a new channel in customer experience management. I am fed up with pressing 1 for sales, 2 for support and so on.  What I want to do is talk about it with my community and have a customer service rep contact me.

So, let’s see who is listening? I want everyone to reach out via whatever social platform you use, complain about products and services you are unhappy with and praise the ones doing a good job then see who answers the social phone.

I’ll start with BT.  You promised me a new Wireless Hub (the sleek black one 2.1 I think) and all you sent me was the hub phone.  Your customer service is so poor and it takes me on average 20 minutes to actually get through all of the press this or that nonsense that I am reaching out via my blog, please answer this social call.

]]> http://www.socialmediamonitoring.co.uk/blog/2008/09/social-media-monitoring-series-learning-to-listen-again/feed/ http://www.socialmediamonitoring.co.uk/blog/2008/09/social-media-monitoring-series-learning-to-listen-again/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/socialmediamonitor/~3/s9KRzZONYsw/ http://www.socialmediamonitoring.co.uk/blog/2008/09/the-social-media-monitoring-series-part-one/#comments Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:01:31 +0000 mbrazil http://www.socialmediamonitoring.co.uk/?p=260 ‘Radian6 - Social Media Monitoring and Engagement Platform’

I am often asked what Social Media Monitoring is.  It is also given other names such as

- Social Media Metrics
- Social Media Measurement
- Social Media Analysis

and so on…

We like to call it ‘Social Media Monitoring AND Engagement’ as the monitoring element is not the end of the story.  If you wish to monitor mentions of your brand, product or service this is relatively simple to do.  A plethora of tools are available that can help you ascertain your ‘Mention Metrics’ but the real question is not just monitoring, it goes further, deeper and wider than that.  Engagement in the conversation is key.

So where do you start with social media monitoring and engagement.

1. Understand what it is you wish to measure

Many agencies will tell you to measure the amount of mentions for your brand and the sentiment towards it.  That’s a great thing to understand but there is more, much more, such as:

- Your competitors - what are they doing and saying, what are people saying about them.

- Your customers - they have a voice, and often want to be heard:

- Compliments
- Complaints
- Concerns
- Suggestions

- Your potential customers - who is your product relevant to? what would they be discussing, what pain does your product/service/application solve.

- Your content - Yes you should be searching for copyright infringement

- Your industry - you are not the only one doing what you do!

2. Select a Social Media Monitoring tool

Lots of tools exist and over a period of time we have reviewed most of them.  This is the part where we become very biased! 6Consulting are a UK focused Radian6 Solutions Partner, with that in mind we are of course going to recommend Radian6 as the platform of choice.  Things to remember when selecting a tool:

- Real time monitoring
Real time analysis of social media interactions is possibly the most important factor.  Social Media never sleeps, it is 24 hours a day 365 days a year.  If someone mentions my business, product. service or industry I want to know about it in real time, not tomorrow.  If using social media monitoring in a customer service capacity what good is finding a complaint made 24 or 48 hours earlier? you need to know immediately, have a process for engagement and a tool to monitor it.

- Feed Farm
How much of the Social Sphere does you social media monitoring tool search? and if it does not pick up something which you know exists you must have the ability to add that source to the system on the spot, not through a support system or by making a telephone call.

- The ability to determine sentiment - not computer generated but with human intervention!
Sentiment analysis has considerable debate surrounding it.  What is important to consider is ‘Context’. I can think of numerous sentences that a computer sentiment engine would determine as negative, but in my native tongue it means the opposite.  Computer generated sentiment analysis is not full proof, you must have the ability to alter it based on human interpretation.  As an example the word ‘BAD’ would be segmented as negative, how often have you heard it used in a positive way?

- Flexibility
Any good system will enable YOU to decide what to monitor, how to monitor it.  If you have a lightbulb moment and want to search on something you need the flexibility to do it, not have to pick up the phone and call your consultant!

- Reporting
It must have a reporting facility, you need to be able to export in PDF, CSV, XML or other.

- Web Based - SAAS (Software As A Service)
Self explanatory, you don’t want a system installed, you want to be able to access it from anywhere and let someone else deal with hosting, reliability, infrastructure.

- Consultancy Independent
Many applications for social media monitoring need a consultancy to do the work, when selecting a platform ensure the system has the potential to be ‘Consultancy Independent’ i.e you have the flexibility to set up and change how the system works and don’t require an outside source to do this.  Of course, some of you may not have the internal bandwidth/manpower/resource to monitor social media and you may decide to work with a consultancy and that’s fine, but have access to the system yourself as well.

That’s enough for you to digest in this post, part two in this series is going to take a look at the rules of engagement, your suggestions and comments are welcome.

The Final Five

After 3 months of tantrums, arguements, evictions, forced removal, drunkeness and general frivolity BB9 on Channel4 draws to an end today.  At our regular management meeting today we took a high level decision to take a look at the online chatter and have a an office flutter based on our results.

So we fired up our Radian6 social media monitoring and engagement platform, built a quick profile to search out and find all mentions of BB9 within social media over the last 30 days.

I’ll show you what we found in a moment, but first it is worth noting what others (the bookies) have been saying.  The Metro (free London paper) said that Mikey and Rex were the favorites to win, click here to see what bettingpro said.

It should be noted that odds are determined by crowd sourced data, what better crowd could there be than the thousands of people discussing BB9 within social media.

Now we could have spent quite a bit of time analyzing the data we have found but as this is just for fun we are working on just simple mentions over the last 30 days, here’s what we found:

Mentions over the last 30 days:

Mentions over the last 7 days:

Mentions over the last 1 day:

Mentions today (September 5th, 08):

6Consulting specialise in social media monitoring and are proud to be a UK focused Radian6 Authorised Agent, if you would like to see a demo of Radian6 please get in touch with us here.

It’s here at last, the return of Xfactor, 3 months of singing joy, the good, the bad and most definitely some ugliness going on.  6Consulting love XFactor so much we have taken the bold decision to monitor the show within the social sphere using Radian6.  The info below (stats) were collected via the Radian6 Social Media Monitoring and Engagement Platform.

Week one was very interesting, so heres the run down.

Top 4 videos:

Ant & Seb

Ant & Seb have become the most viewed audition so far this season, a classic viral video which saw peak viewing times on Monday and Tuesday morning, both days seeing well over 100,000 views.  The video was posted by 55 different people.  The stats are as follows:

Views: 436,032 in 7 days
Comments:1,783
Unique Commentators:1,585

Rachel Hylton

Rachel Hylton had the full XFactor treatment complete with background sob story.  An amazing voice and a close second in viewing figures, we expect to see more of her over the coming weeks. The stats are as follows:

Views: 330,688 in 7 days
Comments:1,834
Unique Commentators:1,456

Alexandra Davies

Alexandra Davies was third most viewed XFactor video this week peaking at 74,090 views.  The young 16 year old gave a good audition.  The stats are as follows:

Views: 74,090 in 7 days
Comments: 300
Unique Commentators:265

Dreamtime

Dreamtime is a personal favourite of mine, a classic XFactor audition with huge viral potential sadly not lived up to.  The stats are as follows:

Views: 39,849 in 7 days
Comments: 130
Unique Commentators:126

6Consulting specialise in social media monitoring and are proud to be a UK focused Radian6 Authorised Agent, if you would like to see a demo of Radian6 please get in touch with us here.

This is a re-post from the Radian6 Website

With the ease of use of Web 2.0 social media sites consumers are now publishers and broadcasters. They have the ability to share their opinions, needs, complaints, and ideas in a way that is not only immediate but permanently recorded and easily spread. Consumers are no longer whispering amongst themselves. They are shouting from the tops of mountains. They are shouting out to brands.

But are their favorite brands listening to them? And if they are listening are they then engaging in such a way that:

- maintains or grows that brand’s reputation,
- improves a customer’s experience,
- helps someone learn more about a product,
- solves a problem,
- positions properly against a competitor
- delivers valued content
- enables and/or thanks a fan
- encourages participation in that brands future success

But is the act of listening and engaging, in general, good enough? It’s certainly a great start. But the act of embracing the social web in this way begins to create a whole new set of challenges.

For a moment, imagine way back in history when businesses got their first phone. Customers could call them to place orders but they could also call to complain, get help, give feedback etc… So, naturally, departments within companies got phones as well to answer these different types of calls and used a new feature to transfer calls between them. This worked so well that these companies began to grow and with growth came the need to add more phones and more staff. And with more staff meant the need to assign calls to the right people within departments based on skill, availability, language, territory etc… It also meant an increased load at times and a challenge to ensure calls were answered quick enough to maintain or increase client satisfaction. And so it goes. It’s the sophisticated contact centers of today that show us where it can all end up.

Brands listening to and engaging with the social web, or what we like to call, answering the “social phone”, quickly face the same challenges. They are expected to:

- answer or engage quickly because commenting activity usually happens in the first 24-48 hours
- operate in multiple languages and filter content by region so issues and opportunities can be addressed locally
- cover all types of social media be it blogs, forums and opinion sites, picture and video sharing sites, online mainstream news and emerging media like Twitter and Friendfeed
- prioritize by what’s going viral or who’s the most influential in order to be the most effective and efficient
- analyze trends in order to help calculate ROI

So keeping all this in mind, we find it particularly exciting when we get to work with a company that believes in listening and engaging with their community, that shares our vision as to where this is all headed, and that wants to see this become a natural part of any company’s mix of valuable customer channels.

One such company we are excited to be working with is Dell. And it’s through their use of our social media monitoring and engagement platform today that’s helping to generate wonderful feedback as to where to go next (See Dell’s blog post: “Dell and Radian6 - It all starts with listening.” ) Assignment of tasks amongst a workgroup and the ability to track and audit engagements are just a few of these key features.

Conversations about thousands of brands are happening every minute of every day. People are expressing needs, sharing opinions, sharing ideas – hoping to be heard and in many cases, hoping to connect. Dell has decided to be part of the conversation, to assist and to share – and we are proud to be partners in helping make it happen.

What about your company? Can you hear the shouts? And remember – “everyone loves a good listener.”

I have profoundly changed the way I do business and have firmly embraced social media and the networking possibilities it has created. To that end I have reduced to a very small percentage the amount of time I spend cold calling.

As someone who has been in sales all of my working life, has been a sales director and managed large teams of sales people, I know many people will think that there is no replacement for activity, specifically picking up the phone. Yet, no matter how intelligent you are about cold calling, it is what it is – speculative, scatter gun selling, not to mention costly and increasingly ineffective.

Bad image

Cold calling has a bad image, forever associated with double glazing, and I believe the whole process has run its course. Over the years the return on investment from a team of cold callers has gradually diminished; much like the internet killed press advertising revenues so will social networking see the demise of large sales floors with people standing on desks, ringing bells or plucking £10 notes from washing lines (just some of the things I have seen in many years involved in telesales).

No names policy

The corporate climate is changing, businesses are signing up to CTPS, making a clear statement: ‘Do not contact me’. The instances of ‘no names policy’ have increased so, for every 100 calls made, the percentage of pitches are falling. Until recently, companies have tried every strategy possible; re-trained staff in different techniques such as buying-facilitation, fact-finding or SPIN Selling yet the percentages keep falling and cold calling is getting harder and harder to see good results from.

So, cold calling is in its last throes. For some I am sure this will be a welcome relief : I for one get infuriated with the daily stream of people trying to sell me anything from cleaning services to water! I am now better informed as a customer than at any other time in history: I, the client, consumer or customer, control the sales process. I engage with others that have purchased a product to understand why, their selection process and what the experience has been like.

Likewise I comment on Facebook, my blog or other social media platforms about things I have purchased. I champion good service and smash the bad. I can be a brand champion one minute and brand slayer the next. There is a deafening amount of chatter online via social media platforms. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that all of that information is a hotbed of potential opportunities!

Comparison

What helped me conclude that cold calling does not work anymore and that I should serve notice of its termination were the results of a test I decided to run – the results are below.

As it so happened I had a new product to sell. In the test I spent an equal amount of time cold calling and using social media, 9-5.30pm Monday to Friday. I started with cold calling

Cold Calling Results

Outbound calls made 325
Meaningful conversations (pitches) and brand touches 80
Meetings made 4
Sales made (as a direct result of cold calling) 0

From a cold calling perspective I was not surprised with the figures; from experience these are the average conversion ratios. The data cost me 25p per name, phone charges were roughly £100, so all up £180 not including my time. If we took an industry standard salary for telesales of £20K plus, general overhead of office, rates, light, heat, computer etc you will have spent about £1,000 to make four meetings.

Social media

Inbound calls generated 8
Meetings as result of inbound calls 3
Sales as a result of inbound calls 2
Brand touches (from site statistics unique views of content) 422 visitors to my blog alone
Subscribers (RSS) to my content 27 stats from Feedburner)
People following me (Twitter) 12
New contacts 71 (on LinkedIn, Facebook, WeCanDo.BIZ, etc)
Listeners to my Podcast 83
Opportunities to sell found 21
Online conversations had 39
Warm call list (names generated expecting a call) 11

The cost of my social networking blitz to find new business opportunities, other than my time and internet connection are small, if anything at all. Most importantly I made two sales, covering any cost associated with the activity and generating a very healthy return. (I guess it would only be fair to include the cost of your time in this exercise as well – Ed.)

New platform

I used a number of platforms for the social media test, such is the diversity of choice and it is here that companies need to get it right. A great new platform is WeCanDo.BIZ, which takes the micro-blogging idea to new levels and allows companies to register a profile and state what their business need is for all to see. During my test, the site generated inbound calls, traffic to my blog and online conversations. It should be said that WeCanDo.BIZ was the most successful platform I used during the week.

The sites founder, Ian Hendry explains: ‘Where I think WeCanDoBIZ may change the rules is in getting the needs shared up front, so that you can determine much quicker whether a sale is likely. This means you can focus where the money is, rather than waste time with a lengthy qualification period.’

New philosophy

You can’t simply start using social media tools and expect your sales to increase. You have to change your sales and marketing philosophy for your business to get better. Your perception of outbound push selling needs to change. This is the lesson I want to get out to everyone. Social media tools simply enable businesses.

Skills

The central question, however, is do modern-day sales people have the level of skill required to conduct a social media campaign individually? The simple answer is no. Not all salespeople will have the necessary skills, but having a skills gap is nothing new on the sales floor otherwise we wouldn’t have the multi-million pound training industry!

Can the skills be taught quickly and cost effectively? Yes. I have always taught people that sales is a process: follow steps one through five to achieve your aims. Social media networking can be processed as well, giving salespeople clear guidelines on the ‘how to’ and ‘how not to’. We spend millions every year teaching salespeople to cold call better, use the latest CRM (customer relationship management) system, be better team players and so on; and so it must come to pass that companies will need to train all staff to be ‘social media savvy’ as it extends far beyond just sales – marketing and service need to be in on the picture as well.

Resistance

There was a time not too long ago when the need for social media in business was not understood and faced resistance. Much like when everyone started creating websites, people asked ‘why?’, ‘what for?’ and pondered how the web could help their business. People thought it would be a fad.

The same discussion is happening now about social media. Businesses look at social media and think of it as Facebook or MySpace; a universally time-wasting activity that employees should not engage in on the business clock. Indeed, some businesses have banned access to social networking sites altogether.

The future

I have to say that such businesses have got it wrong; rather than it being something employees waste time on, it is the future; it is here to stay and within it lies the evolution of sales and marketing.

Agreed, updating your Facebook or MySpace page with pictures of the weekend, playing silly games, nudging or poking other people is not the best use of your company’s time. But creating engaging, thought-provoking, discussion-opening content, centred around your products or services is.

Social media networking will reduce dependence on cold calling. I am not saying it will eradicate the need for the telephone – that perhaps is to bold an idea. But I am certain it will become the first step in prospecting for new business. Companies around the world need to wake up to that fact and act now or get left behind.

]]> http://www.socialmediamonitoring.co.uk/blog/2008/08/googles-advice-on-how-brands-can-leverage-social-media/feed/ http://www.socialmediamonitoring.co.uk/blog/2008/08/googles-advice-on-how-brands-can-leverage-social-media/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/socialmediamonitor/~3/gFyUnK2WFRw/ http://www.socialmediamonitoring.co.uk/blog/2008/08/left-hand-story-two/#comments Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:00:27 +0000 mbrazil http://www.loftabove.com/6consulting/?p=88 The XFactor on ITV1 is what we at 6Consulting like to call a Marmite show, you either love it or hate it. The first of the new series started on Saturday 16th August.  We began our monitoring using Radian6 on Friday 15th, giving us the ability to benchmark online activity.

The video below is a great example of social media at its best and the viral nature of the web.  The much viewed Ant and Seb audition is brilliant.  The main peak in activity came on Monday morning when in a 3 hour period the video was seen in excess of 100,000 times on YouTube.

Over the coming weeks we will continue to update this post with analysis from the Social Sphere.

Enjoy!!

The video has become viral because of the very strange accent he is using.  The video has been posted numerous times on different sites and is currently standing at around 1million views.  Notice of the video has been monitored on countless blogs and forums and was widely circulated on Twitter.

Enjoy!

SO…..

Whilst waiting for Twitter to work today I decided to update the Whale Picture!

I haven’t put a blogpost out for a week or so as I have been playing with some new social media tools and writing for my book (watch this space). So there I was suffering from social media overload and unable to sleep when it struck me (as I am sure it has others) that companies still don’t protect themselves correctly.

There has been a great deal of talk in the media of late about personal identity theft. You chuck out your old bank statements, some low life wades through your potato pealing’s and fag ends, retrieves the discarded documents, steals your identity and takes out a loan in your name. The result is bad credit and a huge waste of your time solving the issue. If, like me you live in the UK, you can be as careful as you like, but when the government loses the details of all 25million parents it doesn’t matter how careful you are.

One would have thought then, that companies would be equally as protective of their brands online. I am afraid to say they are not. So, are big companies (and small for that matter) aware that their identity or brand name may end up being used or squatted on by others?

Because this kept me awake, like the argument on social media vs cold calling, I decided I would find out just how slack these companies are and conduct ANOTHER test!

Let me give you an example. I know not everyone uses Twitter, but lets face it whether it is Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo or any other so called social media platform you don’t want someone taking your name in vain.

I remember the legal wrangles over domain squatting (still happening today) because some shark decides to take your name or brand, use it and hold you to ransom to buy it back. Now what I am going to tell you does not mean I advocate this in anyway, in fact using someone else’s brand or name in this manner is like stealing to me and needs appropriate punishment, but I am going to name and shame a few well known organisations. I have registered some well known brands and institutions on several social media platforms, if any of them notice this blog, or the fact that I have set a profile for them they can have it back free of charge, no hassle, I only want to prove their stupidity for not having done it themselves.

Lets take Twitter as our case study. Their terms and conditions state:

1. We reserve the right to reclaim usernames on behalf of businesses or individuals that hold legal claim or trademark on those usernames.

Fantastic, I am safe then. Anyone can use my name and when I am ready to wake up and use social media I get in touch with Twitter and WHAM! I get my name back, perrrfect.. Well not exactly! How long have they had your identity? who has been following them? how many people? have they Tweeted in a positive or negative way? has ANY damage been done?

The name and shame role call - people/companies without a profile (well they have one now cause I registered it!)

1. Magners - Irish cider brand, incredibly hip and cool summer drink, very big in England
2. Bulmers - Irish cider brand, incredibly hip and cool summer drink, very big in England
3. Micorsoft - Global software company. I thought I had struck gold here but look closely at the name!!
4. Harrods - probably the best known department store in the world!
5. ITV1 - one of the largest and oldest TV channels in england!
6. Cherirblair - Tony Blair’s (ex PM) wife!!
7. Primark - another huge department store chain
8. AsdaWalmart - just a small company (Walmart is the second largest company on the planet)
9. Sysco - 33rd largest company on the planet
10. Centrica - in other words British gas

The list goes on. What is interesting is the spread of companies, celebs and brands. Take Harrods for example, how on earth could they have missed this? who is in charge of protecting them against this sort of activity?

I understand that some may argue as to why on earth they would want a Twitter profile and I don’t want to appear biased towards one platform or another, therefore I checked out the names above on other social media with the same result.

So who is to blame? the company? the agency? or should social media sites build in a protect list of global brands? it would save an awful lot of legal paperwork, cost and heartache, but in my opinion someone within these organisations is liable for the mistake.

Companies need to keep up on what’s happening, or employ someone that can. Protecting your identity, be it personal, company or brand is important, there are individuals out there that will spend hours searching for names, registering profiles all in your name. Some may wish to write about how great you, your company or brand is, others may not.