March 5, 2010
A few days ago I posted my thoughts on social media monitoring for market research.One thing that has become apparent to me over the past few months is that there are a lot of folks using social media monitoring tools to listen for brand mentions, but truly they are capable of so much more with a little forethought and planning. Jason Falls recently posted a survey to determine exactly how people are using these tools (take it!) while others seem to be questioning how the tools are used or constructed. One thing is for sure, however--social media monitoring for brand mentions is not a substitute for research. The mere fact that people are talking about your brand means little unless you can really be sure of the context of those conversations, and equally importantly, who isn't talking about your brand and why.
March 1, 2010
There's a fantastic interview on O'Reilly Radar today with Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare. Of course, the topic of revenue models came up, and one of Crowley's ideas was to create "scrappy promotions" for local businesses--check in five times at the same coffee shop and get a free cup, for instance. The "loyalty scheme" is a pretty promising angle for location-based apps like Foursquare and Gowalla (and exciting, hyperlocal variants like North Carolina's own TriOut.) Certainly they provide the "scrappy" promotional angle that Crowley speaks of, but they also provide local businesses with a loyalty scheme that makes sense and doesn't requires consumers to carry around a rolodex full of punch/stamp cards or other pocket detritus.
February 25, 2010
So, you've taken the big first step in social media for your business: listening. You've set up Google Alerts for your brand, done some Twitter searches, and maybe even signed up for some heavy duty monitoring services from the likes of Radian6, Trackur or Tweetfeel. Sentiment analysis is far from perfect, but on a pretty good day, it will give you a pretty good idea of the consumer zeitgeist out there for your products and services. So, let's stipulate that you are listening, you can measure the conversations, and you have a pretty good idea whether or not those conversations are trending positively or negatively towards your brand.
