Earlier this week, Cossette posted the results of a survey they conducted last fall of over 3,000 web users in Canada, the U.S. and UK. You can find the complete report here.

Specifically, one of the findings stood out to me:

Among some 20 online activities surveyed that can be tied back to social media behaviour, two are particularly meaningful:

• Two-thirds of Internet users turn to online information about products, brands or companies that have been produced by family, friends, colleagues and others they don’t know personally.

• 30% have shared something online about a brand or a company in the past week. More specifically, 20% have cited a company or brand in a personal web page or blog. They are the only group that finds advertising as useful as social brand content, and a lot more likely to join various types of sponsored communities

Of course, this has many significant meanings for brand managers and the agencies responsable:

1. You’re no longer in control of your message. (If you haven’t heard that before, it’s time you did.)
2. People are planting seeds on your behalf around the web and it’s up to you to know where they’re talking and what they’re saying, as their positive and/or negative comments can have a profound impact on purchasing decisions.

As a result, you must start a strategic social media monitoring and response program. Without one in place, the public becomes your brand’s manager and, due to the shelf life of search, anyone who can type your product/service name into Google can be influenced by what’s already been said. It’s on you to find the relevant conversations and join in, so you can correct wrongs and misconceptions and have your point of view on record.

So, do you know what they are saying about your brand?

I’ll probably hear some good natured opposition to this post from some friends at different Social Media Monitoring companies, but I stand solidly behind this advice.

No matter which social media monitoring platform you’re committed to, use others as well.

True insight comes from using several different kinds of search engines, applications and tools. That’s not a knock on the different services, it’s reflective of the monitoring environment’s reality. By using several of the different services available – mostly for no added cost – you’ll uncover deeper intelligence, greater statistics and a better understanding of the conversation.

There may be any number of reasons for this logic, whether you’re committed to paid or free tools:

• Every algorithm is different. While one tool may be capturing certain conversations quickly, another tool may be filling in the blanks in a more timely way. By cross checking different engines, you’ll be able to catch more results sooner.

• Even if you’re using a robust, feature-rich service, there are likely many different insights that the service doesn’t incorporate. Take Twitter, for example. You’re collecting tweets, but are able to drill down about the user, who the person is connected to, since when they’ve been on Twitter, frequency of Tweets, which links they’ve posted, what pictures they’ve linked to, and so on and so on and so on? The more tools you use, and some offer very specific functionalities, the greater you’ll come to understand a particular conversation.

• Backup your main monitoring service with others, just in case. In case your system is going offline for maintenance. In case results turn up missing. In case you don’t have access to a wifi network. For example, through you may be using a web based service, you may want to download mobile applications – Tweetie and Say What? come to mind – to check in while you’re away from your computer.

• Sentiment analysis. Different services go about providing this analysis in different ways. Some automate the process, relying on different “trigger” words to reach a conclusion, others assign sentiment through human analysis, while still others leave it all up to you. As a result, if you like so many of the features offered by the platform you’re committed to, but don’t “trust” how it handles sentiment, you may want to go in a different direction to gain an accurate measure.

• Unless your platform allows you to add custom RSS sources, which helps ensure that you’re not missing any results, you’ll have to find different ways to keep track of these other results.

These are just some of what could be a very long list. And in no way is this post meant to diminish the importance of finding your comfort zone with a primary platform and sticking to it. That said, a single social media monitoring platform just isn’t enough if you really want to get more out of your monitoring program.

So, I ask you, what combination of sites, tools and applications are you using? Need ideas, here’s an exhaustive directory of social media monitoring tools that will show you the potential of what’s out there.

Fair is fair. When you call out social media monitoring companies for not responding and question whether they’re even listening, you have to give credit to those who are paying attention.

So here’s a list of all the companies that have responded to the original challenge so far. These 140-character descriptions of social media monitoring services where either added a few weeks back, by commenting on the last post here at Planting Seeds or through Twitter this time around.

You should also note that Tuesday’s post was also syndicated over at The Customer Collective, which generated quite a bit of attention. You can see the conversation in the comments over there. And you can see just how much discussion this topic generated by checking out BackTweets (Planting Seeds post | The Customer Collective post).

Onto the list:

THE ORIGINAL SIX

• CustomScoop @All4Monitoring CustomScoop: Fast/accurate/affordable online news clips/social media monitoring. 24/7 Dashboard-Email Alerts-Custom Reports

• radian6 @All4Monitoring Real-time tracking, slice’n dice analysis, influencer scoring, workflow/team feats., platform API, Salesforce & Web trends Integ.

• Catherine_VZ @All4Monitoring Attensity: Monitor+analyze+respond 2 social med+email+surveys etc: deep sentiment+intent 2 buy+intent 2 churn+other reports.

• Blake Cahill @All4Monitoring @visible_tech here. A comprehensive social web listening, learning, engagement, & BI SaaS platform for brands & agencies

• vishals @All4Monitoring #Viralheat Real-time social media analytics #a4m

• Intelligence Pro @All4Monitoring Blog monitoring, search profiles, five presentations - graph, latest by authority, latest from prefered, frequent, search

THE COMMENTERS

• gianandrea facchini
Buzzdetector, a company monitoring and delivering strategic insights to his customers. http://www.buzzdetector.com (in Italian but with a presentation in English, too)

• Zak
Moreover’s Newsdesk tool is the one-stop shop for marketing pros delivering real-time news & social media monitoring

• Ari Newman (Filtrbox)
@all4monitoring easy 2 use, real-time, unl. keywords, drill-down, analysis, custom-branding, sentiment, team collab, API, influence, less $$

• Shanna Gordon
@bdbrandprotect - finding a needle in a haystack as opposed to a data dump, assessing sentiment and influence, providing useful analytics.

NEW TWEETS

• socialscape Listening, Strategizing, Engaging. Real-time analytics that assess influencers, trends and insights within social media

• RepuTrack™ we combine real-time retrieval of relevant online convo w/ human review. See http://www.reputationmonitoring.com for precision ORM

• filtrbox easy 2 use, real-time, unl. keywords, drill-down, analysis, custom-branding, sentiment, team collab, API, influence, less $$

• jeanju
Sid Lee provides Brand Monitoring Service based on quality analysis not only focus on tools.

UPDATES

18 September:

• ImpactWatch provides real-time monitoring of all types of media with powerful reporting tools and customizable metrics.

19 September

*

We’ll keep this challenge open ended. If you’re a social media monitoring company offering a free or paid tool, let us know in 140 characters what you’re all about. Send a tweet to @all4monitoring or #a4m or leave your comment here, after the original post or over at The Customer Collective.

We’ll use this post as the master list.

It started with a simple Tweet from @all4monitoring:

“In the social media monitoring business? If you’re a free or paid tool, describe your service in 140 characters. #a4m“

After the first three responses, I posted this a day later:

“@radian6, @CustomScoop + @Socialscape responded to this: http://bit.ly/37EZnT. Are other social media monitoring companies listening?”

In total, over a few days, six social media monitoring companies responded to these tweets. Six.

Hats off to those who did respond, including the following (in chronological order):

• CustomScoop
@All4Monitoring CustomScoop: Fast/accurate/affordable online news clips/social media monitoring. 24/7 Dashboard-Email Alerts-Custom Reports

• radian6
@All4Monitoring Real-time tracking, slice’n dice analysis, influencer scoring, workflow/team feats., platform API, Salesforce & Web trends Integ.

• Catherine_VZ
@All4Monitoring Attensity: Monitor+analyze+respond 2 social med+email+surveys etc: deep sentiment+intent 2 buy+intent 2 churn+other reports.

• Blake Cahill
@All4Monitoring @visible_tech here. A comprehensive social web listening, learning, engagement, & BI SaaS platform for brands & agencies

• vishals
@All4Monitoring #Viralheat Real-time social media analytics #a4m

• Intelligence Pro
@All4Monitoring Blog monitoring, search profiles, five presentations - graph, latest by authority, latest from prefered, frequent, search

So my question became, as noted in the title of the post, “Are social media monitoring companies even listening, let along responding?”

You would think it’s a natural.

Thanks to bit.ly, I can tell you that the link was clicked 75 times, which would indicate to me that some of these companies are at least listening. However, in a world where it’s vital to plant seeds to get yourself on the radar of potential customers, why didn’t more than six companies bother to respond? Especially to a Twitter account that identifies itself as:

“All about monitoring, including links, pointers and the odd challenge to companies to see if they’re listening. Are you all for monitoring?”

So, social media monitoring companies, are you practicing what you preach? Feel free to answer on Twitter (@all4monitoring or #a4m) or by posting a comment below.

There are two kinds of seeds out there on the web:

1. Seeds you plant on your own behalf

2. Seeds others plant for you

In many cases, the seeds planted for you are positive, reafirming or just neutral in tone. Other times, though, they’re awful. Negative. Even disgusting. That’s the situation Domino’s Pizza faced this week when two store-level employees posted this video to YouTube. (RSS readers, please click through. I warn you, though, that this video isn’t for everyone.)

So how did Domino’s handle the bad seeds? They went through the same channel and posted this apology to YouTube. (RSS readers, please click through.)

If we are to take some lessons from Domino’s response, here are some to consider:

• Decide which “bad seeds” are worth responding to. Over the course of your brand’s online lifecycle, there will be a lot of negative stuff said or done. You have to know when to bite and when not to. Obviously, this was a case where they had no choice but address the concerns raised by the video.

• Act fast. Conversations move fast from one site to another to another. By quickly posting this video to YouTube, Domino’s not only helps heal the wound, but also is seen as a decisive and quick-thinking brand interested in fighting for themselves.

• Use the same channel to respond. By posting a response to YouTube, Domino’s is taking the fight to the street where it all began. Plus, through the network’s search, viewers will find the rebuttal in the same place where the original was posted. So if their video turns up as a “related” video to the original, viewers will be able to see the company’s response in context.

• Monitor, monitor, monitor. Not only is Domino’s responding to comments to their video, they also mention that they are “reading each and every response on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.” I would say, though, that they should be participating in the different comment threads for the original video (it’s been reposted many times to YouTube.) For example, I just went through over 300 comments to one of the postings and Domino’s wasn’t present at all. It would be a good idea for them to join the discussion over there and lead people over to their own video response.

This situation is an excellent reminder that your web presence doesn’t just belong to you; brand perceptions can be changed by anyone with an internet connection. If you’re responsible, though, you’ve got to be aware of what’s happening. Because if you don’t, you’re powerless to act.

Overall, I’d say that this was a good response by Domino’s. What do you think?

While tracking conversations for a potential client, I came across a potent combination that opens the door to many different marketing opportunities. Friendfeed, of course, has a very powerful search function. Test it out right now and you’re likely to find search results related to your brand.

With the ability to add any RSS-supported network to a FriendFeed profile, one thing to look for are Amazon Wish List search results.

Think about that. You’re tracking your brand or product and you discover someone who wants it so badly, they’ve publicly announced their desire. Want can you do with this information? Here are some thoughts:   
• Connect with the person and get to know them• Offer a coupon• Give the product away• Develop a channel - on your website, on YouTube, within Friendfeed - that allows these people to show how they use the product or why they want it so much

The list of marketing possibilities is as long as your creative mind is big. Once you have the information, how you use it to secure the relationship is key.

Let’s look at a real example. Clay Shirky has a book, titled “Here comes everybody” that is widely coveted on Amazon - it’s on many Wish Lists. How do I know? I’ve run a service-specific search (Amazon results only - see “Advanced Search“) for the book title on FriendFeed. Here are the results. Note that there are pages and pages of people who covet Clay’s book.

With this information, Clay - or any author for that matter - can connect with real fans, people who truly want to purchase his product. For example, he can:
• Send signed copies to his fans• Create a FriendFeed room to discuss the book and other relevant topics• He can learn about his fans by following their FriendFeed and watching what else they’re putting on their Amazon Wish List. (Imagine he sent a fan one of the other items on the wish list, something unrelated to his book? Now that would be powerful!)• Most of all, though, he can also simply thank them for Planting Seeds for his book on his behalf. That’s because each one of these people, thanks to FriendFeed, is promoting the book through their feed, and recommending it to their network at the same time. Given that people trust “a person like me” to a large extent, that’s some real strong advertsing Clay is gaining - for free.

FriendFeed + Amazon Wish Lists are just one area that makes FF Search such an important marketing tool. And, surely, there are many more ways to use these powerful search engine results.

Any thoughts?

Tags: FriendFeed, Amazon Wish List, Monitoring, Listening, Responding, Initiating, Planting Seeds, Planting Seeds Online, PlantingSeeds.ca, Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, Edelman Trust Barometer, YouTube, RSS,

Think of the web as fertile ground for information. With millions and millions of websites and billions more pages of content, there is so much valuable information to gather. Whether it’s real-time conversations taking place on blogs and discussion forums or market research you’re looking for, you can work the web to distil and collect the information that matches your business goals.
 
What’s being said and why even bother?
Right now, people are talking behind your back. More precisely, they’re sharing their thoughts and opinions about your brand (and your competitors’) with others online. This is happening on blogs, forums, social networks, wikis, microblogs, video-sharing sites, mainstream media and so forth. However, unless you know what’s being said, you’re powerless to act on this information. 
 
So, why would you want to know what’s being said? There are several reasons:
 
1. To gain free focus group research
The online environment is a free focus group. However, unlike the moderator and one-way mirror approach, when you listen to online conversations, you get real feelings, plus open, honest feedback. There is no filter, only pure opinion. Collect it and you could learn a whole lot of what people are thinking about your brand - right at that moment.
 
2. To say thanks
A lot of what’s being said about your brand is positive. People are praising it, either for the service it provides, the value they’re getting out of it or just because they have a great passion for what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. If that’s the case, you’ll want to know what they’re saying so you can say thank you.
 
3. To acknowledge negative opinions and share your viewpoint
Conversely, many people are online spreading their negative perceptions about your brand. And, in many ways, this information travels faster than the positive. Without the knowledge of what’s being said - and a proper response plan in place - these opinions can run rampant and have a powerfully negative effect on your search engine results. If left unchallenged, the effect on your brand’s perception can be damaging in both the short and long term.
 
4. To help people
When monitoring the web, you’ll often come across people who are just looking for a little help, advice or resources. Be the ones to give it to them - whether related to your brand or not - and you’ll be seen and appreciated as a company with a human approach. 
 
5. To collect business intelligence
Say you’re looking for something specific, for example, your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses. You can not only monitor the web for impressions of their brand, you can always use the web to learn about their key people, past successes or failures. Armed with this information, you’ll be in a better position to develop plans to take advantage of the openings they’re leaving for you.

So, my questions to you are:

1. Are you monitoring the web?
2. What are you looking for?
3. Is there something else you’re monitoring for?  

Tags: PlantingSeeds, Planting Seeds Online, PlantingSeeds.ca, Monitoring, Tracking, Listening, Online Conversations, Lists, Bogs, Forums, Social Networks, Wikis, Microblogs, Video-sharing Sites, Mainstream Media

In the last post, we discussed the LRI model - Listening, Responding, Initiating - as it relates to online conversations. The key point, I believe, is that when you’re first starting out, each of the functions stands alone, but as you move from one to the next, LRI all becomes one function that continually feeds the entire effort.

Today, though, we’ll talk about the first step, Listening.

WHY LISTEN?

1. Because people are talking behind your back. Sure, some of what they’re saying may be positive, but there could be a whole lot of negative stuff being said as well. Point is, unless you know what’s being said, you’re powerless to do anything about it.

2. Another reason, using The Broken Telephone analogy given by Jack Holt from the U.S. Department of Defense (@uknowjack), is that while people may be altering your message as it travels from point A to point Z, if you know what’s being said and where, you can join the conversation at any point, put in your two cents and correct the negative perception.

3. The online environment is a free focus group. Think about it. Perhaps you’ve experienced the one-way mirror approach to collecting feedback. A group of people, free pizza and a moderator asking questions. It’s all very unnatural. A leader emerges, opinions are affected. Real honesty? It takes a vacation. However, if you’re listening in on online conversations, you get real feelings, plus open, honest feedback. There is no filter. There is only pure opinion. Collect it and you could learn a whole lot of what people are thinking about your business RIGHT NOW.

So, in short, listening to online conversations is really important if you want to learn what people are saying about you - and set your self up with a smart plan for Responding.

Can you think of other reasons to listen? If so, please share! Next up, What to listen for and how.

Tags: PlantingSeeds, Planting Seeds Online, Listening, Responding, Initiating, Monitoring, Blogging, Micro-blogging, Sharing, Social Media, Social Networks, Adding Value, Keywords, Focus Group, Online Focus Group, Jack Holt, @uknowjack, U.S. DOD, U.S. Department of Defense

Planting Seeds, for many people and businesses, often starts way before you ever leave a single trace online. For many, the first step to jumping into an online life means becoming familiar with what’s going on and what’s being said.

When I coach clients, I explain that this is a three step process at first – and then the three steps merge into one over time.

WHAT ARE THE THREE STEPS?

1. Listening: Monitoring what’s being said, understanding the new online culture, keeping tabs on keywords
2. Responding: Acknowledging what’s being said, adding value to the community, acting as a resource
3. Initiating: Blogging, micro-blogging, sharing, participating in social networks

Visually, these three steps stand independently at first. You may be in the “listening” mode for a long while before you ever decide to respond to or initiate a conversation. However, as you move from one to the other, they merge into one, all becoming one function.

It would kind of look like this at first:

At this point, you’re taking baby steps, getting comfortable, finding your way into your new online life.

But once you move from one step to the next, these efforts become one:

Now, listening, responding and initiating is all one activity, an ongoing process, an approach to commit to.

Over the next couple of days, we’ll delve into this further, get to understand each function, and break down the different ways you can participate at each level.

If you have thoughts about the LRI model, I’d love to hear your comments below.

Tags: PlantingSeeds, Planting Seeds Online, Listening, Responding, Initiating, Monitoring, Blogging, Micro-blogging, Sharing, Social Media, Social Networks, Adding Value, Keywords