At the workshops I give at different conferences, I show those in attendance a slide with three bullet points explaining how seeds get planted:

1. You plant seeds across the web
2. You ask others to plant seeds on your behalf
3. People are planting seeds ” good and bad ones ” for you

Point is, though, if you’re not using social media monitoring tools, you’ll never really have a full handle on when and where those seeds are planted.

To monitor the social web, your options are simple enough. You can use free tools or a paid ones. Now, I don’t want this post to become about those options, as there are many resources available on the topic. The only point I want to make is this:

If you’re not clicking through and reading the links, you’re wasting your time.

It’s one thing to collect links, as I’m sure many people do. It’s easy to look at numbers and statistics. It’s fun to watch your influence and reach grow far and wide across the web.

However, and I don’t say this lightly, if you’re not bothering to click through and read, don’t bother at all.

All the real insights come from reading.

All the relationships you’ll build will come from knowing where to interact.

And none of this can really happen unless you’re reading the posts, threads, Tweets, status updates and comments you’re collecting.

If you don’t have the time to do it yourself, have someone help you gain these insights and guide your participation. But even with a little help, take a little bit of time to read what people are saying about you. At minimum, it’ll give you a feel for the social media environment you didn’t have before.

How are you gaining insights from your social media monitoring program?

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.

Last week, I opened a new Twitter account, @All4Monitoring, to support the new social media monitoring service I’ve been offering clients.

Why start a new Twitter account aside from helping me plant seeds for this new offer? Actually, I have a very clear intention for it. As the profile says, it’s “All about monitoring, including links, pointers and the odd challenge to companies to see if they’re listening. Are you all for monitoring?” (Sidebar: The link from the profile is to our new site: socialmediamonitoring.ca, a URL I couldn’t believe was available given the presence of serious social media monitoring players up here in Canada.)

The idea is to become a hub for all things related to social media monitoring. So you can expect to learn about new monitoring services, talk about familiar ones, participate in the odd twtpoll here and there, and general observations about monitoring the social web for all kinds of different reasons.

Of course, you can play a role. To get the most out of this new Twitter account, it would be great if you could:

• Follow and reply to @All4Monitoring
• Tag any tweet with #a4m to point us to stuff and get our attention (as you can see, this hasn’t taken off just yet!)
• Provide feedback on the account
• And anything else you can think of within your comfort zone and the realm of Twitter

I’m viewing this effort as an ongoing experiment with a clear direction. If you have any ideas for how this account can evolve, let me know. I’m all ears!

Otherwise, I’ll see you out there on Twitter!

P.S. Feel free to connect with me on my personal account, @MarkGoren.

Gearing up for a busy fall, as I’ll be leading workshops at three different events organized by the Advanced Learning Institute, a conference organizer based in Chicago. It’s a great pleasure for me to be involved, as I’ve learned so much and made some lasting relationships at their conferences.

So here’s where you can find me this fall:

• Social Media For Government Conference, September 29 - October 2 in Ottawa
• Social Media For Healthcare, October 5 -8 in Washington
• Social Media For Crisis Communications in Government, November 2 - 5 in Washington

I’ll be running variations of the same workshop at all three events, the basic description of which is:

In today’s marketing environment, it’s vital that you respond to the right conversations in the right places. Using social media monitoring tools that are openly available, you can learn what’s being said, identify the most active and influential conversations and know where you need to be present online.

In this workshop, you will learn why it’s crucial to monitor the web to lead your marketing efforts, plus how to choose and prepare a community ambassador to voice your web presence. In addition, a hands-on approach will be taken to teach you how to monitor conversations using free tactics, tools and websites, including:

• Understanding the concept of RSS feeds and how to set up an RSS reader
• Looking at key free monitoring tools and how to subscribe to search results
• The importance of keyword selection
• Knowing where to listen to online conversations
• Preparing to respond and initiate online conversations when necessary - starting to really use social media

The early bird deadlines are still available for the October and November events - but you only have until August 12 (this Wednesday) to take advantage of a reduced rate for the Social Media for Healthcare conference. In addition, at any time during the registration process, if you mention my name, you’ll get a 50% discount off the current rate.

Also, to follow along during these events, search for #ALI on Twitter while the conference is in session. You’ll get a lot out of the sessions when you keep on eye on the back channel.

Hope to see you there!

Over the last little while, I’ve been wondering why people are so focussed on collecting subscribers, friends and followers. Sure, they’re nice to have, but unless you’re focussed on delivering content that people can connect to, then all the subscribers in the world don’t matter.

That’s the topic I’m exploring over at MarketingProfs Daily Fix today. Here’s a quick excerpt from a post titled, “Are people who share better to have around than subscribers?“:

It’s the traditional marketing problem all over again. It doesn’t matter how many people subscribe to your magazine if they skip over your ad or never open the publication. Nor does it matter how many people Nielsen says are watching if they’re in the kitchen when your spot airs.

Same thing with social media. Don’t fool yourself by counting people if you’re not connecting with them.

What do you think? Join us over at MarketingProfs to discuss!

Give and take.

Over on my original blog, I talked about the notion of Give + Take Marketing quite a bit. The underlying notion of it being simple - to get something, you need to give something. Be a giving brand and you’ll see the benefits of customer loyalty, word of mouth and the sales that come with it. (Surely not as simple as it sounds…)

Lately, as I preach the importance of extending your web presence - “Planting Seeds”, a term readers here have become familiar with - to lead people back to your online hub, I’ve become reminded of the Give + Take premise by one of my favourite music bands, the Dave Matthews Band.

Earlier this summer, after seeing them in concert here in Montreal for the first time in years, I became reacquainted with one of their old hits - You Might Die Trying. The chorus in this song goes:

If you give, you, you begin to live.
If you give, you begin to live.
You begin, you get the world.
If you give, you begin to give
You get the world, you get the world.
If you give, you begin to live.

How true.

In fact, it’s the first tenant of Planting Seeds. Get out there and GIVE. Act as a resource. Be human. Get real. Point people to links. Introduce people to one another. Help others out. Give first. And give a lot. Only then can you begin to live what this whole “social media” thing is all about.

Would love to know how you feel about this. How do you give? And what have you taken from your generosity?

One way to Plant Seeds is by reaching out to other bloggers and developing relationships with them. The better the relationship, the more they’ll be willing to plant your URL, as the theory goes. (Of course, the quality of your content does have something to do with that too.)

Recently, a colleague asked me what I thought about this:

I’ve been reaching out to other bloggers to try to get on their blog roll. Surprisingly, I’m getting a bit of resistance. I’d think the mutual exchange of blog roll mentions would be a no-brainer. But I’ll keep plugging away. Any advice to entice them to reciprocate?

My response is bellow, slightly cleaned up:

Bluntly, bloggers hate being asked to trade links. Hate it. Getting onto someone’s blog roll is something you have to earn, and the only real way to do so is to get out there in the community and become known to the bloggers who you want links from. First thing you can do is comment on their blogs, but if you do, be relevant. Don’t just be there to plant your link. Leave a comment and add value to the post. Your link will be attached to your name, so if you’re consistently leaving comments, they’ll find you. If they like your content, they may eventually add you to their blog roll. But it could take time.

Other thoughts on this:

• Befriend these same bloggers on the other networks where they’re most active. Look for the ones on Twitter because you’re already there (note: referring to my colleague) and established. When you speak to them on Twitter, go in with the same mentality as when you comment.

• Add the bloggers you’re targeting to your blog roll. If they’re doing a vanity search and subscribe to updates, they’ll find your blog. It’s a way to help them discover you.

• Along the same lines, you can also build posts based on something these targeted bloggers have written. Your link back to their post will also draw their attention to your blog.

Put all together and you can see how you can build a connections and alliances through honest effort. If your content appeals to these folks, you’ll be linked to one way or the other.

•

In short, you can sum up my response in one sentence: Earn your links; don’t ask for them.

Add your thoughts below!

Hats off to the Google team for this email, which I received this mornnig. It has all the right elements as it respectfully explains my opt-in options and the changes they’ve made to this list.

But I’ll let you be the judge:

Dear MarkGoren,

You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your YouTube product or account.

•

Nice, clean, simple. Any thoughts?

Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Social Media for Government conference in Ottawa. The event was put on by the Advanced Learning Institute out of Chicago (organized by master conference planner Kelly Flynn) and, as always, was a great success with an excellent line-up of speakers.

In my presentation, “The Moving Conversation”, I explained the Planting Seeds concept and used this high school analogy to get the message across.

Think of the web as two parts, the first being your website and the second being your web presence. While it’s no doubt important to have a proper home base, that being your website, it’s an unreasonable expectation to wait for people to show up there. With millions and millions of websites and networks having generated billions of pages of content (and counting), you have to move the conversation from beyond your four digital walls, get out there and network.

Same thing if you’re a teacher. Think of the classroom as the teacher’s website and the rest of the school as her extended presence. In the classroom - like you with your website or blog - the teacher is the expert and the lesson goes according to her plan. Students can add their two cents by raising their hand, just as visitors to your blog can by leaving a comment. But whether the students are engaged in the content is another story. Maybe some are, but others may not be.

To get her message across, sometimes the teacher has to get out of the classroom. She has to look for her students on their turf and speak to them on their terms. And, further, each student may have a different hang out. So, if the teacher wants to spend time with a jock, she’ll have to get the gym. With a geek, maybe she’ll want to get to the chess club. You get the idea.

Point being, if the teacher doesn’t leave her classroom, get involved with students in a different way and find different methods to engage them, she may never be able to get through to them.

And the same is true for you and your customers. It’s up to you to extend your online presence and find different ways to speak with your audience. In other words, get out there, plant seeds and wait for each one to grow.