Jarrod Gingras Analyst / Director of Advisory Services
Real Story Group @jarrodgingras
Selecting the Right Social Media Monitoring Tools!
Exposing the real weaknesses and strengths of web and enterprise technology products
Copyright © 2012 Real Story Group www.realstorygroup.com
Session Agenda
• What is Social Media Monitoring ? – How does it fit into the overall “Digital Marketing” landscape ?
• Why are people interested in SMM Tools ? – What is the business case ?
• Deconstruction of a typical SMM product – Data collection & Processing – Analysis & Presentation
• Integration (closing the loop)
– Technical – Organizational
• A brief guide to product selection
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Real Story Group: What We Do
Analyze weaknesses and strengths of the tools....and vendors
Advise on successful technology selection
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What Independence Means To Us
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Research Areas: Content Technologies
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What Independence Means To Us
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Digital Marketing Landscape
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Overlap
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Digital Marketing Scenarios
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What is “Social Media Monitoring” ?
• You want to know what people are discussing about your
brand • Benchmark your offerings with your competitors • Gather feedback on your offerings • Resolve customer complaints and handle customer
service • Gather competitive intelligence • Find out who influence your brands (positive / negative) • Increase leads • Run campaigns
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Social Media Monitoring
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Social Media Intelligence
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Social Customer Engagement
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Why are people interested in SMM?
• What’s the (business) case? – Social is not broadcast – Meet customers in the channel of their choosing
• The danger of doing nothing – Market Intelligence – Competitive Intelligence
• The cost of interactions – Customer Support – Crisis Management
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Deconstruction of a typical SMM Platform
• Social Media Monitoring platforms typically consist of two key elements;
– Data Collection & Processing • Sources Monitored • Data Management • Administration & Configuration
– Analysis & Presentation • Dashboard • Analytics & Reporting • Engagement • Alerting
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SMM: Data Collection & Processing
• Sources Monitored; – All tools will talk of content sources in the millions
• Websites • Blogs / Blog Hosts (Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr) • Video/Audio sharing sites (YouTube, Daily Motion) • Microblogging (Twitter) • Social Networking (Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+)
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SMM: Data Collection & Processing
• Sources Monitored;
– The devil is in the detail • Are these sources fixed ? • Can you create your own ? • Do they include regional players ?
– Don’t be blinded by numbers • Wordpress ALONE can number millions • Breadth != Quality • For B2B, numbers can be meaningless
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SMM: Data Collection & Processing
• Data Management; – Signal to Noise Ratio
• De-duplication generally required • The “Like” & the “RT”
– Think about your business scenarios – Processing & Identification
• Extraction of meaning (in itself a HUGE topic)
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SMM: Data Collection & Processing
• Administration & Configuration – Create datasets (sources) for analysis
• Geography, Language etc • Base level queries
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SMM: Analysis & Presentation
• Dashboard – Provides a view on datasets – Customization likely to be key when binding to a business process
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SMM: Analysis & Presentation
• Reporting & Analytics – The real “heart of the system” – Major differentiator between pure monitoring & intelligence tools
– Sentiment Analysis • Generally at the lower end of accuracy rates for analytics tools
– Most engines OEM’d • Highly language dependent
– Native language – Anti-Language – Language compression – Sampling results vital to dismiss “false positives” etc
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SMM: Analysis & Presentation
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SMM: Analysis & Presentation
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SMM: Analysis & Presentation
• Key elements to consider; – What types of metrics are available? – Can you define your own metrics? – Can you define ad-hoc reports if the out-of-the-box reports are
not enough for you? – Can you export reports to external systems? – Can you drill down progressively? – Can the tool do sentiment analysis? Can it do in your languages?
Is it accurate enough for you? – Is the sentiment analysis based on sentiment of a post or a
sentence? – Can it identify influencers? Can you manage influencers? – Can you filter and segment influencers? – Can the tool do trend analysis?
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SMM: Analysis & Presentation
• Engagement & Alerting – Engagement = “closing the social loop”
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SMM: Analysis & Presentation
• Engagement considerations • Routing/joining contact to CRM • Subsequent tracking of case
– Internally (e.g. customer support) – Externally (e.g. via customer chosen channel)
• Alerting • How do you know a conversation has started ? • Alerting within SMM vs outside platform • Most, if not all weak on latter (e.g. email notifications)
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SMM: Integration
• Integration = “closing the technical loop” – Typical contemporary digital marketing toolkit;
• WCXM platform • Marketing Automation platform • Web Analytics Service • CRM Tool • Social Media Monitoring and Intelligence Service
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SMM: Integration
• CRM is central hub for a field marketer – SMM vendors will offer connectors to a limited range of CRM vendors
• Salesforce (plus maybe MS Dynamics, Oracle Seibel) – Connectors typically uni-directional
• SMM -> CRM • Salesforce can be especially tricky due to batch approach
– Managing “events” is a mix of technical / organizational • Creating alerts as to new event and triggering response • Managing human process that underpins this also vital
– As ever, APIs != Lego • Don’t assume even single vendor offerings are well integrated
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Real Story Vendor Procurement (RSVP) Overview
Needs Analysis Scenario Development Market Analysis RFP / Tender Demos & POC Selection
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Buying Enterprise Software
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Testable process
Test via scenarios
in RFP
Test via custom demos
Test via head-to-
head pilots
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SMM: Selection
• Specific elements to consider – Language (especially with reference to sentiment) – Customization of sources to meet business need – How are you going to close the loop ?
• Technically ? • Organizationally ?
• Points to remember – Market is immature;
• Technically • Operationally
– Highly acquisitional
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Let’s Stay in Touch…
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[email protected] Twitter: @jarrodgingras