Conferences & Education

Social Media & Brand Monitoring: Collective Intellect

April 4, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Collective Intellect, a company out of Bolder Colorado, has been around since 2005. They provide software and services to help businesses monitor and analyze real time marketing intelligence agregated from a broad spectrum of web and social media platforms.

Similar to other companies (Radian6 and SM2 to name only 2) who provide software to monitor brand visibility and statistics on popularity and campaigns, their software searches the web, blogs, microblogging, images, and many social media sites for keywords related to your business.

Refining that search, they claim, is their advantage over the competition. Their solution addresses the inaccuracy and bluntness of keyword search and the abundance of results that have very little to do with your business.

Since all the vetting is done by machines (logarithms), those mistakes are bound to happen and clutter or skew the results you will be getting. Collective Intellect has developed a system that searches the web not only by keywords but by the semantic connection between words. Latent semantic Analysis (LSA) exposes latent contextual meaning within a large text.

They offer these programs plus professional advice for prices up to $1,000 a month. Here are some of their offerings:

CI:Insight – Tells you where you are as a digital brand. Using semantic search and analytics their software will tell you where you are on the “social maturity curve”, as they call it. You can review each phase and decide which tools and methods can help you achieve your goals. The software will automate the results to see the consumer consideration and preference, sentiments, demographics, and influencer’s profiles.
CI:Listen – Social monitoring – tracking online conversations about your brand.
CI:Learn and CI:Listen – Social Presence. Measure your market before and after a launch, take actions in real time, and improve your visibility.
CI:View – Social Research –analysis that is specially configured to your needs for more effective social engagement. It is set to be repeatable, and direct feeds are integrated into the dashboard.
Social CRM & Targeting – strategic guidance, professional services.
Social BPM Engagement – intersection between process automation and social networking

Their customers include PepsiCo, Western Union, CBS, iVillage, Viacom, Dole Food Group and Verizon Wireless, among many others.

The past 3 year growth of the company stands at 1505%. With 40 employees the company’s 2009 revenues were $2.7 million.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWJlTH6sSZU]

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Google Search goes social with +1

April 1, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

While Google may cover around thirteen percent of US display in online advertising marketing, Facebook may garner around twenty-two percent. Not surprisingly, it seems like Google has decided they actually do like the way Facebook allows users to share their interest, recommendations and ideas. So they have now added their own method of ‘liking’ or upvoting favored websites and other content. This method for helping to endorse chosen content and search results gives Googlers just one more way to endorse the products and services they enjoy.

Along with the recent algorithm change, Google execs say this is just one more way that they are heading off the pass between low-quality and irrelevant search engines results to see that their search engine queries cultivate the most useful and helpful websites that pertain to a users search results, and as quickly as possible.

The Google Experiment

Testing out this new method for yourself is incredibly easy. Just make sure you are logged into your Google account and head to their experimental search page. Select Join this Experiment, and it is on. If you are already participating in a Google experiment you will need to select the leave option on the current one to join the +1 experience. Now head to Google search and type in a search query. Once your search results appear, next to the title of the page will be a small, mostly blue edged box with a faint +1. Once clicked, the box will now display as solid blue and a text display just under the title will now show that you publicly +1’d a site.

Now those in your Google network only will also be able to see the sites that you have shown your +1 interest in. Additionally, if your friends have been there before you, and +1’d the same link, this will show up as well. Your Google account profile will also save a list of any site you +1 to your account details. For those who utilize their Google and Gmail accounts regularly, this could be a quite helpful tool for saving any site they may have a particular affinity for.

Pros and Cons of Up-Voting

Although for now, the results of +1’s will only be displayed publicly to those in your network, as well as a select random few public +1 voters, it may also be likely that if results from the experiment are positive, a global public will probably be next in their sights.

It is yet to be seen if having ‘friends in high places’ or highly reputable +1’s will make any difference, but it seems highly likely that if Google Labs does take this experiment to the global public, that having top-notch and highly reputable +1 friends could certainly make a huge difference in a web sites own popularity.

With the internet commerce of all types having such a large crowd of competitors this could certainly prove helpful on the local fronts rather quickly. Search engine queries for local businesses will, of course, display far fewer results then queries on a statewide, national or global scale. With far fewer competitors, favored local businesses will likely be quickly noticeable.

While up-voting may in fact give smaller businesses a shot at more public recognition, it may also leave another slot open for SEO tricksters and black-hat marketers to once again send to the top of the +1 pile those with enough resources and techniques to gain those +’s in perhaps not so organic manners.

Google Goes Social

Although quite an attempt was made at sending Google openly into the social media world with the inception of their Google Buzz system, it has had seemingly little effect or impact in the social media marketing world.

Google does plan to integrate their +1 system with Twitter as well, which will add another huge aspect of socially marketing and bookmarking to a users basic browser search results.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAyUNI3_V2c]

Immediate Impact

Although Google has used social media interactions for years in its search engine displayed results, they seem to have definitely monitored and watched for important signals and statistics to give their regular users the ability to help promote more product-centric marketing.

By 4:00pm yesterday, even though shares had fallen by 2% this year, Google had risen by 11 cents to $581.84 per share on the Nasdaq.

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Social Brand Visibility: UStream

March 31, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

UStream is a unique platform that consist of networks that include a wide diversity of channels that are open source options for live video streaming. Brad Hunstable and John Ham co-founded UStream while attending West Point, a renowned US Military Academy. Both of the co-founders had long been inspired by technology and received degrees in the engineering fields, however, it may have been their stints in the armed services that had a heavier inspiration for creating a source of live video communications.

With so many friends deployed to Iraq and time very limited in the war zones, an idea like UStream seemed the perfect solution for allowing soldiers to communicate with their families in real time and whenever they were capable.

Getting Started on UStream

Since UStream accounts are free there are some definite possibilities for any users with interest in live video casting. Simply head to the sign-up page and create your own account. Remember to try to utilize your keyword in your user name if at all possible.

Once you have a personal account it is only a matter of creating your own show or channel. You can create your own channel in just minutes as it only requires a quick trip to the dashboard, one-click create a show option and your channel is up, running and viewable by anyone.

Although users can create a snap channel and dive right in, it is also important to those who want to utilize UStream for marketing purposes to take the time to fill in the details. The easiest way to get the most coverage is to enter the correct tags, choose the closest category to your content and uploading a relevant photo.

You also have the opportunity to enter a short description of your newly created show or channel. The information you put here may be the most important as it is what will offer the most inclusive short description of your channel content possible.

Who Uses UStream?

Everyone from rock stardom to political conventions have been covered by UStream. Even big name radio stations such as Air America and Fox News Radio uses UStream to broadcast live streaming video casts which provides an enjoyable and free alternative to straight radio. Even CBS has their own live news breaking feed regularly on UStream.

UStream isn’t limited to politicians by any means and many famous young people are bringing attention to this format originally created with the best intentions at heart. To promote and connect with their fans users also include:

Ashton Kutcher
Snoop Dogg
Miley Cyrus
Perez Hilton

And many more celebrities from the A to Z list. UStream can go a long way for those celebrities that have not quite achieved public status. UStream can provide prospective consumers with a teaser of their music or live video shows. Even better yet, live events such as this RV show can be broadcast to those who may have great interest in the product, but no means to attend the event physically.

Recently, UStream was used during Social Media Week 2011 at the Social Media Camp hosted by the Roger Smith Hotel in New York. This event broadcasted live in two rooms as presenters covered various topics related to Social Media.

Statistically, common usage shows that there are only 438 sites with a better quarterly global Alexa traffic ranking than UStream. However, with much popularity in Japan, it is estimated that 33% of its visitors originate from there which has landed it a traffic ranking of 62 for their country. Although UStream began a slow but steady climb on daily traffic and page use in late 2009, numbers for the last thirty days show a 103% in user visits.

Although obviously very popular in Japan, its average user tends to be moderately college educated and childless Hispanic males, with an age range of 18 to 34, who browse mostly from home.

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Business Media Solutions: SlideShare

March 30, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Slideshare may be another aspect of online commerce and marketing that may sound like one of the little guys, for now. However, this site offers large varieties of business media solutions in the forms of documents, slide show presentations and even downloadable pdf files. Professionals from many niches upload their business content, while other viewers breeze through and comment on the uploaded media.

Features of SlideShare

Members can have their content uploaded to the site and embed their own personal website or blog
Content can also be shared privately
Can be used as an effective marketing tool in helping to promote or advertise an event

Additionally, SlideShare openly promotes users getting together to create their own groups so that they can interact with people who share the same niche interest as them.

Advantages of SlideShare Coverage

The single most important aspect and advantage of utilizing SlideShare is that every piece of media uploaded to the site can be viewed by their over 70 million viewers per month.

Users can niche network by creating or joining existing groups. This can help increase contacts, and therefore opportunities.

While being a part of a group can have many networking and marketing benefits, SlideShare user groups can also collectively modify and even enhance current online content.

SlideShare Media Creation Tips

Keeping a few helpful marketing tips in mind when creating content that you plan to upload to Slideshare can be imperative to having a successful business media marketing campaign.

Go Visual

Use a lot more visual markers and easy to understand symbolism as opposed to more text. Plain and simple, human beings prefer to be visually engaged if the other option is mounds of jumbled text.

Keep it Short

Try to get to the point of your content quickly. Rambling discourse and biased opinions are unlikely to garner increasing views or ‘word of mouth’ consumers.

Precision Tagging

At the end of each upload users are given the opportunity to choose their content descriptions as well as adding their tags, or keywords. Use keyword tools such as Google’s keyword tool to find the best keywords to describe your content or product.

Call to Action

If your content is one of your marketing tools you will definitely want to supply a ‘call-to-action’ at the end of each presentation. A link to click or short advertisement for your product is sufficient. Badgering your viewers with constant self-serving links is not nessecary.

Who Uses SlideShare?

There are a lot of larger corporations who have social strategist users on SlideShare to help increase awareness and promote their products or services.

A Sears representative, Vanina Delobelle, has uploaded a highly viewed and rated presentation on social strategies. With over 120 thousand views, Vanina certainly achieved a great marketing feat for any level of personal or corporate users.

Niall Cook of H & K has also been a regular contributor since 2006.

Alexa tells a detailed story of SlideShare user statistics. Global Alexa traffic ranking shows SlideShare at 264 with a U.S. ranking of 408. However popular it is in the United States, it is even more commonly used in Mexico. Overall site user statistics show that it holds more appeal for childless Hispanic females with postgraduate educations than any other group, with the age range of most users being from 25 to 44. They view as much from work as they do from home.

There is no doubt that SlideShare has huge marketing value for those who have the knowledge, or quick ideas on strategies that can be shared to garner attention and awareness of their particular products and services.

Here is an example of a Power Point Presentation done by Basil Puglisi on Search Engine Optimization Basics : SEO101

[slideshare id=7181167&doc=seo101-110307150053-phpapp01]

[slideshare id=7447762&doc=hubspotmarketingtransformationfinal-110330085430-phpapp02]

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SmB Digital Trends: LivingSocial

March 29, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

LivingSocial offers a system similar to Groupon where users can jot in their local zip code and browse over offers that can be purchased online for personal use, or even sent to others as gifts. This social discovery and networking tool allows business owners to read and review what others are saying about their business, and cater their advertising and promotional ventures accordingly.

LivingSocial isn’t limited to any specific area of commerce. Commonly movie tickets, books and even pet store coupons appear on the LivingSocial site in chosen local areas. As of early 2011, LivingSocial may not have the coverage that larger sites like Groupon currently has, but they are definitely growing, sometimes with cities expanding coverage in just a matter of days.

LivingSocial.com claims to be the most comprehensive and interest-based community online that is helping over 6.4 million users to catalogue their interest. And where would they get such incredible numbers? It seems LivingSocial has been using Facebook.

Full Facebook integration makes LivingSocial easy to use and even easier to share with family and friends. As they also promise the bigger the crowd, the better the deal, this encourages all users to share and equally encourage others to participate. Top notch marketing ideas like this on LivingSocial.com may indeed make it far more widely recognized and used once the traffic starts to bring in more deals, with better coverage.

So What is the Encouragement to Share?

Really, doesn’t every site online these days encourage you to share? And sometimes, when you see a great deal, you may share it, and just as often, you may mean to but forget, or just have no intention of sharing what you think may interest only you. So how does LivingSocial.com succeed in nudging users into sharing?

Simple. Each day a new discount deal will be available, either by viewing the site or by signing up for their daily emails. If this deal interest you, click the Buy Now option. Once you have purchased the deal you will receive a unique link to share with friends, family and those coveted Facebook followers and if three people also purchase the deal using your link, your originally purchased deal is entirely free.

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Who Likes LivingSocial.com?

Alexa says that LivingSocial.com has a global traffic ranking of 514 and a US traffic rank of 147. In comparison to race based internet statistics, LivingSocial.com’s users are disproportionately white, moderately college educated, and childless females over the age of 65, who earn over $30,000 per year and are most likely browsing from work. The sites regional traffic ranks actually show that 79% of its users are logging in from the United States. With a solid page ranking of 6 across multiple Google datacenters, over half of the daily page views are simple one page bounces.

Although the site is nearly four years old, trends in daily deal sites recently have certainly improved significantly since just after the beginning of 2011.

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Brand Blogs: Mashable

March 28, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Considered an internet news blog, Mashable was launched from Pete Cashmore’s very own home in Aberdeen Scotland in 2005. Its primary purpose is to cover the latest news in social media, but it also covers any new news and developments in entertainment, online video, web development, technology, mobile and other gadget reviews and information.

The site has reported as many as 30 million viewers and users in one month and has a vast following on a variety of different social networking sites. With over a million Twitter followers and a great Alexa ranking it seems to be continually improving and proving itself in the eyes of the search engines.

Mashable’s provide straight to the source information, reviews, blogs and other sources of great informative content that keeps users coming to check it out, and previous users returning when they need to get to the root of just about any problem Mashable addresses. Mashable is also gaining a huge following through sources like Facebook and Twitter users, which is continuing to be an influential demographic.

Awards and Recognitions

Mashable began at the end of 2007 to host an International Open Web Award contest that would give recognition to the best online services and other communities. Voting was conducted online and not only by Mashable but also by its twenty four blog partnerships. In January of 2008 Mashable’s announced their Open Web Awards winners that included Facebook, YouTube. ESPN, Pandora, Google, Twitter and Digg.

Mashable acquired Blippr, a micro review service website, in March of 2009 and has only continued to rise in popularity among those who rely on blogs, news sites and reviews of technology to do their own related jobs. This process helps to keep a continual flow of updated materials that Mashable users know they will find when they head to their site for answers.

In 2011 Mashable CEO and founder Pete Cashmore was named one of the Young Global Leaders by the World Economic Fourum. The World Economic Forum, based in Geneva, Switzerland, is an independent international organization that aims to improve the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas.

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Google Analytics and Greasemonkey

March 25, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that generates statistical information about the visitors to your site. It is aimed at marketers, small business and website owners. It is considered to be the most often used statistic tool, currently used by 57% of the 10,000 most popular websites.

Google Analytics tracks visitors to your site from search engines, display advertising, PCP networks, e mail marketing, and even links within PDF documents. Users can track landing page quality and conversions. By using the Analytics users can determine which ads are performing and which don’t.

Greasemonkey is a Mozilla Firefox extension that allows users to install scripts that make changes to the way a web page displays or behaves by using small bits of JavaScript. The changes made to the web pages are executed every time the page is opened, making them permanent for the user. Greasemonkey can be used for adding new functions to web pages, such as embedding price comparisons, or changes to the way the site appears. There are many scripts for various functions such as providing information within shopping sites, fixing bugs and combining data from multiple pages.

To help Google Analytics users with insights into their website’s traffic and marketing effectiveness, various Greasemonkey scripts are available for free and can be used to enhance Google Analytics. They have different functions; some are aimed to enhance cleaner profile switching, others for quick content search, exporting to Google Docs and more.

Here are some of the most interesting scripts:

Social Media Metrics – this plugin allows users to observe social media, and link statistics to your specific pages.
Twitter and Google Analytics campaign tracking variables. Adds Campaign Source,
Campaign Medium and Campaign Name to your links for easy tracking of the traffic they drive to your site.
Enhanced Google Analytics. This script allows users to get up-to-date information on new referring sites or those who have had a substantial boost in traffic.
Profile Switching. A cleaner way to switch between profiles.
Insights for Analytics. Helps perform Google Insight searches on keywords in the report. Select up to 5 keywords in Google Analytics and view traffic patterns for these keywords on Insight.

It is important to note that on March 17, 2011, in a conference in San Francisco, Google Analytics unveiled a new version in beta trials. In order to make it easier and faster to get information and to enhance the Google Analytics platform, it is rumored to have an updated look and feel. Many of the changes in the new version are the result of user feedback, Goggle Analytics people say, including multiple dashboards, new links for specific reports and new names for reports. It is available for a small group of users for testing. The launch date is yet known.

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Social Media & Brand Monitoring Part 4: Techrigy, Seesmic

March 24, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

SM2 – Techrigy

When Techrigy, a Pittsford, N.Y Company, reached 1 Billion conversations, in Feb. 2009, it was posted all over the internet. In July of that same year, the company was acquired by Alterian, a British integrated marketing software platform and a leading marketing service company. Their product was labeled SM2.

The company provides brand monitoring solutions for social media. It provides tools to monitor and measure social media sentiment analysis, trend comparisons, geographic analysis, theme detection, authority measurement, demographic and classifications.

SM2 helps brand managers see what people are saying about their brand, who is saying what, how the competition is doing and what is said about them. It is an essential tool in market research and shows, analytically, how a campaign or new product launch is performing.

SM2 follows what was said on blogs, message boards, forums, micro blogs (like Twitter, Plurk, Indeti.ca), Wikis (user generated information sites), video and photo sharing sites (You Tube, Flickr) social network sites (Facebook, Ning, LinkedIn), classified sites and review sites.

All this vast information, categorized by topics, is delivered to their customers, aggregated and diced into graphs and pie charts so you can dig out the information you need and adjust your search to make it more accurate.

In comparison to Radian6, SM2 showed almost the same search results. The sentiment result was much better in SM2, but the interface is not user friendly. The initial set up time for each search also takes too much time.

SM2 serves advertising agencies and PR firms like Abraham & Harrison ( working with Kimberly-Clark Healthcare, Lowe Worldwide, Sharp Electronics), Bader Rutter (GE healthcare, Pfizer) and Yamego (MTV, Durex, BBC).

Their pricing is compatible to Radian6 – plans starting at $500 a month.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC3L8XlMoCQ]

Seesmic

Seesmic, founded in 2007 by French investor Loic Le Meur, still operates out of San Francisco. It offers tools to monitor the activity on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites, and respond in a timely manner from one centralized place.

In 2009 the company went through a re-launch from being mainly a video uploading site to aggregating content from other social networks. They have a few programs:

Seesmic Desktop – which allows you to manage several Twitter accounts, build groups and “Build your community”.

Seesmic Web – A web based version that allows you to manage a few Twitter accounts, on any web platform. The information is being stored in a cloud, not on your computer.

Seesmic aim is to be the gateway to all your social services needs on any platform you are on, local apps and mobile phones. The nicely designed app, allows you to link your Twitter and Facebook accounts, you can add a Ping.fm account and automatically update all of them together with one post, or each of them separately.

In January 2010, Seesmic acquaired Ping.fm, a company that allows users to publish updates on many social media sites with a single click, and its ranged grew to over 50 social networks.

Users range from individuals looking to interact with their following, to big brand managers and social media experts. They do not offer analytics.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHoAcEAGsKQ]

SalesForce Chatter with: Android, iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Devices

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Press Release: Submission Software & Easy Self Serve Sites

March 23, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

One aspect of online business marketing may require the distribution of press releases for special events, products or even discounts or other coupon or seasonal promotions. And although drawing up a press release may not be that difficult or time consuming, submitting it to the many directories available can be a definite time-killer.

Many have heard of article submitters or even article directory software, however, this is not the same as press release submission. While article or content farms are a dime a dozen, legitimate press release sites are not as abundant. This is a good thing as with less available sites to choose from, comes more coverage and hopefully views, for the content submitted to the quality press release websites available.

What Tools Are Available?

Although there are tons of article submission tools, there are only a couple of press release targeted submitters.

Traffic Mania Pressbot

Traffic Mania Pressbot is also known as Press Release Submitter. Released by Incansoft, this press release submission tool is available under a couple of different titles. The most valuable package it is bundled in includes many different tools available by this developer. Though it is also listed sold individually, with a different cover, but at the same price.

It is hard to find a bad review on this product. Most who use it seem incredibly satisfied with its capabilities and ease of use. The fact that this tool comes with a one-time cost and offering solid technical support and lifelong free updates may make it well worth it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mn6dGCuHq8]

Submit Like Magic

This is a heavy duty marketing tool. It allows users to create and submit articles and press releases, upload videos and even one-click social media bookmark to hundreds of sites. Although this tool is a literal powerhouse, some user reviews suggest that it hasn’t quite worked out all of its initial kinks. Overall, the kinks that Submit Like Magic does have are seriously overshadowed by its capabilities.

This tool will also come with a hefty price at $67 USD per month. They do allow a quick trial period of thirty days for a small fee of $4.95 to test out the software as well. Although this may not be the right tool for those who dabble in marketing, this is definitely the perfect tool for powerhouse marketers. There is little that you cannot do as far as social bookmarking, article directory submission, video uploading, RSS feed submissions and captcha support is concerned.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrNih3yAboQ]

Easy Self Submit Sites:

If your looking to just do a little self promotion and want to create a nice simple Press Release then PRLog and FreePressReleases are great sites that will allow you to create a single press release that will be added to the digital world with all the formatting done for you. This is great for small businesses that want to just create or pitch a story from time to time to their local media. Both Sites have the ability to email or send once the Press Release is live.

What Can Press Release Submission Software Do for Small Business?

It can absolutely save a small business owner loads of time and money. By utilizing PR submission software, users are able to eliminate the hours of manual submission and complete their PR submissions to many sites with a few entries and the click of a submit button.

For the minor marketer, Traffic Mania Pressbot is plenty of software, but for the power marketer, Submit Like Magic may be a multimedia marketers dream.

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Social Media & Brand Monitoring Part 3: Sysomos, TruCast

March 22, 2011 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Social Media has given every one of us an equal voice in what is being said on the internet about a brand, and with that changed the way our entire world works.

The more saturated the world wide web becomes, with information geared towards making money, not always in an honest way, more and more searches are conducted through social media sites that can give a firsthand, personal experience testimonials using the brand.

That, in turn, changes the way companies are advertising and handling consumer’s complaints. It changed launching campaigns, and reshaped the way advertisers are learning what works and what doesn’t.

There are online tools to help brand managers and small business owners track, analyze and react to what is being said about them on the World Wide Web. They help control the visibility, what is being said and where, and enables real time reaction.

Sysomos

“Business Intelligence and Social Media” – that is how Sysomos labels itself. What’s happening online, what it means for your products or brands, and how to engage in the conversation, are some of the areas their software enable their customers to do from one centralized place.

They provide Social media analytics that gives you the tools to make the right decisions. Their database has an archive of data collected from forums, micro-blogging, videos, blogs and other social sites.

The company, in existence since 2005, employs logarithms to scan information in the form of crawlers (similar to what Google does when new pages are uploaded) and categorizes, breaks down and aggregates that information from all over the world. That includes sites that are not in English, with the help of a translating tool.

Sysomos prides itself for having a 4 tire security against spam, which is meant to produce a spam-free and true report, for being able to produce results in real time and for enabling you to reach and react to the information in a timely manner, any time of day or night. It also has an automated sentiment report to make it easier to navigate through the information.

The site will give you analytics; who is talking about your brand and where they are located. You can compare the information to those of your competitors. You can choose to identify the influencers who are talking about your brand and start a conversation. All this can be done with the same platform and you can share information and assign responsibilities to other team members.

A spinoff of the University of Toronto research project, this Canadian company’s flagship offering – “MAP” (Media Analysis Platform) was launched in 2007, and was aimed to serve corporations, marketers, public relations agencies and advertisers. Another program called “Heartbeat” was launched in 2009, and is a cost effective version of the program. In 2010 the company announced the third major product, “Audience”, in beta testing for social media ROI (Return On Investment).

In 2010, Sysomos was acquired by Marketwire, a press release distribution company. The company holds webinars to explain the benefits of their system. Their pricings start at $500 a month and go up to $1,000.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agVOpF1VtV8]

Facebook Page Central:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjJA5CWyFfg]

Trucast

The newcomer to the social media monitoring is Trucast from Visible Technologies. It launched in August 2010, and offers the ability to track, analyze and participate in forums, social networks, blogs and online communities.

It is aimed at advertisers, brand managers, market researchers and corporate customer service, public relations and communication professionals. It is built to handle massive amounts of information (they say it handles up to 70% more than competing companies) and you can follow up to 40 different topics. The company will categorize it and transform it to actionable business insights which show the purchase behavior of clients, which areas of customer relations needs to be improved and how to build brand loyalty. They say they dig deep into social media data as well as other industries and third party data sources like newsgroups, bulletin boards and online news sites.

Their clients include Microsoft, Panasonic, Hormel and Dell. Their statistics has shown that using their software, Dell managed to reduce the negative sentiment about them by 50%.

They do not publish their prices.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmaiZNRO884]

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