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Research, analyze and compare--choose your social media monitoring tool wisely.

When questions come up with the suspicion that if a social media monitor tool is effective enough for a firm to manage their reputation and influence online, research should be conducted for some of the most popular social media tools so as to make a thoroughly comparison.

There are so many different tools within this industry in recent years. I will take top 8 of them in my opinion to provide some analysis. These tools are Google Alert, Mention, SocialMention, Sprout Social, Trackur, Sysomos, Radian 6 and ViralHeat.

Tools of monitor the information

Google Alert

Google Alert is a well-known, free application that allows you to track mentions of keywords on the web. Users set up their own keywords and receive emails from Google Alerts once or twice a day which is customized by different needs. People can monitor almost everything with Google Alerts such as finding out what is being said about their company or product, monitoring a developing news story, keeping up to date on a competitor or industry, getting the latest news on a celebrity or sports team and finding out what’s being said about themselves, etc...

Price: Free

Social Mention

If social awareness is the main focus of your social media goal, then do not forget to check out Social Mention, which allows you to set up social media alerts so you can measure awareness for specific topics. It is a social media search engine and analysis platform that combines user-generated content throughout the universe into a simple stream of information.

Price: Free

Compare Google Alerts with Social Mention: Both Google Alerts and Social Mention’s services provide similar information, but Social Mention targets social media and gives more information to you than just links while Google Alerts covers almost everything under the sun and not so specific for business.

Tools of Social Listening

Mention

Mention is one of the best and most cost effective solutions for social listening. With a small team they have done excellent job to deliver a web-based app, an iPhone app and a desktop app that you can use to monitor keywords that are relevant to your brand.

You set up filters based on keywords you want to track and through a really nice interface it displays what it finds.

When you click on any item, you see additional information related to the user and the item.

Price and Features:

Trackur

Trackur is a social media monitoring tool which tracks nearly every aspect of online media, such as blogs, RSS feeds, Tweets, images and videos. It provides the ability to not only view conversations about a brand, but also view the increasing or declining volume of the conversation. In that way, users can get the information from everywhere related to their product launch or some negative events. Also, Trackur offers analysis of any website mentoring a term being monitored, allowing users to distinguish how influential that site is.

It has the best bet for low cost so far as I know. This is the cheapest option that has some sentiment tagging and it will save your search phrases and run the searches automatically for you.

Price and Features:

ViralHeat

ViralHeat is a fabulous social media measurement tool with which any content publisher can keep a track of their real-time consumer-generated content on the web. ViralHeat syncs all of the social major networks and is an excellent way to understand community engagement as well as carry out competitive analysis.

The service supports all the major social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, blogs (via RSS feeds) and YouTube. One good feature that some of the competing products don’t offer is targeted publishing, which allows users to deliver content to the right audience based on time zone, country, city, language and other demographic information. Starting with today’s release, users can also now publish directly to their personal Facebook accounts.

Price and Features:

Sprout Social:

Sprout Social’s software supports complete management of multiple social network identities, simultaneously, from a single interface. Fully integrated with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and FourSquare, this management tool let company’s brand top of a manager’s mind as he engage with their customers and allows him to monitor their brand mentions across major media channels. People can track conversations and engage with their customers without having to change programs or sign into/out of other applications. This saves managers a tremendous amount of time. In addition, Sprout Social offers contact management, detailed analytics and lead‑generation tools, and the ability for company to track how they are faring against their competition.

Price and Features:

Radian 6:

We offer unequalled coverage of the social web and provide metrics to measure what is being said, and by whom. —David Alston, CMO Radian6.

Radian 6 is a monitoring tool which can help you monitor brand mentions across the social landscape. It offers users comprehensive coverage of discussions on the social web, covering hundreds of millions of blogs and comments on both Facebook and Twitter. Besides this coverage, Radian 6 is measureable within business, allowing online comments to be assigned within the business, to customer service, sales, marketing and so on. It works in real time and takes a short time to analyze the data.

Their price is not showed online but have 4 kinds of packages each with different features for different segment.

Sysomos:

Sysomos is pretty much the same as Radian 6 as a social media monitoring tool. Basically, they are offering two kinds of products to companies which are MAP (Media Analysis Platform) and Heartbeat. It helps companies identify and engage with key influencers to establish and build relationships, and generate buzz. For marketer and advertisers, Sysomos gains insight about your target audience, sentiment and geo-demographics. Not only participate in the conversations about your products and your brands but also participate in conversations which are happening within the social media landscape about your products and brands.

Key features of MAP:

•Unlimited search queries and access to billions of conversations

• Identify key influencers by industry, demographic groups and geography

• Gain insight into key conversations, themes and trends

• Conduct in-depth research and prepared detailed reports

Key features of Heartbeat:

• Monitor social media conversations

• Measure key metrics around buzz and sentiment

• Identify and engage with key influencers and opinion leaders

•Conduct comparisons between competitors and topics

Price: N/A

Which one is the best for business?

Overall, all of these platforms seem to have similar features but their prices are quite different. To choose an effective social media monitoring tool is the first step for a company to manage their brand reputation currently because online influence is becoming the most important part of branding. In my opinion, Sysomos and Radian 6 are the leaders of this broad market because they provide customized products to satisfy various customer needs especially for medium to large companies that are less price sensitive but focus on how the tool will help them engage and measure results every day. For small business, ViralHeat is more reliable because of its lower price and simple, easy to check dashboard. In a word, different situation forms different needs so that different tools should be chose.

Sources:

TopRank. N.p., 2011. Web. 9 April 2013.

http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/12/near-free-social-media-monitoring/

Baer, Jay. CONVINCE&CONVERT//SOCIAL&ACCELERATORS. N.p., N.d. Web. 9 April 2013.

http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-software/clearing-clouds-of-confusion-the-5-categories-of-social-media-software/

Whalley, Brian. HubSpot. N.p., 17 Aug. 2011. Web. 9 April 2013.

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/29343/How-to-Evaluate-and-Compare-Social-Media-Tools.aspx

http://social-brand-value.com/2010/04/12/social-media-monitoring-tools/

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/5-social-media-tools-to-help-manage-your-online-reputation-30-minutes-a-day/57337/

#MKM815 #Social media tools #Google Alerts #Sprout Social #Mention #SocialMention #ViralHeat #Radian 6 #Sysomos #Trackur

How important is online reputation management for students?

Nowadays, college students are busier than ever. Other than studying for assignments and exams, regularly engaging in different social media and professionalizing online presence with media tools to build up their person brands are becoming a part of their social life, especially for students who learn business or marketing. In today’s social network which is quite easy to be influenced in a very short time but results in a huge effect, reputations should be a big issue to be considered by students. Before talking about the reputation management, the first thing is to know what exactly “Reputation Management” is.

What is Reputation Management?

Actually, there is no certain definition of reputation management at the moment. But the core message within reputation management is that, it is a consistent and powerful transmission for a company to manage its reputation on the strategic level, meanwhile delivers the value, business model, product and service of their company timely and accurately. But for a college student, reputation management is a process that students should follow to maintain their good presence online in order to attract potential employers to pay more attention on you as well as gaining more opportunities to find a job.

Why Reputation Management is important for student?

In today’s competitive business environment, to have good job skills and academic grades are not really enough for a new graduate when taking a job interview. Employers are looking for a variety of personal values and characteristics such as honesty, integrity and reliability. They are not only follow the process in company’s policy for hiring a good person, but will also Google you and see your online social influence as well. It is inevitable that your profiles on social networking sites will also appear in the results. Through an unwise post or something with negative information could deprive a job opportunity. Optimistic posts, relevant interests and professional friends are all lead to a potential employer. Therefore it is important for a college student to concern about how they will enroll themselves in social media and protect themselves by managing their online reputation.

Sources:

Campbell, Susan. Reputation.com. N.p., 2011. Web. 9 April 2013.

http://www.reputation.com/reputationwatch/articles/online-reputation-management-for-college-students

Millen, John. Reputation Group. N.p., 15 Nov. 2012. Web. 9 April 2013.

http://reputationgroup.com/2012/11/15/college-student-reputation-management

SafetyWeb. N.p., N.d. Web. 9 April 2013.

http://www.safetyweb.com/online-reputation-guide-for-college-students

#MKM815 #Reputation Management #Employer

Using tools to measure your social influence scores, is that really reliable?

Klout

Klout is a social influence measurement tool of an America company which was found in 2008. Klout believes that everyone has their influence in the age of social media. You can see your score of influence through Klout with your social media and to discover who you have influenced, in which topic you have gained more attention. Currently, you can link you account with Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr and other six social media website to measure your score based on the engagement of your followers to your post. It also provide you “perks” when you reach some certain score.

Klout score based on three main indicators to measure your influence:

The true reach.

When you post something with your social media, it will calculate the reactions of your followers such as their comments and repost.

Amplification

After you posted some information online, this is the number of times that your posts be shared and commented.

Network

Social media that you have involved in which includes Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and so on are all considered to your total score of Klout. In another word, what Klout estimates is your influence online.

Kred

Kred is another measurement to find out your social influence. Kred is latest product of PeopleBrowsr social data mining company. It consists of two parts: influence score and "outreach" score. Your influence score measures your ability to "inspire others", ranging from 1 to 1000 points. The scores are based on how many times your twitter message is pushed, how manyfollowers and replies you get. It's like your Klout score. Outreach score is measured by level, reflects if your reprint and reply to other people's content are as much as possible.

Then what is the difference between Kred and Klout? The main difference is the Kred transparency is higher. It will show how you get the scores, so you can see specific information about how many points you get when reprint. Ordinarily it is worth 10 points, but sometimes may worth 50 points with high Kred scores. Being referred to score higher than being attention. Everyone's score is real-time computing.

PeerIndex

Peer Index is a consumer data analysis platform, according to network activities of consumer groups and the user's social network activities for user ratings, high score represents its more influential.

This is quite different from Klout and Kred because it is not as easy as these two to increase your score. It only connects to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora and one of your own websites. The interesting and similar part with Klout is that PeerIndex can provide you different kinds of incentives when you get different number of scores.

The similar part of these three platform is that they all measure your social influence by calculate the reaction from others to your posts. The more engagement, the better higher score you will get.

I don’t think they are legitimate tools for measuring social influence because these scores can’t be distinguished from positive to negative influence. For example, if you post something disgusting on YouTube or some bordered topic on Facebook, you may get more attention or blame on your comments. This would increase your score on all the three tools but it doesn’t mean your social influence is appropriate or good.

My Klout score is now 45 compared with the beginning which was only 22. When discussed about how to increase my Klout score, I would like to talk about some strategies. First, build up your own website which is related to your personal interest or professional interest. Second, post something meaningful and make sure it delivers the messages that the customers need. Third, update your blog and social media every now and then. Finally and the most important is to follow the right person and try to interact with them to improve yourself.

This is kind of "gaming the system" because if you want to increase your score, just post something debatable or hire someone who "like" your posts everyday.

Business can hire influencers who may not be celebrities and advertising on the influencers’ webpage as more people will notice that. Also, to determine who is qualified in that position not only just to see their score of these tools but also look into details such as the content that they posted and who are their followers.

There should be risks when you are using social influence measures to make business decisions because some of the data lacks of authenticity as the statistics do not mean people are interested in a specific product. They may just see it for fun. Questionnaires are much better.

And the most important is that these tools are the cheapest way for you to promote yourself as well as your product than any other traditional tools. It won't take you a long time and you can be impressive faster.

Sources

Brandweiner, Natalie. MYCUSTOMER.com. Sift Media, 15 Mar. 2012. Web. 26 Mar. 2013.

http://www.mycustomer.com/topic/customer-intelligence/influencer-marketing-klout-vs-kred-vs-peerindex/138067

Levy, Scott. Forbes. N.p., 04 Mar. 2013. Web. 26 Mar. 2013.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottlevy/2013/03/04/klout-vs-kred-which-if-any-is-better-for-your-business/

#kred #peerindex #social influence #measurement tools #Business #marketing #MKM815 #Klout

instagram

Landmarks Around the World Go Dark for @earthhour

Today, people around the world will celebrate Earth Hour (@earthhourofficial) by turning off their non-essential lights from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. local time. The event was conceived by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in 2007 as a way to raise awareness about climate change.

Iconic buildings and landmarks participate each year, offering a rare unilluminated glimpse at their exteriors. Be sure to browse the location pages below for photos of the Earth Hour events!

Sydney Opera House, Sydney

Beijing National Stadium (The Bird’s Nest), Beijing

Petronas Twin Towers, Kuala Lumpur

Table Mountain, Cape Town

Eiffel Tower, Paris

Empire State Building, New York City

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco

#mkm815 #save energy #earthhour

How to use Pinterest to engage consumers for business

Currently, Pinterest is becoming the third big social media platform along with Facebook and Twitter. By using Pinterest for brand promotion, it will bring more pageviews for some brands than using LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube.

How to make sure that the time you spent on Pinterest was valuable as a marketer, especially when you want to promote something which doesn't rely on pictures to gain attention? And how can you establish an active interacting relationship with such kind of social media like Pinterest? The magic of this are “Boards” and “Pins”.

You can create different kinds of Boards according to different topics via Pinterest. For instance, your topic can be based on travelling resorts or even based on your favourite colour. Members of your Pinterest can follow your boards, however, from which different is that to compare with other social media by using Pinterest, it allows them to follow one of your boards or some of your boards instead of following the whole thing that you shared. Therefore, the secret to use Pinterest is to make your content correlative, then you can easily link them to what you want to recommend through their concern.

To achieve this goal, you need to analyze your target market first to figure out what kind of topic is their favourite. For example, if you want to share some pictures about how to cook or how to use your product, you’d better think more about what they really like but not to push them the thing you want to share directly.

Here are some of the tips to help you attract more target audience to engage in your business:

To share videos

Although videos are still not so popular in Pinterest, to create a board which focus on videos is one of the good ideas to gain more attention. Content of these videos can be stories behind your company or the demonstration of your product to your customer, etc... These videos can attract large streams of people to your website.

Provide instructive information

Suggestions and “how to do something” are two main stream of content to be repined the most on Pinterest. Thinking about what kind of suggestions are the ones your target audience’s need, and build a relative board on Pinterest.

Share your resources

If you consider some of the resources are useful, then your target audience may regard them useful as well. Create a board about your resources and establish an image of expert in your industry then provide useful information for them.

Pay attention to your counterparts

The essence of social media is to share resource, build relationship with others and acquire the support from your counterparts who have a common goal with you. By setting up a board talking about other excellent counterparts of your market and territory, you can enhance the relationship and at the same time gain their support.

Transmit the coming events and campaign

Do you want your target audience know that you are going to present at an event or a seminar? Pinterest is a proper platform to conduct this kind of activity. You can transmit the information of the upcoming seminar or some of the pictures you took when you were attending the current event. This will makes your target audience notice that you are concerning about the development of this industry as a professional.

There are still lots of methods for you to attract your target audience to engage in your business. Above all, the key point to appeal more target audience is to build up a board correlated to what your customer‘s needs meanwhile to use brilliant pictures in your blogs and website. The more interesting and higher correlative your pictures are, the more possible for them to be shared on Pinterest.

#MKM815 #marketing #business #Pinterest #engagecustomer

A new start on social networking with Tumblr

What Tumblr is?

Tumblr is a platform for creation for both individuals and brands. Unlike regular blog on which you can post your diary, Tumblr is a microblog which looks more like your clipboard. It did follow the form of traditional blog, but evolved to trivial narrations that reflect the stream of consciousness. Every single thing can be posted at will—maybe a piece of pictures, a video spot, a quote, a link or just a thought in your mind.

Why I choose Tumblr?

The reason is simple because it makes me satisfied, which is the most important reason for me to sign it up. As for free communication platform, the most fabulous and attractive one must be the one which would meet the most needs of their users. To be different with Blogger and other blogs, which tend to follow the same path—make their function gorgeous, Tumblr developed their own style by coming up with a microblog which is simple and easy to use, especially easy to share your thoughts with other social media. People know that it is not easy for them either to insert videos or to share pictures by using Blogger because limitation always exist and it is not as easy as just posting an article. Their goal is to make it possible for people to share their network within the easiest way.

However, Tumblr has not limited to what I have mentioned above, but also includes functions that allow you to change your theme, binding with your URL and uploading your profile pictures and so on.

How I will use Tumblr for my social network?

· Post ideas with various elements

The distinctive features of microblog are randomness and richness, which includes voice message, pictures and videos. Most microblogs will provide a bookmarks toolbar to achieve the function of sharing by just one click.

· Follow other blogs

One of the most interesting part to maintain a blog is to extend your social network, so just go and find someone who has the same thought with you and linked to their blogs or even reblog them.

· Customize my own style

All the leading blogs provide divers themes. If you are familiar with HTML and CSS, you can even make your own template. (Me just don’t have this kind of talent)

Well, to build up an influential social network needs time as well as differentials, so just set your first step by signing up for a proper and powerful social media account then enjoy it.