Archive for February, 2010
8 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools You Probably Haven’t Tried
Here’s a list of 8 free (or very cheap) social media monitoring tools we’ve tried out in the last few weeks. They are all pretty light-touch, but great for anyone starting out in social media monitoring – and a lot of fun into the bargain.
Social Media and Chaos: A Love Story
Several month’s ago I read a fascinating article by John Naughton. He was looking at social media successes – such as Wikipedia and MySpace – and asking the obvious question: who would have thought this would work? When planning to create a new encyclopaedia, you would probably gather together a group of fine and varied minds, set up a structure (to cover everything) and a strict editorial process, then set out a timeline of, what, six years to complete the job? You certainly wouldn’t set up a website and open it up for entries to be posted by anyone and his wife.
Using Social Media to Predict Fashion Trends (Guessing is so 2009!)
Social media monitoring is generally dominated by Marketing, PR and Communications, so it was refreshing to meet Geoff Watts from Stylesignal earlier this month. Geoff and his team have developed a social media monitoring tool for the specific purpose of tracking and predicting new fashion trends. By tracking the websites, blogs, Tweets and images published by a selection of influential fashionistas, Trend Science is able to provide uniquely valuable insights into a notoriously unpredictable market. It’s pure genius
Why Don’t Social Networks Enable Different Personas?
I hosted a workshop last week for about fifteen Communication and Marketing Managers from local authorities. We covered the fundamentals of Inbound Marketing, including blogging, SEO, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks. As always, I put a strong focus on lead generation and getting tangible results – i.e. customers, sign-ups or positive “interventions” – and they left the room with some really clear, obvious next steps for improving their use of social media
Social Media Monitoring: Who’s Making Money?
So who’s making the money in social media measurement and monitoring? I was on a panel asked this question at the Measurement & Monitoring Meetup on Friday. It’s essentially another take on the ROI of social media monitoring question, but with the focus widened to include suppliers and consultants, and at first sight it’s a rather annoying question. Having established at the Chinwag event on Tuesday that social media isn’t (necessarily) all about financial ROI, to be asked where the money is in relation to social media monitoring tools seems regressive.
Inbound Marketing: The Movie
You gotta love Hubspot. This is an inspiration for any cold-calling, spamming, ad-posting, paper wasting, door-dropping marketeer who’s starting to wonder if there’s a better way to live. Learn to blog, learn about SEO, make some friends on Facebook and Twitter, then spend your time being interesting and, if you’re Hubspot, entertaining, and watch the leads come in. It’s never quite that simple, but equally, it isn’t that far off.
The ROI of Social Media: Where’s the Money?
What is the ROI of social media? Although I’ve heard that question a thousand times in the last year, I’ve never heard (or given) a particularly convincing answer. So I’m pleased to report that at the “Where’s the Money” Chinwag event last night, at which I spoke on the panel, I think we got at least halfway towards a comprehensive answer.
