Like all of you, I too am fascinated by the power of Social Media. I have personally done a large Social Media analysis industry study and would like to share some of the highlights with you.

Companies considered for study – Radian6, Biz360, Umbria, Motive Quest, Nielson Buzz Metrics, Brand Intel, Cymfony, Visible Technologies and Custom Scoop.

Executive summary of the study – Majority of the companies except a few such as Custom Scoop provide Social Media analysis through automated tools.

Consumers today have realized that automated tools cannot accurately identify sentiments/tonality, influencers, geography, gender, themes/messages etc. And hence, for deeper and accurate results the need for Human Intelligence is a must.
The solution a few smart companies have decided to take is – do analysis through Human Intelligence by sampling. They outsource the blog coding to specialists such as Manthan Services who code blogs and update them on client’s tools for deeper analysis.

The catch to Human Intelligence is that you really do not have to go through 1000s of blogs to understand your brand perception. Instead it is best done through smart sampling. Smart sampling at 2 levels – First level is identifying top 20 or 30 blogsites only. BY top I mean the once which have the maximum number of visitors as well as blogsites those are focused on a particular category. So you see, the impact/image created on such blog sites is what matters the most as you have many eye balls to such blog sites and hence the impact is that much larger.

The Second level is identifying Key Influential Bloggers – I would define them as those bloggers who’s profile would influence people more than others. Example – doctor writing about a brand or a teacher writing about a product would make more people believe in what they say. Also if a blogger has many followers and people write back on his views about a topic then his influence is that much more higher.

Lastly automated tools cannot enter networking sites such as Facebook as you need to manually punch in your username and password.

It’s amazing to see how Social Media is becoming a precursor to Primary Research. You can narrow down your scope of primary research by doing some social media intelligence.

If you need to know more about how Social Media Monitoring and Evaluation companies can meet there clients growing expectation then do write to me.

Cheers!

Sandeep Sankhla
http://in.linkedin.com/in/sandeepsankhla
sandeep.sankhla@manthanservices.com

I need a monitor platform to follow and messure comments in blogs, forums and social media sites….do you know one who we can use for all this things?. I have seen a lot but I need some with all this sites together.

thank you from Spain

Any experiences? Pls feel free to contact me directly on twitter.com/csteiauf.

I love posts that compare the best in SM monitoring. There are so many solutions coming on the market daily – if I was looking for one, I’d surely be overwhelmed. I would love to throw my hat in the ring with Biz360 for when you do a more expanded list. Please ping me for a demo and a trial account – on Twitter @themaria and email mogneva (At) biz360 (dot) com