PixelMEDIA Inc.

I have received several inquiries after my seminar and webinar on social media for business and building a successful process for it. So below is a deeper dive on the two sections of my presentation (slide 9) that were most asked about. The questions were in regards to the tools used to find the right information, what to look for, and the methods on how to manage the data.

The concept of auditing and mapping is to understand the environment and how it relates to your corporation or brand. This blog is not a deep dive into daily social media tasks that need to be performed. Chris Brogan has a great blog on that.

The Takeaway

• You can’t plan a social strategy without quality information
• Focus on your goals and not the noise
• Plan ahead by documenting results
• Test tools after you have refined your focus to save energy

Brand Audit and Mapping

This is a critical exercise to take into account where and what is being said about your company and by whom (probably the most important piece) and cataloguing it for future reference. Are they ranting about or evangelizing your brand? Who needs help? Who is out there as the “gurus” in your industry that you should connect with? What are users of your products and services saying that is flat wrong that you should “politely” correct? Also, performing an audit allows you to take a look at your competitors and their presence (or lack thereof) in your space.

So below are some approaches and a suggestion to start out with some “toe dipping” from a tools perspective. Better to get an idea of what your needs are prior to signing up for paid applications.

Search for your brand and find influencers

• At a base level, do a Google search under the terms that are relevant to your name, brand, products and services, or industry, and note what sites are referencing you (or competitors). Bing is good as well. Bookmark the relevant searches.
• You can also use Google Alerts to send you daily/weekly information on these same searched terms.
• Twitters Advanced Search can also give you lots of valuable information.
• Use a tool like Tweet Deck or Seesmic to run multiple advanced searches on Twitter for the same terms and it will keep you current with new tweets on those phrases as well.
• Trendrr is another product I use. Not so user friendly in the beginning, but a worthwhile tool for tracking purposes.
• Another product is called Backtype: Perform a search on your company and see what shows up.

All of the above applications are free and some offer an upgrade path to more functionality or volume.

I could go on and on with the various types, but a wiki list from Ken Burbary will give you an idea of how many social media monitoring tools there are.

With these tools please stay the course and fixate on what your goals are. It’s extremely easy to get lost in the mountain of data coming back at you. Have your goals top of mind at all times.

Build a usable customized map of your brand

• This could be nothing more than a spreadsheet to start, with relevant information such as URLs (saved from searches), products/services talked about, influencer (s), notes about them, etc. This just allows your team the ability to go back and quickly reconnoiter what is being said pertaining to your company and build strategies to accomplish goals.
• Perform a weekly/monthly/quarterly scan (audit) of the top influencers to stay on top of trends (see Google Trends) and update your sheet. Frequency of updates is wholly depended on the amount of resources allocated for this effort by your organization. Lots of multi-hat wearing out there these days.
• Try Dan Zarrella’s newly versioned TweetPsych to give you even more insight into the top influencers and what propels them. I love the new algorithms.
• You can also go with larger all inclusive (monitoring and execution) web apps like Radian6 who are on the high end price-wise, but they are the big boys on the block with exceptional data/services
• But you might find some middle ground with apps I discussed in the seminar called, Viral Heat and PostRank which have mid to low entry fees.

The online monitoring apps help you stay organized with less manual effort, but no matter what, someone still needs to go and see, engage with the communities, and ask or answer questions/needs. Sometimes customizing a plain old spreadsheet is better for that. It’s also convenient for presentations with Executives as they are comfortable with existing tools such as Excel. Another attribute is spreadsheets permit you keep multiple sources of information together for historical reference in regards to reviewing strategies.

My suggestion is to start out with the typical free tools and then look more deeply for a specific tool to search/monitor/manage what is important to your business. Once the top social sites that are important to your goals are known you can then research which tools fit best.

Ultimately it will depend on how deep into social media you need to be (driven by your users’ needs and where they are placing their social time) and how quickly you need real time information.

Note 1: Influencers – Please keep in mind that “influence” matters in the social sphere so pay particular attention to whomever is giving your company a nod or even possibly talking negatively, that has some level of follows that are either important to your business or just plain large and the “influencer” could impact their decisions. Look at both the good and bad conversations as opportunities for engagement.

Note 2: Locations – You may find that your audience is not in the most talked about places (Twitter, Facebook, etc). Depending on their needs a very specific blog or closed forum may be where they feel most suited to openly converse. I have found lots of closed LinkedIn groups being created lately as an example. Look to specific online forums or blogs pertaining to your organizations main products/services.

Ultimately, the goal is to think like your users, listen to the data, and keep and open mind.

And if the central meeting ground(s) for your brand do not exist, perfect. Build it for them, with your brand wrapped around it, and let them know it’s there.

Whew! Questions? I’m here….

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Tags: Business Process, Social media, strategy