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November roundup: What does it take to bring technology to market?

By Alexandra Reid

This month saw a lot of action in the Canadian startup scene and we covered much of it here on our blog. Most notably, Startup Canada launched its much anticipated Startup Blueprints, an ambitious web platform that summarizes what the organisation heard this past summer, and sets out what needs to be done to turn those ideas and reflections into concrete action.

But that shouldn’t eclipse the wonderful work of Maple Leaf Angels and CanWit, two organisations that have fostered a partnership to create new investment opportunities for women-led startups in Canada. The National Angel Capital Organization also held its annual conference in Halifax, where important debates took place about the value of crowdfunding and how investment in this country could be improved.

Of course, those stories don’t even scratch the surface of our coverage this month. In case you missed any, here’s a handy roundup of our posts, ranked by the enthusiasm of our readers.

November 19: Lessons for entrepreneurs who wish to globalize their startups upon inception: Part 2 by Tony Bailetti

November 28: If Jack and Jill had worked together to engineer a well water system … by Leo Valiquette

November 20: Celebrating 25 years of community support by Alexandra Reid

November 29: A clarion call to make Canada an entrepreneurial economy by Francis Moran

November 6: CMI-MarketingProfs report reveals B2B content marketing confusion by Alexandra Reid

November 12: The CMO is dead by Dominique Turpin

November 27: Product management: Give the user the best possible mobile experience by Peter Hanschke

November 13: Hey, kid, I hear you want to be an entrepreneur by Leo Valiquette

November 26: Supporting investment in women-led startups by Alexandra Reid

November 7: Give capitalists the ball, let them run by Leo Valiquette

November 14: Lessons for entrepreneurs who wish to globalize their startups upon inception by Tony Bailetti

November 5: The neuroscience behind elections by Bob Bailly

November 8: Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes inspires hometown crowd: Video by Fiona Campbell

November 14: The subsistence diet of government — and some VC — funding by Francis Moran

November 21: Walking the digital tightrope: The perils of co-branded employees by Megan Totka

November 22: Startup Canada to call for urgent action to support Canadian entrepreneurs by Francis Moran

November 1: Even angels are going enterprise by Francis Moran

November 16: How to create brighter lives with content marketing by Alexandra Reid

Image: Oana Befort

Technorati Tags: Startup, Startup Canada, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, Startup Blueprints, Canada, economy, innovation, small business, technology, Maple Leaf Angels, CanWit, National Angel Capital Organization, NACO, globalization, gender bias, Community Foundation of Ottawa, Content Marketing Institute, Marketing Profs, B2B, marketing, content marketing, marketing strategy, CMO, chief marketing officer, product management, user experience, mobile, application, app, neuroscience, neuromarketing, Ryan Holmes, Hootsuite, venture capital, VC, angel, investing, investment, financing, fundraising, crowdfunding, social media, enterprise

Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes inspires hometown crowd: Video

By Fiona Campbell

Ryan Holmes, CEO and founder of HootSuite, gave an inspirational talk as part of the ignITE speaker series in the Okanagan about his journey as an entrepreneur, followed by a fireside chat and Q&A with Jeff Keen, CEO of Accelerate Okanagan.

Wynne Leung, a UX/UI designer from the Okanagan, attended the event and offered her perspective:

Two things really hit the spot for me. The first is his perspective on leadership and the second is his attitude about life. It was humbling to witness an amazing leader like Ryan speak to the audience in such a comfortable and friendly manner. At times, it felt like the kind of talk people would have around the fireplace on a winter evening with friends. Except we were sitting in a college auditorium, listening quietly and attentively, with no fireplace in sight.

He was quoted as saying at the end, ‘Nothing is owed … Keep motivated and hustle.’ With just a sentence, he summed up something I feel people struggle with, and that is the notion of self-loathing through anxiety and fear. That things ‘should’ happen to people at certain times. So, truly being able to let go of this grandiose idea that some have about themselves and their talents and all the ‘shoulds.’ That nothing is owed to you. That miraculous things can happen if your passion is genuine. That hard work pays off. Not only did he speak of it during this talk in the Okanagan, but he lived it.

Needless to say, he is a role model to a creative person like myself who is also working on a dream. Go Canada Go!

Thought leader, dog lover and serial entrepreneur, Ryan has redefined the face of social media — bringing Twitter, Facebook and other social networks out of the dorm room and into the boardroom. Ryan has grown HootSuite from a lean startup to a global leader in social media with close to five million users, including 79 of the Fortune 100 companies. A college dropout, he started a paintball company and pizza restaurant before founding Invoke Media, the company that developed HootSuite in 2009.

Today, Ryan is an authority in the social business revolution, quoted in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal and called upon to speak at TEDx and SXSW interactive conferences. An angel investor and advisor, he mentors startups in Canada and around the world. Also, through HootSuite University, Ryan partners with major universities to deliver social media coursework to the next generation of business leaders.

Accelerate Okanagan’s interactive speaker series ignITE is designed to Inspire. Transform. Educate. It is part of the educational cornerstone in our offerings to our members, companies, entrepreneurs, businesses and the community at large. Its underlying purpose is to inspire our community through thought provoking talks given by world renowned authors and visionaries. So far in the series, technology startup gurus Steve Blank, Geoffrey Moore and Ryan Holmes have presented.

Check out the photos here.

Ryan Holmes ignITEs: My entrepreneurial journey

Ryan Holmes ignITEs: My Entrepreneurial Journey from Accelerate Okanagan on Vimeo.

Fiona Campbell is the marketing coordinator at Accelerate Okanagan.

Technorati Tags: Hootsuite, Ryan Holmes, Accelerate Okanagan, ignITE, Jeff Keen, entrepreneur, startup, Invoke Media, social media, startup mentorship, Hootsuite University, Steve Blank, Geoffrey Moore

Marketing’s hidden treasure map

By Francis Moran

Whenever I present to groups or prospects on my Four Steps on the Road to Revenue™ marketing methodology, the first sentence out of my mouth is always, “It all begins with the customer.” My point is that marketing must start with identifying a customer requirement that your product or service can fulfill. Too many companies, and especially technology companies, start with building a product and then go looking for someone willing to buy it. It is far more effective to first find that burning pain or unmet need that you — and, preferably, you alone — can address in a unique manner that creates high value on both sides of the transaction.

I will admit that it is getting easier all the time to persuade folks of the sense of this approach. Every time we have rigorously applied this methodology, the client ends up with a clearly defined market need, a well-described customer, a sharply articulated value proposition, a product-development strategy that compells alignment with that market need, and an effective and measurable tactical plan to bring the product to market. In every case, the process is anchored by a detailed understanding of the customer, whether that comes from the client’s own reliable knowledge of customer requirements or from independent executive-interview-based or third-party research.

Even in those instances where companies achieve this customer centricity, though, it is much too frequent that they then set it all aside. Having plotted their course with the customer as their lode star, they then allow their single most accurate navigational tool to go rusty and unused through the balance of the voyage. The customer, the same compass that was consulted so heavily when determining exactly what should be built and how it should be brought to market, should continue to be checked time and time again to ensure the marketing ship is still on course, or to determine how the course needs to be corrected if conditions have changed.

The good news is that finding and using this hidden treasure map is incredibly easy to do. The bad news is that too many companies don’t do it, or do it badly. Here are a few good examples to guide you.

1. Carbonite is clearly a customer-centric company

I use Carbonite as a cloud-based backup for my laptop. I’ve been having some issues these past couple of weeks as I migrated to a new laptop and transferred my Carbonite license. I’ve had to make two customer-support calls and, shortly after the second one last week, I received an email asking me to take a few moments to complete a short survey about my experience. The email promised the survey would take no more than a minute or so. I clicked through and was delighted to find just three straightforward and easy-to-answer questions: On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied was I with Carbonite, how satisfied was I with my support call and how likely would I be to recommend Carbonite. True to the promise, I was in and out of that survey in much less than 60 seconds, and Carbonite had another valuable jewel to add to its treasure chest of customer feedback.

This vendor exhibited every behaviour of a relentlessly customer-centric organization. Its website offered me several different ways to interact with customer support and the most expensive (for Carbonite) way, telephone support, was easily found. (Unlike my much poorer experience in the same timeframe with HootSuite, which conducts customer support exclusively through Twitter and — entirely coincidentally, I’m sure! — ignored my several tweets until I made them part of my public timeline.) Carbonite’s telephone support was swift and skillful. And the final evidence that this company genuinely values customer satisfaction was the immediate and low-friction feedback survey.

2. How would you feel if you could no longer use this product?

At this past summer’s International Startup Festival, Sean Ellis of user-feedback analytics firm CatchFree gave some fundamental lessons in how to solicit and evaluate customer feedback. He said — and I have to agree whole heartedly — that one of the most useful questions to ask is, “How would you feel if you could no longer use this product?” If more than 40 percent of respondents say “very disappointed,” you may have a promising product, Ellis said.

This is an extraordinarily powerful question to ask but I can understand why a lot of companies might hesitate to ask it. They fear its power, and an answer that tells them the marketplace is ambivalent about their product. Be brave. If customers don’t place a very high value on what you’re doing, it’s in your very best interest to learn that just as soon as possible so you can get out of the dead-end business you’re in and go find something that will be highly valued.

3. If customer satisfaction really is important, measure how well you’re doing

My third example comes from the speaker we had at our monthly TEC (Vistage) meeting last week. Kraig Kramers is an internationally recognised expert on key performance indicators. I use several of his tools in the measurement of everything from our profit and loss statements to business development activities and even traffic levels on this website. Kramers told us that many companies say they always put their customers first but few actually bother to measure how true that is from the customer’s point of view. His Customer Satisfaction Index is a great starting point if you’re interested in developing such a scorecard within your own company.

Sailing a marketing ship on today’s turbulent oceans is tough enough. Stop denying yourself the insight, direction and guidance you can gain from customer feedback, one of marketing’s real treasure maps.

Image: Free desktop backgrounds

Technorati Tags: Marketing, marketing strategy, customer feedback, customer service, customer support, customer satisfaction, marketing methodology, customer centricity, Carbonite, Hootsuite, International Startup Festival, Sean Ellis, CatchFree, Kraig Kramers, key performance indicators, KPI

The free tools in my social media marketing toolkit — Part 2: Management & measurement

By Alexandra Reid

In my last post, I shared and reviewed my favourite (free) social media monitoring tools that I use regularly to carry out social media marketing strategies on behalf of clients. Today, I reveal the management and measurement tools I use to organize and keep track of the zillions of conversations I monitor daily across multiple channels.

To summarize, these tools are free and therefore great for small businesses and new ventures. However, they are useless if they are not aligned with a sound social media marketing strategy. They are also far from perfect so we must always cross-examine data with information provided by other tools and sometimes even check information manually to ensure everything is accurate.

I decided to combine my favourite management and measurement tools because many of them do both functions. Technically, some of these can be used for monitoring social media as well. At the end of the day, it’s not so much the tools that matter, but how you use them. These are the ones that I’ve found excel, particularly in the management and measurement departments.

Without further ado, here are my favourite social media management and measurement tools:

Hootsuite and TweetDeck

I explained and reviewed these tools in my previous post on monitoring, but thought it was worthwhile to explain how they are also useful for management and measurement. Essentially, both tools allow users to organize the flood of social media content into relevant “streams” for easy digestion. This is fundamental for time-management, helping you find the right conversations in which to participate quickly with engagement options available at your fingertips.

On the measurement front, Hootsuite beats TweetDeck hands down. With customizable reports, Hootsuite analytics allow users to track follower growth for individual social profiles, monitor brand keywords, measure sentiment (though I’m always skeptical of this) and manage reports from multiple team members. While bit.ly, the URL shortener used by TweetDeck, can integrate with Google Analytics to track click-throughs on links shared through the tool, the amount of data available is inferior to what can be gleaned through Hootsuite.

Google Analytics

This is a great (free) tool for measuring blog traffic that provides detailed information on how many people are coming to your site, how long they stay on a certain page and where they come from geographically and online, whether that’s search engines, direct or social media. With its new Real-Time reports, users can measure the immediate success (or lack thereof) of social media activities, including campaigns.

We use this tool for management as well, using the insightful data to gear blog content towards stuff that our readers respond to. As Google Analytics charts the growth path of your blog over time, it serves as a great resource for content management.

Klout, PeerIndex and Grader

These three tools purport to measure influence online. I am reluctant to include them in my measurement system because they are flawed (read my rant on Klout for more information). However, they are the best tools out there for now, and do provide some indication as to when social media influence has increased or decreased, as well as where we stand among all others measured by the same algorithm.

However, these tools on their own don’t provide us with the full picture and shouldn’t be used as a sole means of measuring influence online. The only solution I have found to understand general trends over time is to track Klout and compare those results with PeerIndex and Grader scores. If all three are moving up, I can reasonably assume that what I’m doing is working. If one goes down while the other two go up, which happens on a regular basis, I know there is something happening that is discrediting my results.

Keyword Rank Checker

Very straight forward, this tool checks the ranking of specific keywords per URL for Google and Yahoo. It’s a great tool for optimizing your blog and social media content for search. Keep track of competitive keywords discovered as part of your management activities and measure progress over time.

Google Docs (spreadsheet)

We use simple Google Spreadsheets to track our progress because they are secure, organized and can be shared. For example, we have one spreadsheet that tracks social media contributions each week, including how many blog posts we commented on, Quora and LinkedIn questions we answered, how much content we shared on Twitter, and so on, to determine if we are meeting our goals. At the same time, we track how much time we committed to these activities. We also have a spreadsheet that tracks our Twitter accounts each week, including how many followers we have, how many accounts we’re following, Klout, PeerIndex and Grader scores, how many retweets or mentions we received, and so on. Over time, this gives us a good understanding of how effective our efforts have been and where we should steer our social media activities for greater success.

If you are experiencing any difficulties in monitoring, managing or measuring your social media activities, we encourage you to give us a call.

I’m also always interested in hearing about new social media marketing tools. If you are a new company with a neat and helpful new social media tool, share it here. I love test driving!

Technorati Tags: social media, marketing, social media marketing tools, monitoring, measurement, management, TweetDeck, Hootsuite, Klout, PeerIndex, Grader, Google Analytics, Keyword Rank Checker, Google Docs

The free tools in my social media marketing toolkit — Part 1: Monitoring

By Alexandra Reid

I talk a lot about social media marketing strategy here, but rarely do I mention the time-and-money-saving tools that streamline my community building activities and make our social media marketing program an effective solution for businesses.

All of the tools I use are free and available to anyone with access to a computer. They are great for small and new businesses with tight budgets and limited time for experimentation and operation. But while I highly recommend that these tools be used to support social media marketing activities, they are useless for businesses that don’t align them with a sound social media marketing strategy. Additionally, while these tools help abridge the flow of social media content so users can siphon relevant information, engage with their communities and track progress, a key challenge cited by numerous businesses is keeping on top of monitoring, measurement and engagement efforts.

We must also remember that these tools are free and far from perfect. In fact, the biggest criticisms of all social media monitoring tools (free and paid) are that they sometimes fail to provide reliable and accurate data, have lag times, bugs, and are confusing to use. That’s why we must always cross-examine data with information provided by other tools and sometimes even check information manually to ensure everything is accurate.

Today I’ll discuss the tools I use for monitoring social media. In a subsequent post, I’ll reveal my favourite management and measurement tools. You’ll notice that I don’t use many tools to do my job. This is because too many tools act as speed bumps in an otherwise efficient engagement system.

Without further ado, here are my favourite social media monitoring tools:

Hootsuite

This is a popular tool that allows you to monitor multiple accounts including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, WordPress and MySpace. Hootsuite allows you to track click-throughs, time updates, monitor mentions and assign tasks among team members. It also acts as a management tool, allowing you to update multiple accounts at once, and has expanded into measurement with Hootsuite analytics.

TweetDeck

Similar to Hootsuite, this is a great tool for monitoring social media. It is different than Hootsuite in that it works on your desktop, saving you the step of having to go to a website each time you need to check updates. I employ TweetDeck to receive instant updates of social media mentions, which pop up automatically on my desktop, so I can respond immediately to inquiries, concerns and advocacy.

Review of both tools

Both Hootsuite and TweetDeck have their benefits and determents. As mentioned previously, as a desktop application, TweetDeck is easy to access and also displays social media updates directly to your desktop. However, in my experience, TweetDeck has glitches that cause streams to not refresh automatically and scheduled tweets to be sent out at the wrong times.

Hootsuite has fewer glitches (in my experience) but it is more difficult to access as a web-based client. My biggest complaint is that it overlooks some messages altogether. However, its analytics are extremely useful.

Both tools work seamlessly the majority of the time. I use both Hootsuite and TweetDeck to ensure I never have (what I like to call) a “Chrysler moment.” I keep all client accounts on TweetDeck and manage my personal streams on Hootsuite. That way, it is impossible for me to tweet something I intended to go out on my personal account on a client’s account.

Social Mention

This tool offers useful influence-tracking features including reach, sentiment, passion and strength. It trumps Hootsuite’s monitoring service in that it also tracks updates on blogs and their comments, news, images, video and audio. Searches can also be saved as an RSS feed, making it easy to keep track of updates. Social Mention also allows you to set up alerts similar to Google but specifically for social media, where you receive daily email alerts of your brand, company, CEO, marketing campaign, developing news stories, a competitor or other high profile individual. It also offers a “real-time buzz” widget so you can display buzz on your website.

I use Social Mention to identify updates I may have missed on Hootsuite and/or TweetDeck. I use it especially to track social media pick-up of client and competitor stories and media releases. I don’t use it on a daily basis as I do Hootsuite; I only use it periodically for specific searches.

Friend or Follow

This is a great tool to keep track of legitimate Twitter connections. It is an unfortunate common practice on Twitter for users to follow other users simply to receive a follow back and then promptly unfollow. It is a downfall of Twitter, in my opinion, that it alerts you when you receive a follower yet neglects to alert you when someone unfollows you. This tool does this job for you, in that you can see who followed you temporarily.

Admittedly (like Hootsuite and TweetDeck) Friend or Follow straddles the monitoring/management line. However, I classify it as monitoring because I use it primarily to monitor the integrity of a client’s social media community. Not only does it help me understand the kinds of people interested in a client’s content, it also helps me gear content towards the interests of the community. The goal is to have a long-standing and loyal community and the drop-off of community members gives you some clue as to how you may have fallen off track, and if so, how to steer your content back on course.

Google Reader

This tool puts all your blog subscriptions in one place and so is an important time-saver for businesses eager to incorporate blog engagement into their social media marketing strategies. It automatically shows when a blog that you have subscribed to publishes a new update and allows easy click-through to the original post, saving you the time-consuming step of going to each individual site and checking to see if there is anything new.

I use Google Reader every day to keep on top of blogs that post relevant content for our clients. I also use it to keep on top of LinkedIn Answer subscriptions.

Blog Catalog, Technorati and Google Blog search

All of these tools are wonderful for identifying relevant blogs and posts where you could engage in comment discussions. I check Google Blogs every day to uncover timely posts that could be shared via a client’s social media accounts and commented on. I check Blog Catalog and Technorati regularly to find new blogs to which I could subscribe (through Google Reader) and monitor on behalf of our clients.

In my experience, Technorati is superior to Blog Catalog, which sometimes lists outdated blogs that have ceased publication. However, I advise using both to ensure you don’t miss any opportunities.

If you are experiencing any difficulties in monitoring, managing or measuring your social media activities, we encourage you to give us a call.

I’m also always interested in hearing about new social media marketing tools. If you are a new company with a neat and helpful new social media tool, share it here. I love test driving!

Image: Idea Girl Media

Technorati Tags: social media, marketing, social media marketing tools, monitoring, TweetDeck, Hootsuite, Social Mention, Friend or Follow, Google Reader, Blog Catalog, Technorati, Google Blog search

Drinking from the waterfall: How to effectively monitor social media

By Alexandra Reid

This is part one of a three-part series I will write on how to monitor, manage and measure social media. I have discussed best practices for each of these processes in previous posts. However, after receiving a comment on LinkedIn, I realized that I neglected to dive into any of these subjects in great detail. I hope this short series will help social-media newcomers grasp not only the basic concepts required for each of these areas of community management, but also provide the most modern tools and techniques so they can be more effective in marketing their businesses on these channels.

Social-media monitoring has often been compared to attempting to drink from a fire hose. This description is an accurate one, but these days I’d argue monitoring social media is more like trying to drink from Niagara Falls because businesses and individuals alike bombard social media channels every second with updates about everything from their day-to-day activities to new blog posts, articles and whitepapers. It can be overwhelming; it seems sometimes as if all the Tweets, posts and Facebook and LinkedIn status updates will wash you away. You must abridge the flow in order to siphon relevant information and keep on top of your monitoring efforts. There are a number of free tools that will help you do this, but you must understand how they work together to optimize their faculties. Planning your approach should consist of three stages: Choosing the right tools, using these tools to siphon the right information, and determining a method for absorbing the content and making sense of it.

Constructing the dam

Stage one, as mentioned above, is choosing the right tools that will filter relevant streams of content from the massive pool of updates. Choosing your monitoring tools largely depends on what social channels you intend to use to establish an online presence. However, you must also consider that people are talking about you regardless of your presence on a channel, so you should also prepare yourself to listen in areas where you might not hold an account. These areas could include blog comments, podcasts and videos where you could be mentioned, and also other social media channels where you have not set up accounts. Your budget for social media will also be a huge deciding factor for which tools are you able to employ. For instance, if you are a large business with an expansive social media presence, you might chose to employ premium tools such as Radian6 or Meltwater to monitor mentions of your brand. However, if you are a startup or small business just starting to get your feet wet in social media, you may want to consider employing a combination of these free tools:

Hootsuite

This is a popular tool that allows you to monitor multiple accounts including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, WordPress and MySpace. Hootsuite allows you to track click-throughs, time updates, monitor mentions and assign tasks among team members. It also acts as a management tool, allowing you to update multiple accounts at once, and has recently expanded into measurement with Hootsuite analytics. This is the tool I mainly use to manage my accounts because of its intuitive interface and extensibility.

TweetDeck

This is a great tool for Twitter because it works on your desktop, saving you the step of having to go to a website each time you need to check updates. I employ TweetDeck to receive instant updates of mentions, which pop up automatically on my desktop, so I can respond immediately to inquiries, concerns and advocacy.

Socia l Mention

This tool offers useful influence-tracking features including reach, sentiment, passion and strength. It trumps Hootsuite’s monitoring service in that it also tracks updates on blogs and their comments, news, images, video and audio. Searches can also be saved as an RSS feed, making it easy to keep track of updates. Social Mention also allows you to set up alerts similar to Google but specifically for social media, where you receive daily email alerts of your brand, company, CEO, marketing campaign, or on a developing news story, a competitor or other high profile individual. It also offers a “real-time buzz” widget so you can display buzz on your website.

Kurrently

This tool is a real-time search engine for Facebook and Twitter. Simply enter a search term, be that a keyword, business or person, and Kurrently will produce all mentions and shares from these channels. It trumps Hootsuite and TweetDeck in that it displays shares beyond the first degree. For instance, if your blog post is retweeted by someone, you would receive the notification in Hootsuite. However, Kurrently will find your shared content even if someone shares it from a secondary source and eliminates your handle.

Friend or Follow

This is a great tool to keep track of legitimate Twitter connections. It is an unfortunate common practice on Twitter for users to follow another user simply to receive a follow back and then promptly unfollow. It is a downfall of Twitter, in my opinion, that it alerts you when you receive a follower, but neglects to alert you when someone unfollows you. This tool does this job for you, in that you can see who followed you temporarily. For instance, when Twitter alerts you that someone is following you, and you follow back, you can consult this tool a few days later to see if that person is still following you. This tool also tells you your Twitter friends and fans. I classify this as a monitoring tool because connections can be forged and broken at a rapid pace in social media and it should be a primary goal to monitor connections, forge true relationships and maintain them.

Controlling the flood gates

The second stage is to siphon the information you need from these tools. Some tools, such as Hootsuite, TweetDeck and Social Mention, allow you to customize search terms for ongoing monitoring. In Hootsuite and TweetDeck, you should set up streams for keywords related to your business, including important individuals, products, services and other industry terms. Monitoring your streams regularly will allow you to determine which ones are the most active and useful, which will help you streamline your approach to focus only on the most informative search terms. Create a list of the most active search terms and monitor them regularly through each of your tools.

Monitoring the spillway

Depending on the size of your business, you may still feel overwhelmed at the amount of information coming through your streams and through search results. The third stage is determining a method of absorbing the content and making sense of it. My first recommendation is to appoint a community manager either internal or external to your business to ensure these channels are monitored on an ongoing basis. Every mention that you receive needs to be categorized. For example, you will need to decide which mentions are short-term, requiring only quick responses, or long-term, which could provide actionable insight and therefore should be documented. Mentions also need to be categorized as “high priority,” medium priority” and “low priority” and should be addressed in that order. Monitoring requires ongoing active listening and social analysis. The community manager must constantly be aware of things such as the tone of a mention (sarcastic, passive, neutral, light, passionate or urgent) intention, influence and legitimacy and must classify each mention to draft the best response.

Next week, I will discuss the role of the community manager and effective methods you can employ to manage the information pulled through your monitoring activities.

Was this post helpful? Is there any information I can provide that was not yet addressed? What did I miss? Have you any additional suggestions to offer?

Technorati Tags: social media monitoring, community management, social media tools, Radian6, Meltwater, Hootsuite, TweetDeck, Social Mention, Kurrently, Friend or Follow, social media streams, active listening, social analysis

Michael Pontious : Well said Leo! I also, do not attend Trekkie Conventions (unless one would occur right here in Cedar Park, Texas!) I could 'trek' down memory lane within th...

Nick Stamoulis : From "How to grow an engaged social media community" - "Social media a two way street so foster conversations around your brand and be quick to respond to th...

Gary James : This is an excellent piece. I am going to save and share with both colleagues and clients alike. Thank you for the time you spent in crafting the piece and s...

Anil Dilawri : All is not lost though. Many clients are willing to devote the time, effort, and resources to improve their presentations. The result is a more consumable me...

Anil Dilawri : The living zombies indeed, Richard. The living zombies indeed!

Nick Stamoulis : The article "Meaningful social measurement: A lesson from the underpants gnomes" hits all the right notes. Besides the fact that half of your followers could...

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