Climbing the social media ladder – listening and learning

As promised we said we’d share our learning and insight gained from SAP in relation to social media and how to fully embrace every aspect of it, or as much as is relevant to your business. As an SME ourselves our learning couldn’t be more applicable to our partners and we feel it’s our duty to help you along the way!

The focus of the most recent webinar was on listening and learning. A recent area which I myself have been interested in, in terms of measuring our social media presence and improving and building upon it. We endeavour to become even more responsive to our customers and are seeking to use social media tools and the web as a whole to proactively engage with and stay in touch with our customers’ needs within the various verticals.

Evidently what has been brought to my attention is the fact that you can also use free online tools to determine how successful other marketing activity you have or are carrying out is by actively listening to the conversations that are being held across the web in relation to it. This insight could be even more valuable than asking customers direct questions and seeking feedback as it isn’t limited by specifics.

Are customers/businesses talking about their passions, pain or are they giving praise? The key buzz metrics to consider are noise and the level of it, sentiment, topics, where in terms of geographical or online locations, and who, whether it is users, industry experts or journalists involved in the conversations.

Some key tools which we are set to test and will provide feedback on once we have done so ourselves are Google Alerts, Social Mention, Delicious.com and Blog Pulse.

These are all free tools. There are paid for tools available from and including cymphony, visible technologies, radian social media monitoring and Nielsen buzz metrics. Though the insight from these may not be immediate they potentially provide more insight and support you in ensuring that you don’t just acquire data, you acquire information; interpreted data and knowledge!