“Are we on the verge of seeing a rebellion? As we know more and more people are adopting various elements of the social web as part of their daily lives”.

Behold, the opening of yet another ambiguous blog post on the somewhat heralded “econsultancy” (i’m surprised they aren’t still spelling it e-consultancy) entitled “Social media monitoring: time to say ’sod it’? It’s a rather queer article which talks about how social media monitoring is just a fad and soon there will be too much data to handle. As Shakespeare once tweeted “WTF”.

We have a policy of not naming names but rather pointing fingers at a group of people not an individual, however the title was too good to let go. But it also serves another purpose. By using the names “Econsultancy” in the title it’s clearly marked out should they by some twist of ironical fate actually be monitoring conversations themselves. Heaven forbid!

But what am i really getting at? Well the problem is quite obvious, it’s a plague of carelessly placed words, “opinions” put together by maladroit blogger’s who know they ‘just have to write something’ but really have nothing to say. Although, i do i think that the freedom to share your opinion is a great thing but i still believe that journalism, and by that i mean JOURNALISM, is still fundamentally important and if you position yourself as such (or such and such) then there must be standards. Surely there must be standards???

Even Mashable can be accused of pointless articles that are much ado about nothing. Such as, “Which meta-blogging social network do you most facebook like readers poll” or “Evan William’s feeds his dog bird flavoured mega-chunks”. Yawn.

So…. is it time to say ’sod  it’ and go find some people who know what they are talking about? Or… start that rebellion we were talking about and tell these sites that if they have nothing to say then, as the poet Ronan Keating put it “Just say nothing at all”.

Are there any other sites equally as guilty of “filler”? Are you an avid reader of Econultancy and firmly believe everything they write is “jolly spot on” then have it out in the comments below, we would be interested in hearing your thoughts…

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Cyber-squatting is something that plagues brands in social media all the ruddy time. There is plenty that can be done to help prevent that ‘worse case scenario’ from becoming reality and it’s something that we advise all new businesses do from the outset. Username check is Ronseal and does exactly what it says it does and checks a variety of social tools to see whether your potential username is already in use. Hell, it even checks ones that no longer exist such as rejaw RIP, but it’s free and easy so can’t complain.

But what happens if you have a pre-existing brand and are only just catching up, or maybe you have a new brand but unfortunately someone else had the bright idea of using your  username for themselves??? The instant reaction is to want to kick them to the curb, but maybe they could be your butler? *tweet for me Wilson will you*. Okay sounds ridiculous but in this day and age where crowdsourcing shifts from being absurd to a norm, is it really that far out to look to utilise potential brand advocates in this way? (Please note: i someone is pretending to be your brand then don’t interact or negotiate with them, try to sot it via the official channels).

Here are a few ideas of what you could possibly do:

1. Get started & Get on side

So,  someone on twitter has the username you would prefer you had but go with your second choice and start doing everything as you would normally to generate authenticity & authority – clear branding & frequent tweeting. Now once you have gone some way to establishing yourself it’s time to get in contact.  Contact your namesake maybe commenting on their username. The idea is to get them on side so some general friendly chitchat is a good place to start. There’s a reason why it’s called social media. DON’T BE PUSHY!

2. Involve the user

Sometimes you need a bit of creativity, so why not suggest the idea of involving the squatter in your campaign. This is good especially if they have a pre-existing following. The more flare you share the more likely they are to get involved. If you are able to forge a good relationship then that user might just be willing to forward on the odd tweet here and there should someone make a mistake – at the very least. In the early stages it’s all about increasing visibility so those first interactions are essential.

Who knows, if you throw a ’social media guidelines’ document their way they might decide it’s not worth the effort and hand over the name

3. Gift Aid

This is always going to be easier for existing brands that are new to social media as are likely to have promotional material but never forget about ‘giving’. If you have a product that the squatter might potentially like then why not give it to them, they’re bound to be far more impressed than you trying to bully them. One brand advocate isn’t going to hurt now is it?

Obviously these aren’t ‘the new rules’ or anything of the sort but we wanted to address whether a new thinking could be applied to an old problem? We think there is potential there but would have to be reviewed on a case by case basis. Just think though…. if you were one of the first to tackle the situation in a clever way that could be a nice PR story.

Just remember the basic rules of social media. Listen>engage>add value

What do you think? Is it ever just to interact with a squatter? Seen any examples of brands doing this? Let us know your thoughts in the comments…

Related posts:

1. don’t get senti-mental!

We’re very pleased to announce that as of yesterday evening we were officially invited into the all-top family and you can now find social medium under http://social-media.alltop.com/ and http://tech.alltop.com/.

But what does this mean? Well firstly it means that if you are already using alltop and have a MyAlltop account you can now include our updates in with all of your other ones. It’s also good news for us as our updates can now be opened up to a new audience who might not otherwise have come across our blog.

PS: As we’re the newbies you can find us right at the bottom

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We saw this and just had to post it up. It’s true, everything can be legitimised with a graph or chart. EVERYTHING….. so be warned! Also the flashier the diagram the bigger the impact! KERBLAMMO! But just an FYI… Social Media probably looks like this.

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1. the best test of social media monitoring tools

Following on from our recent post on sentiment monitoring we thought it was only just that we conducted a scientific test battling through all the sponsored links on google to find out once and for all which social media monitoring service is the most effective and on the ball! You can often tell agencies apart based on what monitoring software they use. And if they saying they have ‘an in-house solution’ that normally just means Radian6. NEXT!

But first we’re going to oil our eyes with a quick look at the top contenders in the measurement camp:

1. Sysomos

This is probably our favourite online measuring tool and always our preferred choice when monitoring social media and online mentions. Now, i know we really shouldn’t be letting the cat out of the bag, but then, we’ll probably have found something new by the time you read this. They have a really nice UI that reminds me of google anlytics creating crisp and clean reports. you can check their site out here

2. Trackur

This is the cheap-as-chips David Dickinson bargain of the social media monitoring world. It might not be the flashiest crumb comb on the table but it does the job. sort of. With prices starting from $12 (whatever that is in pounds) you can’t complain all that much, although if you’re the client and you’re agency is charging you £1000+ a month you pretty much have a right to pissed. Check there stuff out here

3. Brandwatch

Brandwatch has a terrible website but as they’re from the UK we thought they were worth a mention. It’s been in the making and unlike some other social media monitoring tools the guys actually built their own search engine which means they are not reliant on google. They even let you sign up for a weekly email alert for you brand for free. Just run along to here.

4. Nielsen

Good ole neilson. Sort of sounds like some goofy neighbour in some american sit com. But in fact neilson are the measuring gods to many. The have been researching for long time and somewhere on their hugly website they probably offer some social media monitoring services too. We’re not sure where you can find them but we got this far.

Now as we know there are loads out there and we could go on for ages and it’s not up to us to decide which one is the best. The important thing is understand is what exactly each service monitors and how ‘real’ is their ‘real-time‘.

Right, Here comes the Science!

Surely the only only true way to measure how good a social media monitoring tool is is by how good they are at monitoring their own brand reputation! Seems simple right? But it’s true, if a monitoring service isn’t able to pick up on posts about themselves then how can you really expect them to do a good job looking after your brand? And of course, you may argue, it’s not their job, or, they probably don’t have staff to do that – the simple answer is, not our problem.

SO… let the trial begin. The first social media monitoring service to leave a comment on this blog post will be crowned KING the quickest. The winner if any will be announced on the blog.

After all, Who will measure the measurerers?

What are your thoughts? Do you use a different service and think it’s the bee’s knees? Will UKOM be of any use and do you even know of it?

PS special thanks to @grumblemouse for inspiring this post.

Related posts:

1. don’t get senti-mental!
2. we have charts & graphs to back us up

facebook and myspace have always been completely polar. facebook concentrated on web standards and usibility but was clueless at how to make any money and saps the life out of it’s investors. MySpace on the other hand was made out of bits of old shoes but was designed so badly that it served 4x as many ads and instantly made a profit.

However, are things starting to change?

Facebook has a history of unethical behaviour most recently when it defaulted everyones privacy settings to public under the guise of ‘making privacy simpler‘. It also has a reputation for having a good user experience (i have no idea why). So how come, when they recently redesigned the homepage did they make the user experience worse? Everyone has been too busy looking at the top of the page to notice the gaping void at the bottom….

the bookmarks have gone!

This means that in order to check your groups or fan pages (to name a few) you now have to travel back to the homepage in order to get the link. But why would facebook de-evolve the user experience when it worked perfectly before?! Well, the FACT is that it now means the impressions on the homepage will have increased considerably which would suggest they plan to sell that space at a premium.

Even if that is not the plan then they have still retrograded the user experience and knowing facebook, they’re bound to have an ulterior motive for doing so.

(while we wait to see what happens we’re just going to go on google buzz and let our neightbours know we’re going out and will be gone long enough for them to sneak in and use our swings in the back garden without us knowing. What’s a privacy?)

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Social Media is a young market and with no clear rules or standards companies have been left to define the space themselves, carving up niches left right and center. One such baby-bell sized niche is that of ‘sentiment‘. The idea has been to accurately measure the ‘mood‘ in which people talk about your brand.

“Mood? Sorry,  I’m not in”.

Now, obviously the idea of this sounds preposterous but there are technologies out there that well, sort of do an okay job. That’s not what really concerns us, the worrying thing is how it’s become a ‘buzzword’ that some agencies throw into a deck with no idea what it even involves!

Those that have seen the word ‘sentiment‘ in a pitch but never thought to ask any questions then it might be an idea to check up now.

Ask yourself:

1. What tools are being used to measure sentiment?
2. What is being measured? emoticons, positive wording?
3. What other stats are they reporting on? After all, sentiment isn’t a great indicator.

So how can sentiment be used?

At this stage sentiment is more of a nice idea than a practical solution. However, it can be used in ‘brand reputation‘ as part of ongoing online monitoring. The trick is to use sentiment as a dial and if the dial makes any major shifts then investigate the cause. If something does go wrong for your brand it can be useful when cross-referencing changes in conversations and articles.

That spike in traffic wasn’t down to the great PR work you agency put in!

For further reading check out some comments by Guilhelm Fouetillou (linkfluence)

What are your thoughts? Is sentiment tracking worthwhile or a bit of a con? Is all to be taken with a pinch of salt? Are you using one of the many ’sentiment’ tools to track your brands popularity? Let us know in the comments.

Related posts:

1. the best test of social media monitoring tools
2. how should brands interact with cyber-squatters?

Definition of Spam: a disruptive, esp. commercial message posted on a computer network or sent as an e-mail.

Now that sounds like a pretty obvious explanation but i just wanted to make it clear in our minds before we begin. ‘Cos we’re going to begin right about now.

There’s been a lot of buzz about ‘word of mouth marketing’ and ‘generating conversations‘ but what does this actually mean? How do you ‘generate‘ conversations, especially around a campaign that’s well, not really that interesting? There is only one way…. hire one of the all new magical agencies that inspire people to instantly talk like there’s no tomorrow!

But how do they do it? Here comes the science….

They don’t. In fact, all they are doing is replicating the tried-and-tested PR method of utilising bloggers. BLOGGER OUTREACH. Now you might think that the words blogger outreach and conversation are actually very different but some people seem to be getting confoozed [sic]. Blogger outreach essentially involves spamming a notoriously long list of strangers from a multi-coloured spreadsheet in the hope that they will actually read it and are willing to be bought. This doesn’t really sound like the fluffy stuff that these new age agencies are promising?

Now don’t get me wrong, blogger outreach is an important part of any campaign but it is what it is and it should only be one part of a much bigger strategy not just something that is rolled out for every pitch that’s won.

People like to talk when they are engaged, when they can interact, when they see something new. If you start off on the right foot then bloggers will naturally be interested in it and it’s just a case of bringing it to their attention not ramming it down their talkbox.

SO, want to build conversation? Get some ideas that are actually interesting, and for any clients out there, get smarter. quicker. And stop getting mugged over. please. so we can move this industry along.

But what do you think? Have you been on the receiving end of some ‘outreach’ that just didn’t feel right? Or do you actually think that there’s nothgin wrong with calling it ‘conversation’? Take over in the comments….

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Here is a little bit of inspiration to kick start the blog. I’ve not done any of that marketing stuff yet so no-one is going to see it anyway. Should you stumble upon this video and have never seen it before then please do enjoy as it sets the tone

Related posts:

1. how should brands interact with cyber-squatters?