Learning from the Twitter Fail Whale

To fail once may be regarded as a misfortune. To fail twice looks like carelessness.

Poor Habitat. They had two visits from the Fail Whale last week - there must be barely any water left in the pool.

For those who missed the hoo-ha, the slick British home-ware brand hit the headlines last week when they spammed Twitter hashtags with their upcoming special offers. (Hashtags, in case you don't know, gather tweets relating to the same topic - take a look at Digital Tip for how to use them.) Habitat first hit trending topics, from #iphone to #mms - even #Mousavi, which was streaming news from the Iranian crisis . Then, in a clunky backtrack, Habitat blamed the tweets on an "an overenthusiastic intern who did not fully understand the ramifications of his actions" . It was an undergraduate error (or two) by the otherwise hip furniture brand.

The Rules

First rule of Twitter? Do not spam Twitter.

Second rule of Twitter? Do not let interns manage your Twitter account.

You need to get your corporate social media policy straight, right from the start. Twitter, in particular, is famously viral, and famously fail-intolerant. And so, while some argue that social media, by its very nature, requires absolute freedom to succeed, most social thinkers advise that you should very clear who can tweet on your behalf, and what, precisely, are the limits of their remit. Dave Fleet outlines the issues coherently.

So, while we wouldn't suggest you emulate Associated Press, who last week caused controversy when they exhorted their employees to to police their Facebook profiles “to make sure material posted by others doesn’t violate AP standards", it's clear that Habitat was waaaay too liberal here. If they knew an intern was tweeting for them, they should have put an immediate stop to it. And if they didn't know, then why the heck not?

Twitter Train

Assuming that a decent company social media policy had already nixed the intern's involvement - how should Habitat have approached their entry into the Twittersphere? Well, with caution. In the absence of a Twitter-authorized set of ground rules for brands, Habitat should first have spent some time looking at the brands that are really claiming Twitter:

@UPS, who've turned Twitter into a parcel-tracking tool

@vodafoneliveguy, whose Where's Wally theme generated lots of buzz

@O2UKOfficial, whose customer service tweets are converstational, individualized @ replies

and

#lovemarmite and #hatemarmite - a perfect integration of a brand's pre-existing theme with a new-ish medium.

If they were still a bit wobbly, they could have done much worse than flick through Michael Brito's post outlining the 10 best practices for brands; Corinne Weisgerber's great presentation on using Twitter for PR ; Themos Kalafatis, who demonstrates how text mining can help companies listen more intelligently, and Megan Keanhe, who argues that sometimes the best thing a brand can do on Twitter is just, you know, zip it.

Still, with such a dramatic entry onto Twitter, it's highly likely that it will be heads down at Habitat for some serious homework, before their next tweet. So chin up, chaps - onwards and upwards, and all that.

Kate Williams, eModeration Research Consultant

www.twitter.com/emodkate

PS. For more fail-related fun, go to Twitter Fail, a blog whose only mission is remorselessly to mock those individuals and companies who, um, fail at Twitter.

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How to Moderate Teens and Tweens

We're really pleased to anounce that we've published a new whitepaper; the second in our series on Teens and Tweens, called 'How to Moderate Teens and Tweens'. This is a sequel to the previous whitepaper: 'An Introduction to Using Community and Interactive Advertising to Engage Tweens & Teens', which is designed to educate brands on the best ways to target tweens and teens via social media.

In this latest publication. we examine the psychology and online behaviour of teens and tweens, and what that means for brands engaging with this group online. Authored by our CEO, Tamara Littleton, this white paper examines how teenage behaviour differs online from offline, and the trend of ‘disinhibition’ or ‘flaming’ that the perceived anonymity of the internet affords teens in their communications with each other. It considers the impact that this perceived anonymity has on bullying online, and the long-term consequences of, for example, the increase in ‘sexting’. It also analyses research from other professionals in the field, such as Tanya Byron.

Tamara discusses the positive and negative effects that online role-playing can have on development, and the crucial safety concerns: for example, how children will attempt to share contact or location information that could lead them open to abuse. She also considers the impact of live content and perceived access to celebrities (through media such as Twitter) on teens and tweens.

The role of the moderator is crucial in helping to guide young people through their online development, and in the paper, Littleton gives practical help to brands engaging with teens and tweens and seeking to moderate online behaviour. These guidelines include how to achieve the following:

1. Inhabit their world

• Understand the language used by teens / tweens


• Understand that children are developing and allow them some freedom to do this


• Listen to concerns or questions, and respond quickly


• Avoid being intrusive


• Earn trust and respect


• Keep them engaged and happy online

2. Keep them safe

• Watch out for and deter cyberbullying, peer-to-peer abuse


• Spot and prevent grooming behaviour


• Keep children safe from themselves


• Don’t let them be exposed to potentially damaging, offensive or otherwise inappropriate material, uploaded by other users


• Educate them on the consequences of inappropriate behaviour


• Create mechanisms to report abusive behaviour, or give feedback, or voice concerns

Quoting Tamara: “Adults have a clear responsibility to help steer children through their online environments, and it is a world that can seem baffling to some. Teens and tweens are finding their voices as their brains develop, and in these days of instant communication, sometimes they may later regret online behaviour. Moderation has a role in helping to guide them as well as keeping them safe.”

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What's motivating decision-makers to buy marketing services?

Rainmaker is a London-based consultancy which provides new business acquisition advice to marketing services companies across Europe and North America. They kindly invited us to one of their Intelligent New Business Seminars, and curious to see what they had to offer, Tamara and I went along. A little to our surprise, we got some really interesting information about the way key decision makers are viewing their marketing activities, and thanks to Rainmaker for allowing me to republish excerpts from their report.

The methodology: agencies across the UK were asked to nominate the questions they most wanted to pose to marketing decision-makers. A target group of 97 decision-makers (drawn from the top 250 most targeted brands on the INBG database) was approached with the shortlisted questions, and their answers analysed for the report. There were a few other sections to the survey, but to keep this reasonably short, I’ll just look at Budgets, Agency Selection and Social Media.


Budgets:
With the recession now a reality, it’s unsurprising that we want to know exactly how it’s likely to affect marketing spend moving forwards. The questions Rainmaker asked focused on whether budgets have decreased or not, and by how much, and whether the current economic situation was affecting how brands are allocating their budget.

The answer was (unsurprisingly) that 55% report budgets have decreased since the beginning of the year with 20% of those reporting a substantial decrease. Generally, budget have to be more focussed now – there’s little room for optional extras. However, it looks as though digital is the least affected of the marketing disciplines: 64% said they were spending more on digital marketing – partly because it’s seen as a very measurable way to spend money, and partly because many decision-makers are still evolving their use of digital communications.

From Rainmaker: “Demonstrating quantifiable ROI is clearly the key to securing new projects, although with more and more agencies claiming that their methods are the best for getting returns, decision-makers are struggling to distinguish, and more than one respondent has complained about the market place being confused with so many agencies fighting for their business. So if your message is also very ROI focused, make sure that it’s backed up irrefutably with how your approach works in practice.”

“Our budgets have decreased but not by much. We just have to be very vigilant to make sure we’re getting quantifiable ROI from the agencies we use.” Head of CRM, Financial Services

“Budgets have decreased quite sharply, but we’re actually spending more than before on digital, as it’s more cost effective.” Marketing Director, Retail

“Budgets are down by 25% but I reckon that next year all will back to what it was before the crisis” European Comms Mgr, Travel & Leisure

Agency Selection

Agency PR. Interestingly, the PR efforts of the services agencies was not felt to be as important as it had been last year: possibly because of work overload by the decision-makers. There’s so much information coming in, the PR efforts have to really be effective to be noticed. Rainmaker advise: “make sure that it’s not just shouting about new wins and big names – include thought leadership and interesting viewpoints as ways to reinforce your agency positioning.”

“I don’t think press is important when I’m selecting an agency to work with. I do read the various titles, but I don’t pay an awful lot of attention to the agencies.” Marketing Manager, Automotive

“PR is completely irrelevant to me as I just don’t have the time to read the trade mags.” Marketing & Communications Manager, Charity

Agency websites. In contrast, the company website is all-important – and shouldn’t contradict what your new business team are saying when they reach out. The topic of agency websites revealed a different picture, with 75% of respondents saying that it’s very important when making choices about which agency to use. Make sure that the messages you’re putting out in all other communications are backed up on your site. Host your PR, thought pieces and case studies on it.

“The website is my first point of call after a cold call; it’s really important for differentiating between the cowboys and the agencies that have a genuine reputation.” Customer Insight & Analysis Manager, Retail

“I always look at websites… If you’re a digital agency and your own website is rubbish, it doesn’t bode well. I look at their usability and design, as I’d really want any agency I work with to excel at these things.” Online Marketing Mgr,
Automotive

“The website has to back up what they’re saying on the phone. Often a sharp sales pitch is let down by a sloppy website or vice versa.” Online Marketing Manager, Travel Company

Agency approaches. The message here was that as the recession deepens, be very careful with your cold-calling. 71% of the respondents felt that agencies oversell to them, and that it has a negative effect on that agency’s chances. If you have to reach out, then Rainmaker has some pithy advice: most of this would seem pretty obvious, but it seems that a lot of Agencies are consistently getting it wrong:


Don’t be pushy; leave at least two months or more before you chase up; avoid lunchtime or late afternoon calls; don’t attach weighty files to your emails; and do your research. Tailor your approach to the company concerned. Learn about what they do and work out a genuine offering you can make them. DON’T oversell your services or claim to do things yourself that are in fact subcontracted. Be innovative, and appropriate in your approach – if you claim to be a social media specialist, why not get in touch with a prospective Client via Facebook or Twitter? Lastly - get their personal details right. Spelling their name wrong isn't going to help your case.

“Your first cold call should really be all about qualification, rather than aggressively selling.

• Be clear about your proposition
  
• Only target the most relevant companies
  
• Do your homework
  
• Don’t assume anything
  
• Ask questions!


• Be prepared to take a long term view of relationship building"

“Most people that approach me are polite, but often they’re quite clueless about the organisation and the decision-making pathways.” Marketing Comms Manager, Technology

“I want agencies to be straight with me about their strengths and areas of expertise. I hate it when they claim they can do a whole range of things but actually sub-contract a big chunk of the work.” Head of Brand Marketing, Apparel

“Lots of agencies get it wrong, but I’m impressed by the ones who follow up conversations efficiently and send nicely tailored emails. So many of them are really generic.” Marketing Director, Apparel

“Everyone from PR to design and sports marketing agencies approach me and every single one pisses me off because they all make the assumption that I’m looking for agency support. They’re all really unoriginal and all they do is talk about themselves. What I’m really looking for is someone who can show they understand my business.” Head of Marketing, Sports Retailer

Social Media

Well, as you'd expect, 88% said that social media has affected their marketing strategy. However, 29% of these are only monitoring the buzz around their brand. The vast majority said that social media was an important part of their marketing programme and an area that they are investing in.

As for ROI on social media, the majority (57%) said that they were happy with how their activity had been performing in terms of general brand building, rather than tangible ROI; the others weren't convinced, or said that it was too early to say that their activity was delivering returns for them.

“I think social media gives us a really good benchmark for measuring global awareness and opinion.” Online Marketing Manager, Motor Organisation

“Social media is really useful. It gives us a really valuable opportunity to talk to our customers and gives them a valuable avenue to talk back to us. I don’t think it has a direct influence on sales but I think it’s helped us to retain customers and increased their loyalty to the brand.” Marketing Manager, Gaming

“We do a lot with social media because it’s something people want to be seen to be doing – but I don’t fully buy into the strategy behind it and I’d be interested to see how it’s directly affecting sales…” Head of CRM, Retail

Conclusion: Rainmaker summarised as follows: overall spend is still in decline but perhaps we're reaching the bottom of the slump. Brands are responding in two ways:

• Placing more emphasis on value (not necessarily cost) - but are not all clear on how this can be measured.


• Reorganising what they are spending to areas that demonstrate clearer value
  

The opportunity for agencies is to prepare themselves for the upturn by taking a proactive stance to sales and marketing, but they must heed the tips above to make sure that cold calls don't turn to ice.

If you'd like to know more about the survey, or think you'd benefit from some tailored advice, do get in touch with Chris Gordon at Rainmaker. He's very nice.

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uVizz - monetizing social media?

We just thought this idea was of sufficient interest to tell you about it. We don't create campaigns at eModeration (well, at least, not yet!) , but if we did, we'd be looking at this one seriously.

uVizz bills itself as "the solution to the Social Network Advertising Problem". The problem in question is for advertisers: social networks have the eyeballs but no one clicks on adverts - people use social networks to interact with friends, not advertisers. uVizz believe they have a solution: user generated content as viral video, with the added incentive of rewarding both the generators and the propagators of the video.

Advertisers use the service to outline their campaign and target audience, then they invite anyone with a creative inkling to create and upload videos to suit. So, perhaps a user creates an ad for a breakfast cereal, which is then sent out into the viral hemisphere. Video creators are rewarded according to the number of unique views that fit the advertiser's stated demographic. Anyone who shares the video with their friends and is responsible for a unique view is rewarded too. The advertiser only pays for unique views by their selected profile - so an advertiser might only pay for their videos being viewed by, say, middle-aged males located in Florida if that's their chosen target audience.The service is currently in beta and is literally one to watch.

Have a look at their video to learn more:

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Favourite Facebook Fan Pages: Case Studies & How to Get It Right with Teens

Callan Green has just published a great post on Mashable about brands who are really getting it right in Facebook Fan Pages. Sure, she says, “anyone can build a fan page in under 10 minutes, and some big brands may even attract fans without any real effort. But even if you have 3 million fans, if the extent of their involvement with your brand is that at one point they “became a fan,” is that really benefiting you?”

She’s listed five really good examples of Fan Pages:

• Pringles (viral videos)
• Coca-Cola (authentic message and respect to fanbase)
• Starbucks (great status updates)
• Adidas (linking to social media campaigns)
• Red Bull (incorporation of Twitter into Fan Page)

Invited comments below her post are pulling in other good examples too, especially of lesser known and not-for-profits organizations. I’m sure the list will have grown by now, so I suggest you go through to her post – oh, but not before you’ve finished reading mine, of course ...

To make the most of Facebook Fan pages (or Bebo, any other social network), you need to actively engage with your fans. Callan advises “creative content, two-way communication, active discussion boards, videos and images, and a fun and casual tone to match the medium….. you have to know your audience, you have to provide quality, regular content, you need to encourage discussion and engagement, and you must not take yourself too seriously.”

Given the platform, there’s a high chance you may be trying to engage with tweens and teens – so there’s an equally high chance you might be getting it badly wrong. From eModeration’s recent white paper Using Community and Interactive Advertising to Engage Tweens and Teens:

Carol Phillips, in her blog ‘Millennial marketing’ explains why ‘brands make poor friends’. Social media and online communities are all about people talking to each other; a brand encroaching on this territory can be viewed as out of place as a grandparent at a sleep-over. Phillips, herself a mother of ‘millennials’ – roughly defined as those who were pre-teen at the turn of the century - quotes her own research into how young adults view brands who attempt to ‘befriend’ them on Facebook or Twitter. The results? At best, brand invisibility - simply not being noticed by teens, or ignored; at worst, a lasting lack of credibility by doing something considered to be deeply ‘uncool’.

So, if you are targeting 11-17 year old, how do you get it right? Again, from our white paper:

1. Consider what you’re trying to achieve. Is your community / virtual world / campaign promoting something that this market really wants?
2. Put some personality into your efforts. But don’t try to be a ‘cool kid’ – it’ll be like watching your Dad dance at a wedding.
3. Be credible. You want your campaign to have enough ‘social currency’ for a teenager to want their friends to see (on your Facebook page, for example) that they’ve downloaded an app, become a fan of X brand, or used Y widget.
4. Interact. Brand advertising campaigns are no longer about pushing one-way messages on a billboard, but are all about interaction and engagement.
5. Create a space or campaign that is authentic, not over-branded, and is engaging to all senses. Multi-sensory campaigns that incorporate video, audio and user-generated content are all important.
6. Be useful. If you’re developing an application or widget as part of your brand campaign, make it useful. The nature of viral marketing has changed, from ‘look how clever this is’, to ‘look how funny this is’, to ‘look what I can do with this’.
7. Know your niche. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Set a style and personality that fits your audience.
8. Consider cause marketing. Is there a cause that your audience will take on, that will really make a difference to their lives?
9. Get the language and tone right. Be authentic. Keep your message short and simple to cater to this group’s short attention span. Don’t patronise and don’t pretend to be something you’re not.
10. Lastly, but arguably, most importantly: make your community, or campaign, safe. If you’re hosting a community, remember that no space where teenagers and young adults congregate should be unsafe. MODERATE IT!
    
    

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CEOP Online Moderator's Conference

Hot on the heels of Rebecca's summary of the EU Kids Online conference comes mine of the CEOP Online Moderator's conference held in London on 16th June.

First off, these conferences always make me proud to work in this industry. Not only are we doing great work which helps to safeguard children, but we're positive, proactive and willing to share thoughts and best practice with each other - even when we're technically competitors (I mean other moderation companies rather than CEOP, of course!).

Presentations were delivered by Harm Reduction, Education, a Legal Barrister, a Covert Internet Investigator, Child Protection, Initial Assessment and Development and an Internet Investigator. These presentations helped the attendees to build a picture of just some of the work carried out by this relatively small organisation.

The day opened with a showing of the CEOP corporate video, which gives a flavour of some of the problems we're facing with regard to child abuse, and of the work done by CEOP to tackle these problems. If you haven't seen this before, it's quite an emotional roller-coaster, so be prepared - although no actual abuse is shown. Trust me, you'll never listen to this particular Oasis track the same way again.



Throughout the day, we learned more about the scale of the problem, for example:

• 1 in 6 children are a victim
• 69% of children in child abuse images are under 10 years of age
• 87% of reports coming into CEOP concern grooming
• 75% of young people have lives online unsupervised by adults
  

We learned about some of the ways children unwittingly put themselves at risk:

• "Pass the Pervert", where children share their buddy lists, eventually giving paedophiles access to a wider group of children
• "Sexting", for example a teenage girl sends a sexy picture of herself to her boyfriend, who may then send it on to trusted friends, who may then put it on a public social networking page
• Taking part in virtual world "adoptions" by adults they don't know - apparently an increasingly popular trend

We learned about some of the behaviour patterns of child abusers:

• Communicating with like-minded people on forums, essentially normalising their own behaviour
• Collecting and sharing videos or pictures innocently posted by parents of young children, for example a toddler bouncing on a bed or having his/her first wee on the toilet.
• People with a sexual interest in children often started having those feelings aged 13 or 14
• Looking for social networking pages containg sexy or flirty chat and targeting those children
• Searching for vulnerable children - victims of online bullying for example, or someone who says on their social networking sites that they have a difficult relationship with their parents, then offering help and advice - saying things like, "I'm not a perv, I just want to help. I know how you feel"

We didn't just learn about the problems, but were able to find out more about the many-pronged approach CEOP takes to keeping children safe through empowerment, education, enforcement, intelligence and protection. For example, 4,500,000 children in the UK have been reached through the ThinkUKnow programme. If you are interested in finding out more about the varied work done by CEOP, I encourage you to read their Annual Review.

Sadly, the current economic climate is putting financial pressure on CEOP. The withdrawal of some industry funding means, for example, the Intelligence Team can't operate on a 24-hour basis. Of course it could be argued that this gap should be plugged by the government - but I personally believe that industry has to take some responsibility for this too.

Discussions were held about how industry would/should deal with particular scenarios in their communities, and how in turn CEOP deals with and prioritises incoming reports. That's another post for another day, and it's something we'd welcome further discussion on.

In the meantime, however, the conference left me (and I'm sure the other attendees) feeling even more determined to ensure that we as an industry do everything humanly possible to ensure the safety of children using the internet. We need to learn everything we can about the behaviour of children and offenders, and to trust our instincts.

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The difficulties facing Digital Britain

The government’s advocacy of self regulation in Chapter 7, Digital Security and Safety of the Digital Britain report, out yesterday, is the only practical option available in applying content safeguards. The Internet Watch Foundation, which plays a pivotal role in implementing these standards (and has done a great job in the UK) will see its remit expanded across Europe as the government works with EU bodies to create a pan-European body based on the IWF. This is a very welcome announcement, and the first step in international collaboration to keep children safe in an online environment that knows no borders.

The issue of funding for the IWF is interesting. The report calls for the IWF to ensure that an adequate funding model is developed to allow it to continue its role within online protection. If funding dries up, a huge part of the work it does will be under threat. The government has said it will consider intervention to find funding from industry, if necessary.

Also in the report, the UK Council for Child Internet Safety is tasked with developing a strategy to include: “better regulation in the form, wherever possible, of voluntary codes of practice that industry can sign up to; and better information and education where the role of Government, law enforcement, schools and children’s services will be key.”

It’s not yet clear how this will work in practice. The report states that four working groups will be set up to apply standards in four areas: “industry standards, video games, public awareness and better education”. Video games will adopt the new Pan European Game Information system (PEGI), which meets all the criteria set out by Tanya Byron in the ‘Safer Children in a Digital World’ report. But the sale of video games, sold on an individual basis to children or adults, is easier to control, in the same way that film classification works. What is much harder is to control the content in an online environment (such as a virtual world, or an MMOG – massively multiplayer online game) where users upload their own content. Classification will need to adapt continually to changing online behaviour.

The report does reference areas that are within control. Better access to advice for parents, for example, on online safety and content filters is a good place to start. But children have a way of getting round these filters – changing language, code words and so on. And it does require parents to be involved, and more savvy than their children, as pan-European research from the recent EU Kids Online Final Report highlighted.

There is a responsibility on the part of the providers of social networks to filter inappropriate content, but who takes responsibility for user-created networks? If the basis of PEGI is to be applied to online games and virtual worlds, who will check that content adheres to content classification codes? Moderation can address this, of course, with a combination of human and automated systems. But again, how will this classification evolve and keep up with online trends? And who will create the moderation standards to ensure that consistency is applied across all online content?

The report acknowledges that these are difficult areas, and it will take a huge collaboration between the various online bodies, government and industry to come up with solutions. In many ways, the report on Digital Security and Safety raises at least as many questions as it answers, but it's a significant step in the right direction.

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EU Kids Online – what the future holds

We’ve already blogged about EU Kids Online Final Report, presented on June 11th, and now I get to be the first ‘guest blogger’ on the eModeration website to give my impressions, since I was representing eModeration at the conference in London.

This research, gathered over three years from 21 EU member states in their diverse languages, has been, according to Sonja Livingstone Director of EU Kids Online, like working within a Tower of Babel. I can imagine. Kudos to the LSE then, for pulling it together, and providing such an interesting display of work from the research centres involved, which demonstrated how their respective countries were fairing when it came to online usage and safety, plus promoting best practice to young people.

The various speakers highlighted the key areas within the report (presentations here), and were, in the main, knowledgeable and interesting. But I have to confess, it was a lot to take in, and the inevitable between-caffeine-shots haze was beginning to creep over me when I was saved by the entrance of the formidable Tanya Byron, author of The Byron Review: Safer Children in a Digital World (2008)

She spoke of the disappointing questions she had put to her in her recent 'grilling' by the government think-tank and expressed frustration at the 'Daily Mail' attitude of even those who should know better. She felt political currency was getting in the way of moving forward and making changes. Information needs to get to the people at large but not via hysterical media headlines or politicians vying for political gain. Effectively, politics and journalistic hype were wasting time and resources: the more they messed around, the more people – especially children - have bad experiences on the web. Cutting through the flack in typical style, she managed to sharpen to a point all the issues that had been and would be discussed during the day.

Which has just made me think about the Digital Britain report which came out today, parts of which we have read - but which appears to be slightly tricky to inwardly digest. More from eModeration about that as soon as it’s gone down ...

Anyway, on to future plans: There’s to be an immediate launch of EU Kids Online II: this will be a further data collection exercise, via interviews with parents and children in 20 member states, started 12th June 2009. For more information, see here.

The Safer Internet Programme 2009 – 2013 is being launched, which will cover 4 actions: 1) Ensuring public awareness of online risks and precautions, 2) Fighting against illegal content (in particular child sexual abuse material) and tackling harmful conduct online (grooming and bullying), 3) Promoting a safer online environment and finally, 4) Broadening the knowledge base that will provide input to the development of policies and actions. For more information, see here.

There will be further research in the form of ‘POG’ - a study into understanding the process of online grooming, an offender-related study. Also, research into online grooming from the victim’s perspective, with the aim of feeding the learnings into policy making, child welfare work and awareness raising.

The conference identified some future needs to be addressed: there need more research on those under 12 years of age – understandably a difficult group to study. It is important to have a good level of online content aimed at children (of all ages) as this helps divert their attention from ‘wandering’ elsewhere on the net. And a point made several times: content aimed at children should be ‘granulated’ – different for all ages/genders/cultures/risk levels. One size really doesn’t fit all.


Rebecca Fitzgerald
Account Manager, eModeration

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Virtual World Growth Set to Soar

As predicted, the recession can only be good news for some sectors of industry - notably those which involve staying home and spending only very small amounts!

Market research firm Strategy Analytics today released its forecast for growth within the virtual worlds sector and to say it sees growth would be an understatement. Overall, the firm said it sees the global population of virtual world users growing from 186 million today to almost 640 million by 2015 -- that's almost one hundred million new players a year, a nearly 25 percent compounded annual growth rate.

Of especial interest to my company, which offers user-safety consultation and moderation of virtual worlds for children, is the predicted growth in the kids/teen/tween market. The fastest growing demographic is 'kids' between the ages of 5 and 9 which the company predicts will grow 27 percent; the current largest segment of virtual worlds players, 'tweens' and 'teens', should grow by some 21 percent, according to the company. Looking at the numbers, from 2009 to 2015, Tween/Teen registrations are set to rise from 125 to nearly 400 million worldwide, and kids registration from 50 to nearly 210 million. This rate of growth far outstrips the predicted adult growth (though that's not small either - from 11.5 to 32.5 million registrations).

Overall, as virtual worlds continue to improve the user experience, Strategy Analytics see a conversion rate from registrations to active users at a growth rate of 38 percent through 2015.
"The high conversion of registrants to active users demonstrates that users are finding value -- in the form of entertainment, engagement, and social interaction." That is according to Barry Gilbert, Vice President of the Strategy Analytics Gaming Sector and author of the company's just-released Virtual Worlds Market Forecast 2009-2015.

"Virtual worlds have largely overcome enabling restrictions in terms of broadband access, computing power, and ease of use, and are now experiencing significant interest among major brands, as well as traction among targeted demographics," added Harvey Cohen, President of Strategy Analytics.

When it comes to revenue growth, the key drivers, the company says, will be microtransactions, subscriptions, and advertising/sponsorships, with microtransactions expected to grow from slightly over $1 billion in 2008 to $17.3 billion in 2015. Microtransactions will account for approximately 86 percent of all revenue generated by virtual worlds.


Thanks to Virtual World News for bringing me that bit of info - see their article in full here, and you can buy the full report from Strategy Analytics here.

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EU Kids Online Final report Published

Yesterday, EU Kids Online culminated its three year research project and presented its final report at a conference in London. Amongst the speakers were Tanya Byron and Sonia Livingstone of the LSE, one of the co-authors of the report. eModeration were at the conference, and we'll be posting a blog or two on personal impressions and highlights later - but in the meantime, here's some of the information from the Final Report summary:

Children’s use of the internet continues to grow. Striking recent rises are evident among younger children, in countries which have recently entered the EU, and among parents. This last reverses the previous trend for teenagers especially to outstrip adults in internet use. Long-standing gender inequalities may be disappearing, though socio-economic inequalities persist in most countries.

Across Europe, despite some cross-national variation, available findings suggest that for online teenagers, the rank ordering of risks experienced is fairly similar. Giving out personal information is the most common risky behaviour, followed by encountering pornography online, then by seeing violent or hateful content. Being bullied online comes fourth, followed by receiving unwanted sexual comments. Meeting an online contact offline appears the least common though arguably the most dangerous risk.

Even though higher status parents are more likely than those of lower socio-economic status to provide their children with access to the internet, it seems that the children from lower status homes are more exposed to risk online. There are also gender differences in risk, with boys more likely to encounter (or create) conduct risks and with girls more affected by content and contact risks.

The report recommends further research into younger age groups:

There are some significant gaps in the evidence base. Research priorities
include:

• younger children, especially in relation to risk and coping, though continually updated research on teenagers is also important;
• emerging contents (especially ‘web 2.0’) and services (especially if accessed via mobile, gaming or other platforms);
• understanding children’s developing skills of navigation and search, content interpretation and critical evaluation;
• new and challenging risks, such as self-harm, suicide, pro-anorexia, drugs, hate/racism, gambling, addiction, illegal downloading, and commercial risks (sponsorship, embedded or viral marketing, useof personal data, GPS tracking);
• how children (and parents) do and should respond to online risk;
• how to identify particularly vulnerable or ‘at risk’ children within the general population;
• evaluations of the effectiveness of technical solutions, parental mediation, media literacy, other awareness and safety measures, both in terms of the ease of implementation and more importantly in terms of their impact on risk reduction; this may vary for different groups of children in different cultural contexts.

The report draws attention to the inability of parents to effectively control their children's online behaviour:

Although no-one doubts that parents are responsible for their children’s safety, evidence suggests that they should not be relied upon as many are unaware or unable to mediate their children’s online activities. Rules and restrictions do not fit well with the ethos of modern parenting, especially in some countries, and it is unclear that parental strategies are effective in reducing children’s exposure to risk or increasing their resilience to cope.

and calls for the strengthening of regulatory frameworks across Europe:

Self-regulatory provision in improving children’s safety online is to be welcomed and supported, although it is not always transparent or independently evaluated. Children can only be supported in managing the online environment if this is substantially regulated – by law enforcement, interface and website design, search processes, content and service providers, online safety resources, etc – just as they can only be taught to cross a road on which drivers and driving are carefully regulated.

Download : EU Kids Online: Final Report
Download the two previous publications from EU Kids Online: What Do We Know about Children’s Use of Online Technologies?
and Comparing children's online opportunities and risks across Europe

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Brands that have Fallen Foul of Social Media

Maybe it's schadenfreude, but I'm still chuckling after a colleague led me to Jeremiah Owyang's splendid list of foul-ups in social media A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media

A list of companies that were blind-sided by the internet, they didn’t understand the impacts of the power shift to the participants, or how fast information would spread, or were just plain ignorant.
Criteria of “Punk’d” includes a situation where the story would have not been told if social media was not available, or if social media enhanced the situation

It's not an exhaustive list, but provides a good slice of the dangers inherent in social media. In most of these cases, it really wasn't the brands' fault, but if there are any lessons to be learnt, perhaps these:

1. Don't offer to pay people to write good consumer reviews for you.
2. Don't believe everyone on Twitter is who they say they are.
3. If you're a top executive involved in controversy, don't use your daughter's online ID as a human shield.
4. Be very careful who you employ. In addition, ensure that ingredients in your food products cannot easily be substituted by human mucous.

Thanks Jeremiah!

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What to Listen for in Social Media: Part Three, Case Studies

As the third and final part in this series on Listening in Social Media (see earlier posts What to Listen for in Social Media Part One and What to Listen for in Social Media Part Two )
I wanted to look at how this is done in practice.

It’s really helpful to see what some good examples of what companies are doing with their listening skills: deflecting customer anger, researching new products, or correcting mis-information. I think the point is that they are reaching out, listening, and then acting. As Michael Brito put it, in his post: In social media, listening is only half the battle:

Listening and responding are only half the battle when engaging with consumers online. The other half of the formula is acting. It’s like being in a relationship. If my wife is upset that I leave my dirty socks on the living room floor every night; and I listen to what she is saying but continue to leave my socks there … well, you catch my drift. There will be hell to pay if I don’t “act” on her politely spoken "recommendations".

Comcast
Comcast, like other companies, has learned the power of the aggrieved individual firsthand. Two years ago, a YouTube video of a technician who fell asleep on a customer's couch while on hold with Comcast became a hit - the video has been viewed 1.2 million times and triggered more than 750 comments.

Now, amongst other improved to their customer service offering, Comcast has also set up teams of employees who are encouraged to click around social networks or online forums. The result?
When C.C. Chapman noticed a blemish in his high-definition television's reception during the NBA playoffs recently, he blasted a quick gripe about Comcast into the online ether, using the social network Twitter. Minutes later, a Twitter user named ComcastCares responded, and within 24 hours, a technician was at Chapman's house in Milford to fix the problem.

Chapman's experience is one example of the ways customer service is changing in an age when a single disgruntled consumer with a broadband connection can ignite a crisis. (It also shows the potential of the Internet to turn miffed customers into fans in a more organic way than an advertising campaign. Chapman, for example, made a podcast about his visit from Comcast.)

Bizzuka
Bizzuka.com (a company that specialises in web content management systems) had urgent need to respond to a blogger who had written some factually incorrect information about the company and its content management system. Even worse, that post was displayed prominently on Google search returns for the word "Bizzuka."

Two actions were taken. First, Bizzuka's CEO responded to the post with a comment which added much needed balance. Second, we engaged in a content marketing strategy using blogs, YouTube videos, Flickr photos, online press releases and a number of other online media.
While their primary intent was to provide consumers with useful content, a secondary benefit was that the critical post was driven off the front page, replaced instead by Bizzuka generated content.

Southwest Airlines
At Southwest Airlines, the social media team includes a chief Twitter officer who tracks Twitter comments and monitors a Facebook group, an online representative who fact checks and interacts with bloggers, and another who takes charge of the company's presence on sites such as YouTube, Flickr, and LinkedIn. So if someone posts a complaint in cyberspace, the company can respond in a personal way.

For example, when Travis Johnson, known by the Twitter handle, "pastortrav," complained recently about Southwest's check-in process, he received a quick, public response from an airline employee saying, "So sorry to hear it! What don't you like about the check-in process? Did your flight get off okay?"

"We monitor those channels because we know these conversations are taking place there, and we can either watch the conversations or take part in them," said Southwest spokeswoman Christi Day.

Embarq
Having made the split away from Sprint in 2006, phone and internet service provider Embarq had inherited a culture that was extremely conservative. Employees were under a “gag order” and weren’t permitted to interact with customers outside of the traditional communications/customer service channels. Symptomatic of these underlying cultural and legal issues was a high level of negative customer sentiment towards the company.

In order to build awareness and reduce the fear of engagement as well as build internal support for their social media strategy, the team started by listening to customer conversations for over 6 months. Going through this intensive listening process helped them to surface the issues and questions that their customers were asking. It also helped demonstrate the value of direct engagement as well as get buy in from the internal stakeholders including the executive management.

The outreach team made contact with customers who chose to vent on a public/social media forum such as Twitter or Face book where the traditional channel didn’t have a presence.
They followed up on a short-term viral campaign by rolling out series of short but highly effective “how-to” videos that addressed their top 10 customer service issues. This is where they demonstrated the value of listening to the customers by basing topics on information gathered from their online outreach and call center data. Not surprising, these videos became highly popular with their customer base and also demonstrated that the company was being responsive to their customer\’s needs.

They not only managed to meet their education objectives but also their branding objective of creating a presence in an online community where customer and prospects are already engaged. Over a one-year period, the team saw a 81% success rate (Dec 07 to Mar 09) on their social media outreach initiatives. They also found significant increase in the number of customers self-correcting their negative posts and subsequent increase in the number of customers likely to recommend their service.

Dell
Dell Inc. has been a leader in this sort of unconventional outreach. The company was burned by "Dell Hell," blogger Jeff Jarvis's 2005 account of his negative experience with the company. In the years since, Dell said, it has aggressively worked to improve customer service, including by listening online. The company's 40-member "communities and conversation team" includes employees that do outreach on Twitter and communicate with bloggers.

At DellIdeaStorm.com, a social website that the company launched in 2007, people are invited to make suggestions for products and services. Of more than 9,000 suggestions, 50 have been implemented, the company said.

The Society for New Communications Research recognized the Dell Outlet, which sells refurbished products, for using Twitter to offer special deals and products. The outlet has sold $500,000 worth of products through Twitter offers.

It's not just an early warning system, said Dell spokeswoman Caroline Dietz. "If you look at the more positive side, it's also about innovation - the closer you are to your customers via these social media tools, you can listen to what are their needs, what are their pain-points, and act on that feedback."

Starbucks is following the same model “share, vote, discuss and see” and inspire their community with the following message at My Starbucks Idea:

"You know better than anyone else what you want from Starbucks. So tell us. What’s your Starbucks Idea? Revolutionary or simple—we want to hear it. Share your ideas, tell us what you think of other people’s ideas and join the discussion. We’re here, and we’re ready to make ideas happen. Let’s get started.”

Lego
The company got in touch with a group of Lego-philes and asked if they wanted to help with the development of a new product. The end result was Lego Mindstorm; a very cool line of Legos combining programmable bricks with electrical motors, sensors, Lego bricks, and Lego Technic pieces (such as gears and axles) - oh, and a great community too.

Blackberry
I just came across this case study about Blackberry from eConsultancy, about how to make listening and responding more efficient. Briefly, Blackberry's problem was that tracking and responding to all the conversations about Blackberry across the various networks was proving too expensive. The company decided to help grow the conversation about Blackberry online by putting all of the comments in one place. They created MyBlackberry, which will go live in July 2009, and will syndicate questions asked on any social network to the MyBlackberry site. “For a marketer, it was a miracle,” says Wallace. They can now staff one site and track all the comments happening about their products in a central location. On individual networks, Blackberry might have been able to reach 60,000 fans. But when they launch MyBlackberry, they'll have access to a million with every post.

A question asked inside of Myspace will automatically be federated out to Facebook and iGoogle, and anyone in the MyBlackberry community can answer the question. The response will skew more positive, because users on MyBlackberry and on the social networking fan sites are likely to be supporters of BlackBerry products. But the company is clear that it does not want to edit out negative comments. "We're following terms of use. Very flagrant abuses and bad language won’t get posted, but we have to take our lumps."

The other benefit of the site is that RIM is able to keep all of that feedback forever. Wallace says: "If Friendster goes away, I don’t lose all of that content."



Thanks to Carolyn Y. Johnson for Hurry up the customer has a complaint, eConsultancy , Marketing Mystic and Paul Chaney in Social media Listening is the new marketing for these case studies.

Update 05 June 09: And finally, here's a good piece from Denise Zimmerman on how brands can prepare themselves for using Twitter to deal with unexpected crises: How to use Twitter to mitigate a crisis .
I hope these were useful. Got any more good 'listening and acting' case studies? Please add them below!

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Brands, Bloggers, and the Law

Here's a really interesting article about the legal implications of relationships between brands and bloggers. Some clear case examples and rulings by the FTC (US Federal Trade Commision) with discussion points. Recommended reading!
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/23301.asp

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What to Listen for in Social Media – Part Two: How to Listen, for What, and how to Respond.

In the second of this three-part series on Listening in Social Media, here is some of the best advice I found on how to listen: setting up your listening, analysing the conversation types, and what do with what you’ve heard.

Quoting Tania Yuki in her post on comscore.com:

Listen to the good. Respond quickly to the bad, and respond even faster to the ugly. Enable the conversation, rather than attempting to put it in a chokehold. People are talking about your brand anyway, so you may as well get down in the weeds and know what’s going on.

How should you listen?

Beth Kanter has written a guide to listening literacy skills in Social Media Listening Literacy for Nonprofits which provides help for the bemused, or simply overloaded. A step-by-step guide with links to further reading, it provides a useful reference to such topics as to why you should listen, how to set up keywords, add RSS feeds, identify key bloggers in your space, how to respond, and collate your reporting. Do check it out.

What should you listen for?

David Alston, VP Marketing at Radian6, has made a great list of 20 of the kind of conversations you should be listening out for in social media. Published across three posts (links below), it identifies key conversation types and why you should pay attention to them. He gives a lot more information about each type, but I’ve made a quick summary of each case.

• The complaint – a complaint is an opportunity to demonstrate problem-solving abilities. Catch them early to show how responsive you are


• The compliment – save your ‘good reviews’ for testimonial use


• The expressed need – you can offer assistance or a free demo


• The competitor – keep an eye on your competition’s strategy and customer’s views towards them


• The crowd – follow the swarms who gather around a particular topic to understand the current sentiment and it’s relative importance


• The influencer - Often an influencer’s post appears prominently in a topic’s Google search: use them as advocates or to improve your understanding of negative opinions


• The crisis – use social media to serve as an early warning system to locate issues and track effectiveness of campaigns to address them


• The ROI – measure the performance of online marketing and outreach campaigns


• The audit – analyse the buzz to rank overall sentiment, trends, locations, competitor performance


• The thread – connect together the splintered conversations to improve analysis


• The long tail – get in contact with the influencers, your brand evangelists


• The story angle – you may uncover new ways to talk about your brand from the stories people are telling about it


• The recruit – what do potential employees see about you on the web?


• The brand association – how do your customers and potential customers actually view our brand? It may not be the way you think they do.


• The mashup – what are people doing with your brand? Have they improved upon it?


• The correction – preserving brand equity by stepping in and correcting mis-information


• The advocate – finding and thanking the people who are talking positively about your brand


• The common ground – finding where your like-minded customers are gathering


• The infringement – checking for copyright infringements

The original articles (One, Two and Three) are published one the Radion6 blog.
Update (5 June 2009) In refence to the story angle - I've just read a good article by Nicholine Hayward called The Beginning, Middle, and End of Brand Storytelling, giving more information about how to leverage consumer stories within brand marketing.

And how should you respond?

So, you’ve set up your tools, you’re monitoring the conversations in and around your brand, everywhere from Facebook to Twitter, and from within your own community. But what are you supposed to do now? How should you be engaging your customers or potential customers?
Amber Naslund, also from Radian6, offers some good questions on how to manage the participation side of listening in The How and Why of Listening .

• Do we have to respond to EVERY brand mention?


• How much time does it take each day to do this?


• What’s the best way to handle negative comments? Ignore or engage?


• How does one person manage all of that information?


• How do we keep track of what happens after someone responds?


• Who should respond to brand mentions? What should they say?


• How will we know if all of this is making a lick of difference?

And for some suggested answers to these questions, check out Corby Fine’s comments below the post ...

Update 12 June 09 - Do read this fine advice from Nathan Gilliat in Social Media Today about how to avoid going too far the other way, and creeping our your customers by seeming to stalk them ...

Social media is all about sharing knowledge, so please comment below if you’ve found any other pertinent advice out there. For the third and final part in this series on listening in social media (check out the previous blog post on Tools to Help you Listen ), I’ll be posting some case studies of good examples of brands who got it right - hopefully tomorrow!

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The Safe Internet Alliance Launches

The Safe Internet Alliance, a US nonprofit organization, marked its official formation today with the launch of its website, http://www.safeinternet.org/. The organisation's central mission is to promote a safe Internet and better educate and protect all users -- especially children, teens and the elderly -- from Internet corruption, crime, and abuse.

Safe Internet Alliance will bring together broad public and private support for a safe Internet through online safety organisations, law enforcement, non-profits, industry associations, businesses and the media.

"The launch of our website marks the first initiative of the Safe Internet Alliance," Linda Criddle, president of Safe Internet Alliance, said. "We want to provide our partners and the public with a comprehensive platform to facilitate dialogue, cultivate best practices and encourage awareness about the growing risks online."

Safe Internet's goals are:

• Elevate Internet safety as a priority and increase public awareness of Internet opportunities and threats;
• Foster broad private/public sector support for a safe Internet;
• Promote safe Internet education and training for: users, families, teachers, law enforcement, software developers, companies, and organizations;
• Empower users with choices and tools to increase their positive experiences online while better protecting themselves from harm; and
• Advance an Internet ethic of respect and accountability online.

"We are excited about the continuing interest from a wide array of partners, each of who will bring a unique perspective of what a safe Internet means to their community," said Criddle.

Safe Internet's leadership board has strong ties to online safety advocacy. Members include Linda Criddle, president of LOOKBOTHWAYS, Inc., an online safety consulting and software development firm; Joy Howell, a former director of the Office of Public Affairs of the Federal Communications Commission; Alma Riojas, president and CEO of MANA, A National Latina Organization; and Stacie Rumenap, executive director of Stop Child Predators, which combats the sexual exploitation of children.

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What to Listen for in Social Media – Part One: Tools

When my sister was learning to cross the road, family lore has it that she dutifully stood back from the kerb, listened, looked, then walked across with ears cocked, checking left and right just as she should. They thought she had it cracked - until after a couple of weeks of this, she turned to my mother and asked: “But what am I listening for Mummy?”



We’re all agreed that you should be listening to what’s being said within your community and about your brand, on whatever platform it appears. And there is a proliferation of tools to aid your listening, some paid for, some free. But how should you listen? What should you be listening for? And what should you do after you’ve listened?



As you’d expect, there’s a lot of advice out there. I’ve had a look around, and I’m going to publish a series of three posts – firstly, on the tools, secondly: how to listen and respond, and finally on case studies which demonstrate the rewards of getting it right.



Tools to help you listen

Firstly, that tools list. It’s not exhaustive, so please add any more you find via comments, and don’t forget to mention if they are free or paid. Thanks to Clay McDaniel in 13 Essential Social-Media 'Listening Tools': MarketingProfs Articles, and Jake Hird for his post on econsultancy.com

[Update 23 June 09: Anna Banks published this excellent article on what her 'dream' social media monitoring tool would contain. Really good pointers for what to look for when doing your research.]

Free Apps

· Addict-o-matic – Allows you to create a custom-made page to display search results
· BackType - a comments search and tracking engine
· Bloglines - A web-based personal news aggregator that can be used in place of a desktop client
· Blogpulse – A service of Nielsen BuzzMetrics. It analyzes and reports on daily trends within the blogosphere.
· BoardTracker – A useful tool for scanning and tracking within forums
· Commentful – This service watches comments/follow-ups on Blog posts and similar content such as Flickr or Digg
· FriendFeed Search - Scans all FriendFeed activity
· Google Alerts –Daily or real-time alerts emailed to you whenever a specific keyword (chosen by you) is mentioned
· HowSociable? – A simple way for you to begin measuring your brand’s visibility on the social web.
· Icerocket – Searches a variety of online services, including Twitter, blogs, videos and MySpace.
· Jodange - tracks consumer sentiment about your brand or product across the Web
· Keotag – Keyword searches across the internet landscape.
· Lexicon - searches Facebook walls for keywords and provides a snapshot of the chatter volume around those terms
· MonitorThis – Subscribes you to up to 20 different RSS feeds through one stream
· Monitter - provides real-time monitoring of the Twittersphere
· Newstin.com - a multilanguage news aggregator that functions natively in 10 languages and can be combined with machine translation to track news on detailed topics from news and blog sources around the world
· Omgili - for tracking bulletin boards
· Samepoint – A conversation search engine
· Socialmention – billed as the Google Alerts for social media
· Surchur – An interactive dashboard covering search engines and most social media sites.
· Technorati - Search engine and monitoring tool for user-generated media and blogs
· Tinker - Real-time conversations from social media sources such as Twitter and Facebook.
· Trendrr - uses comparison graphing to show relationships and discover trends in real time
· Tweetburner - lets you track the clicks on those magically shortened links, giving you some hard numbers.
· TweetDeck - Not only a great way to manage your Twitter account, but the keyword search means you can see what people are saying about you.
· Tweetmeme - monitors Twitter tweets for links and determines which ones are becoming popular, then posts them on a constantly updated page.
· Twendz - piggybacks off Twitter Search to monitor and provide user sentiment for the real-time Twitterstream—70 tweets at a time.
· Twitter Search – Twitter’s very own search tool is a great resource. Can be subscribed to as an RSS ffed.
· UberVU - Track and engage with user sentiment across the likes of, FriendFeed, Digg, Picasa, Twitter and Flickr.
· wikiAlarm – Alerts you to when a Wikipedia entry has been changed.
· Yahoo! Sideline – A TweetDeck-esque tool from Yahoo. Monitor, search and engage with the Twittersphere.

Paid Apps

· TruCast - provides in-depth, keyword-based monitoring of the social Web with an emphasis on blogs and forums
· Radian6 and Cision - pulls information from the social Web, and analyzes and provides consumer sentiment ratings for your brand. When paired with CisionPoint from Cision, the evolved Bacon's of today, Radian6's dashboard can provide a wealth of information
· Techrigy SM2 is a social-media monitoring and analysis solution for PR and marketing folks
· Collective Intellect - a real-time intelligence platform, based on advanced artificial intelligence. Its solution provides automatic categorization of conversations based on CI’s proprietary filtering technology
· Brandwatch – online reputation management and brand trand tracking via keywords analysis

(Update 6th July 09:

. Viral Heat - a newcomer to the market, just coming out of Beat. See Techcrunch's article. A lot cheaper than most paid-for apps, this affordable social media measurement product scours social video sites including YouTube, Hulu and Vimeo, and Twitter to deliver real-time results of consumer generated content on these sites. One major drawback is that the site doesn’t allow you to track other social networks where brands are commonly mentioned, such as blogs, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Flickr. The startup says that it has plans to incorporate blogs, sites and social networks into its dashboard over the next few months and will not be planning to change its pricing structure when these services are added. Anyone who has any experience of Viral Heat, please do comment and let us know what its like. )

For a list of 67 social media/web/reputation management tools and sites, please also look at Marc Meyer’s post on Social Media Today - not all of these are on-topic for this post though, and I just didn’t have the space here to list them all.

Update 1 Sept 09: Amusing ansd informative blogpost about the deficiencies of buzz monitoring tools. Make sure you read the comments below too! http://no-mans-blog.com/2009/08/05/the-problems-with-social-media-monitoring-technologies/

Update 19 Oct 09 - FreshNetwork's excellent list of free buzz monitoring tools http://blog.freshnetworks.com/2009/10/getting-started-1-do-you-know-what-people-are-saying-about-you/

I’d just like to emphasise that none of these tools come with any recommendations (or otherwise) from eModeration, though there are some reviews on the original sites (see links above). Please do add any comments below if you feel there is anything missed or you’d like to add your own experience of these tools.



Tomorrow I’ll be looking at how you should be listening to what’s being said out there.

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