New Marketing Summit: Listening in Blizzard

David Alston
VP of Marketing, Radian6

Candace Fleming
CEO and Co-Founder, Crimson Hexagon

Todd Parsons
Co-Founder, BuzzLogic

Tony Priore
Biz 360

Mike Spataro
Visible Technologies

How do people retro-fit to understand the listening part of the business?

• Similar to what was going on ten years ago - how to fit the web strategy into the organization
• How to understand the listening data - what is the strategic process for the way the information comes into the organization and how the information is actionable?
• Driven by business objectives - much more in the last year.
• People are aware of how important it is to listen - more and more champions.  More focus on the best practices of how to collect the information and applying it to decision-making.  They are starting from the top down - relating the business goals to the social media listening.
• You recognize the value of listening to social media - think of listening like the social phone.   Think of it as the phone ringing.  None of you would not pick up the phone if someone was calling.   

How to make value of the data?

• Visible: Listening is more than collecting data - is it is the business insights you gain from the data.  You need to quantify the trend and understand what it means or else you won't know what to change.  The data has to have broad strategic value.  In 2008, it became important.  How important is this data?  Does it make a difference to my business? 

• Biz 360: Finding the influencers is most important.  Our product identifies the influencers - the credible blogs.   

• Crimson goes behind summarizing whether what was said was negative or positive - they do a content summary on the brand, organization, or product.  Example, summarizing opinions on the VP race.  Like a stock ticker of public opinion that goes on your desk top.

• Buzz Logic:  Focuses on online product reviews - summarizing opinions.  Information out there is huge.  People refer to this information to make product purchase decisions.  78% research it before buying.   Get granular about how customers feel re: different features.

• Radian6:  Gave an example of how one client uses their product, Dell.  They monitor what is said about their brand and produces in real time in all types of social media - from Twitter to blogs.  They have a large team at Dell - data comes in and it is assigned to a person on the team.  They reach out and respond.  Treating it like a customer channel.   

What's the ROI of listening?

• Visible:  Last year 10% engaged in listening, following year 20%.   If you can collect and analyze fast, plus you activate responses - yo  u can calculate the return.   It is relationship management, not just responding to bad comments.

• Biz 360:  They start with a baseline benchmark - and measure what they learn and adjustments the clients make.  So, they are able to adjust the ROI.  Created an "advocacy" metric - positive opinion - negative opinion.  Whether or not an individual will recommend your program or product to other people.

• Crimson:   As a cost savings -- they have people employed to monitor blogs - but using the software automate its.   Puts your marketing dollars to better use.

• BuzzLogic:   Gave an example of PBS Kids launching a community.  Used it for metrics around the blog community.  Wanted to launch the program in a specific geographic area - and needed to identify influencers. 

• Radian 6:  Told story about ComcastCares.  Why a company should do listening.  When you deal with a company it can be a faceless company.  When you're dealing with people, it is a relationship.   One day he couldn't respond because he had an emergency.  When he logged on later, he discovered that the community was answering the questions.

Comments

[David Alston]

Thanks for blogging this Beth, great to have a summary to go back to. Great meeting you in person tonight as well. I loved hearing all about your 'tradesies" stories.

[Perry Hewitt]

Thanks, Beth, for the recap. David Alston's "social phone" analogy was a terrific takeaway.

Hope to catch up with you today -- the organizers assured us there would be coffee somewhere!

[David]

Thanks Beth - it's interesting to find out what these companies are saying. Social media monitoring is becoming quite a hot topic these days - I've already noticed how radian6 is marketing itself on Twitter with some good success.

This is probably a great way for nonprofits to get their foot in the door.
I did a review of a number of these services http://www.pageonepr.com/blogs/thepagewonders/2008/09/review-of-commercial-social-media.html
We're still evaluating the benefits of these services based on clients' budgets, so definitely interested to hear these discussions