Listening 2.0
Mike Moran
Co-author of Search Engine Marketing, Inc.
Author of Do It Wrong Quickly
Chief Strategist, Converseon

What are they saying about you?
FORUMS/NEWSGROUPS
MICROBLOGS
VIDEO SHARING Twitter: 17 million visiitors in april 2009
YouTube:82.2 million viewers (2008)
SOCIAL NETWORKS
WIKIS Facebook: 200 million
Wikipedia: 59 million visitors
(May 08)) The Conversation
SOCIAL MEDIA NEWS
PHOTO SHARING AGGREGATORS
MAINSTREAM MEDIA
BLOGS

Why is it important to listen?
• “The direct, unfiltered, brutally honest nature of much online discussion is
gold dust to big companies that want to spot trends, or find out what
customers really think of them.”
– The Economist, March 2006
• “As control of a brand’s marketing messages—and, indeed, its very
image—migrates from traditional media to social media, companies need
to become increasingly adept at paying
attention to how they're being perceived in
the online world.”
– The Aberdeen Group, February 2008
3

How is listening changing?
Insights
• Listening is yielding insights, not just data
Action
• Listening is producing action
3.0
• Listening 3.0 is around the corner

Insights
Insights, not just data
1.0 Monitoring
Volume
Word counts/tag cloud
Entry timeline Sentiment
Topics and subtopics
High-level topics
Venue analysis 2.0 Voices/participants
Key influentials
Influence
Drill-down to entries Mining Incident-level reporting
Custom reporting elements
Human analysis

Insights
Sentiment analysis shows opinions
Top 5 Tech Pundits in Smart Phone Conversation
Blog URL Net Sentiment Rank Traffic
(toward Brand)
Venue falls in the top 1% of highest
Engadget A
trafficked, most influential sites
Venue falls in the top 1% of highest
Gizmodo
A trafficked, most influential sites
Venue falls in the top 10% of high
Electronista
B trafficked sites
Venue falls in the top 10% of high
UberGizmo
B trafficked sites
Venue falls in the bottom 90% of
Switched
C trafficked sites
6

Automated listening misses sarcasm Insights
“Oh, the iPhone is a beautiful
girl, no doubt.”
The automated sentiment
analysis failed to identify the
sarcasm and coded the entry
as positive for iPhone, while
failing to understand the
author was actually saying
there was no value for the
iPhone beneath its flashy
exterior

Insights
Automation misses multiple ideas
“I did a little research of my own, and was a bit alarmed to
come upon a forum of migraine sufferers who had tried the
drug and reported tightness in the chest and other
indications of cardiac disturbance. I decided to leave the
Treximet in the desk, untouched.”
“For some reason, today I picked it up. I did a quick web
search for adverse side effects of Imitrex, which I have used
for years, and felt surprised to see the very same
descriptions as those accompanying the Treximet. Since
Imitrex has never bothered me...”
“…I popped a Treximet, slanted my shades, closed and
locked my office door, and put my head down for fifteen
Automated systems typically minutes. When my alarm went off, my head was
mark this conversation as perfectly clear. That was four hours ago.”
negative
Blog.lazyharpy.com, published on 18-02-2009

Insights
How do conversations relate?
All Credit Card Brand Rewards Conversation Topic Relationships Feb-March 2009
9

Action
Listening must cross the organization
10

Action
Enterprise listening is needed
Insights / Creative BI / Market Research
Enterprise
Listening
Campaign Solution Media Planning
Effectiveness + consistent methodology Conversation Planner
+ consistent data
+ custom configuration
PR / Corp Comm / IR Customer Service
Conversation Monitoring

Action
Across geography, too
North America
Market
PR Research
Enterprise
Listening
Asia Solution Europe
+ consistent methodology
+ consistent data
+ custom configuration
Corporate Customer
Comm. Service
South America

Action
Workflow distributes insights

Action
Workflow also allows engagement

3.0
Next: Cross national languages
• Those who need to know can’t
speak every language
• Machine translation crosses
the gap
• Automation will be augmented
with human beings at first

3.0
Next: Calculate return on investment
• How many people who
viewed the message
eventually bought
something?
• Of the people who saw
this message, are they
more or less likely to
buy from us?

3.0
Next: Predictive modeling
Sales Brand Tracking
Conversion/Analytics
Traffic
Conversation Mining
17

Listening 2.0
Mark Kovscek
Senior Vice President
VivaKi

How is VivaKi using Listening Solutions?
At The Core… Dashboards Top 5 Use Cases
Content Development
Consumer and Brand Insights Consumer Engagement
Media Planning
Performance Measurement Program Strategy
Social Media Strategy

What are we looking for in Listening 2.0?
• Control
• over data accuracy and precision
• over sentiment and influence scoring
• over size of solution
• Integration
• of imagery
• of multiple data sources
• Rich visualization experiences
• Global reach and consistent approach

How are we managing the execution?
Match the Business Objectives with…
• Insight
Technology
• Measurement
• Engagement
Content Development • Operations
Consumer Engagement • Sampling
Analytics
Media Planning • Monitoring
• Mining
Program Strategy
Social Media Strategy Resources • Analysts
• Practitioners
• Consultants

What does this look like?
Do these things better… by knowing these folks better… to optimize the
purchase funnel.
Content Development
Consumer Engagement
Media Planning …in an increasingly complex
Program Strategy environment…
Social Media Strategy Data is proliferating
People are in control
Efficiency is demanded
INSIGHT
What do consumers think and what do they do?
MEASUREMENT
Do consumers think differently because of what I do and say?
FORESIGHT
Can I better anticipate their behaviors?

Building Insight, Measurement, Foresight
1
Search
Audience Listening
2
Site
Spend
Market Research
Video
3
Performance
Display
Mass Addressable
4

Listening 2.0
Pauline Ores
Market Insights, Principal Consultant
Social Insights Practice
IBM Corporation

Social Media Research vs. “Listening”
• Social Media Research has become quite sophisticated, but
research doesn’t guarantee the investment will result in
business value unless
– Information is conveyed to someone who can absorb, process and
formulate a response – it’s really hearing vs. listening
– Someone somewhere takes action – which doesn’t always require
external social interaction, and might only impact internal activities
– Research is informed by community knowledge – GIGO – garbage in,
garbage out

Social Research, Engagement, and Marketing
• Social Engagement is often focused on “feeding the funnel” –
which of course already has optimized tools, tactics and
analytics designed for that purpose
• This activity may or may not add meaningful value given the
investment, but why not also consider the unique value social
research and engagement has to offer, improving
– Business processes
– Content search
– Locating the right resource
– Messaging
– Product development
– Customer service

Social Research: Extracting the Most Value
• Research isn’t enough – to ensure we extract the most value
from our investment we also need to
– Develop internal communities that align with external activity, which
may involve working with teams in different departments, with
different roles in different divisions
– Coordinate and track who at our firm is engaged, who said what to
whom, who manages what relationships, etc.
– Consider how to get the right information to the right team on an
ongoing basis – as volume increases ad hoc methods won’t scale

The Three Things That Matter Most
• People, people, people
– Research
• Start with the self-defined definition of the group – standard poodle
owners vs. pet-food shoppers
• Not enough to provide business terms, competitive terms – also need to
consider informal terms – what do they call it
– Engagement
• Think of the group, vs yourself, first, and consider how you can be of
service, and provide meaningful contributions
• Commit to “being in sync” with the market – be willing to reconsider
marketing approach, content development and offerings, it can be about
joining and taking their lead

Questions?
• Get more information on Listening 2.0
• Get Converseon’s upcoming free white
paper
• Send an e-mail to: info@converseon.com