This document discusses how companies can use social media for competitive intelligence by monitoring conversations about their industry, competitors, and brand. It provides examples of how companies like United Airlines and Dell have used social media to address customer complaints. The document then outlines specific tools and strategies for listening on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs and forums to gain insights into trends, customers and competitors. It emphasizes the importance of listening in order to effectively engage customers and identifies key metrics for measuring social media exposure, engagement, influence and sentiment, and lead generation.

1. Can Facebook predict the future? Using social media for competitive intelligence David Lakins info@keymultimedia.co.uk www.businesslink.gov.uk/southwest/eventspresentations

2. About Key Multimedia Founded in 2007 Based in Poundbury, Dorchester, Dorset Create Content managed and e-commerce websites Online marketing and website performance Search engine optimisation Pay Per Click Management Article marketing Blog Posting Social networking Content supply 2

3. Agenda How you can use social media to: Monitor what is “hot or not” in your industry sector Keep an eye on your competitors and see what is being said about them Keep an eye on what's being said about you, your business and your brand Look for conversations about trends within your industry Gain valuable insight into your customers' behaviour, buying habits and more Easily manage the data you have collected

4. “Word of Mouth” has always been the most effective form of marketing. People have always trusted their friends opinions…

5. Companies who listen make better friends

6. Word of mouth never stopped being important, but when mass media became popular last century, brands could rely on advertising to broadcast their message at the world and word of mouth didn’t seem as important to some marketers anymore…

7. TV got people’s attention. And trust.

8. You could tell people whatever you wanted, because you knew they were paying attention… Image © Aaron Escobar @ Flickr

9. But the landscape has changed…

10. Ads are everywhere. In fact, people see and hear between 1,000 and 3,000 advertising messages every day… 87,600,000 throughout their lives…

11. New conversations are being powered by Social Networks News & Bookmarking Blogs & Microblogging Video Sharing Photo Sharing Message boards Wikis Virtual Reality Social Gaming Related: Podcasts Real Simple Syndication (RSS)

12. People still watch TV, but they flick through the ads. They read the news online instead of on paper. Recommendations and opinions for every product and service are now available on the Internet.

13. Why use Social Media? For many companies, social media is regarded with a sense of scepticism. However, for the general public, social media has already become a part of their everyday Internet life. The benefits of social media are real, abundant and measureable. Understanding the implications of social networking and this new breed of Internet user is therefore extremely important. 13

14. People obviously still talk to each other face to face, but the INTERNET has allowed conversations to spread at light speed around the globe and be heard by millions within minutes.And the Internet is now the largestmass-communication medium, by far…

15. 13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

16. There are more than 113 million blogs in the world (Source: Technorati)

17. Facebook has more than 500,000,000 users worldwide (Source: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics)

18. Every single second of every single day, Twitter’s 5 million users mention brands they LOVE and HATE. AND Twitter is growing at a rate of 1382% per year (Source: Twitter Search, Forrester Research)

19. There are millions of special interest forums in the UK. The most common forum topics are product reviews and recommendations.

20. Fancy a trip? Check the reviews! 20

21. People are talking about your brand and company right now.

22. Some people like you… Some people don’t…

23. But if you monitor what people are saying…

24. And start engaging your customers.

25. You have an opportunity to make friends like never before

26. Most brands now have a Twitter page and a Facebook account …

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29. But you don’t just want any old friends, you want best friends. And you only get to be best friends by being the best listener…

30. “I would much rather be in front of ten people who are the right people than ten thousand people who aren’t.” – Seth Godin

31. If you are listening – and you know what you’re looking for, how to search and where to run the query – you can begin to better understand your customers, identify new customers and spot emerging social and technology trends. 31

32. Take a look at a few examples of what other companies have been doing and you’ll start to get an idea why…

33. United Airlines Guitar Blunder 10m people have viewed video by Dave Carroll, who penned United Breaks Guitars after his instrument suffered at the hands of baggage handlers. United Airlines eventually paid up!

34. Customer Service: Dell Hell Influential blogger complains. Company reacts, engages him, engages the social media sphere, starts monitoring 1500 blogs a day, talks to people about their issues, gives out personal email addresses for customer service, the influential blogger becomes a fan again, tells everyone. Complaints fall by 16% in the first 6 months.

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38. The Old Days: Just Search 38

39. But Search has expanded 39

40. We now have Mobile Search 40

41. Today: Social Media Matters Too! 41

42. Inbound Marketing 42

43. Social Media Feeds the Funnel & Helps Convert 43

44. Social Media: The Art of Conversations 44

46. Listening to the chatter about your products and services

48. LISTENING

49. How to Get Started 48

50. LISTENING Twitter Facebook Discussion Forums Blogs Google Alerts Google Search Results

51. Simple Listening Tools: Twitter Check Twitter for chatter about your company Use tools like TweetDeck or Twitter Search to monitor conversations about your company in real-time. 50

52. TweetDeck 51

53. Twitter Search 52

54. Set up Google Alerts Check Google Alerts for your company name, products, executives or brand terms. To set this up, enter your search terms in a Google Alert and select to receive updates as they happen or once daily. Now, when people blog about your products, an alert will be sent to your inbox. You can read the articles and respond right away! 53

55. Set up Google Alerts 54

56. Google Reader Use Google Reader to manage your RSS feeds for searches on your company name and industry terms in other social media sites. Similarly monitor LinkedIn and Twitter in your Reader, it will serve as a great place to centralise your other searches too! 55

57. Add the Feeds to Google Reader 56

58. Create Feeds from Twitter 57

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60. How to Add a Feed 59

61. Check Facebook stats Visit your Company Page's Facebook Insights. This can be found under the page's main photo if you are an admin for your page. Scan your active users and interaction stats. Check out your wall posts or new discussions if you have them enabled for your page. 60

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63. Listen to LinkedIn Answer Industry-related LinkedIn questions Search for questions on LinkedIn that you or members of your company can answer. You can set up an RSS feed for specific question categories to go to your Google Reader as well. When you find a relevant question, respond and include a link to your website or a relevant blog post that might be helpful to your audience. 62

64. Add Feeds from LinkedIn Answers 63

65. LinkedIn Signals 64

67. Discussions

69. Google Insights: Check timing & popularity of terms

70. Google Insights: Check folksonomy & regional interest

71. Google Wonder Wheel: explore related searches

72. Advanced Techniques 70

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74. Google Ad Planner: to understand audience behaviours, types of sites visited 72

75. Google Ad Planner: to understand audience behaviours, types of sites visited 73 E.g. Gathering advice from forums and blogs, Socialising on Facebook, Shopping for food and household items, Researching property & holidays, Reading news, Watching TV programmes, Paying bills

76. Complex searches in Twellow Location & bio search, & follow directly on the pageE.g. search ("united kingdom" | UK) ("surfing")

77. How to Monitor Your Social Media Monitoring your social media presence is incredibly important. What should you measure? How effective are the tools out there? 75

78. 4 Things to Measure Measuring Social Media Exposure Measuring Engagement Measuring Influence & Sentiment The Lead Generation Funnel 76

79. 1. Measuring Social Media Exposure How many people could you have reached with your message? In social media, this measurement is about as reliable as a print magazine’s circulation, but knowing your potential audience does have value because it represents your potential sales lead pool. 77

80. 1: Measuring Social Media Exposure Twitter: Look at your number of followers and the number of followers for those who retweeted your message to determine the monthly potential reach. A great free tool to use for Twitter measurement is TwitReach. Facebook: Track the total number of fans for your brand page. In addition, review the number of friends from those who became fans during a specified period of time or during a promotion and those who commented on or liked your posts to identify the potential monthly Facebook reach. Facebook Insights provides value here. 78

81. TwitReach 79

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83. 1: Measuring Social Media Exposure YouTube: Measure the number of views for videos tied to a promotion or specific period of time, such as monthly, and the total number of subscribers. Blog: Measure the number of visitors who viewed the posts tied to the promotion or a specific period of time. Email: Take a look at how many people are on the distribution list and how many actually received the email. 81

84. YouTube 82

85. 2: Measuring Engagement How many people actually did something with your message? This is one of the most important measurements because it shows how many people actually cared enough about what you had to say to result in some kind of action. 83

86. Engagement Encourage people to share e.g. using Addthis or Sharethis Use shorted URL services in order to measure the results 84

87. 2: Measuring Engagement Twitter: Quantify the number of times your links were clicked, your message was retweeted, and your hashtag was used and then look at how many people were responsible for the activity. You can also track @replies and direct messages if you can link them to campaign activity. Facebook: Determine the number of times your links were clicked and your messages were liked or commented on. Then break this down by how many people created this activity. You can also track wall posts and private messages if you can link them to activity that is directly tied to a specific social media campaign. 85

88. HootSuite Stats 86

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90. Facebook Demographics 88

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92. 2: Measuring Engagement Blog: Evaluate the number of comments, the number of subscribers generated and finally the number of times the posts were shared and “where” they were shared (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.). Measure how many third-party blogs you commented on and the resulting referral traffic to your site. If you are using services such as Sharethis bookmarking tool – you will have a dashboard that measures each engagement. Email: Calculate how many people opened, clicked and shared your email. Include where the items were shared, similar to the point above. Also, keep track of the number of new subscriptions generated. 90

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94. 3: Measuring Influence & Sentiment This category gets into a bit of a soft space for measurement. Influence is a subjective metric that relies on your company’s perspective for definition. Look at whether the engagement metrics listed above are positive, neutral or negative in sentiment. In other words, did your campaign influence positive vibes toward the brand or did it create bad mojo? 92

95. Socialmention Filter, subscribe to RSS & export CSV

96. Socialmention for measurement

99. 3: Measuring Influence & Sentiment Influence is generally displayed as a percentage of positive, neutral and negative sentiment, which is then applied in relation to the engagement metrics and to the metrics for reach where applicable. Do you have a nice mix of big players with large audiences engaging with your brand, as well as the average Joe with a modest following? 97

100. Identifying Influencers 98

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103. Twitter grader to find influence path

104. If you want even more Twitter metrics…

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106. Paid for Services http://www.brandwatch.com/ http://www.lithium.com - $299 per month http://www.radian6.com/ - $500 per month http://sproutsocial.com/ - from 9$ per month http://www.trackur.com – from $18 per month 104

107. 4: The Lead Generation Funnel After you’ve measured through the influence portion of the funnel, you’re now creeping into where too many companies are starting their measurement efforts: the lead generation funnel. This is where the brand awareness portion of the funnel ends and the traditional ROI-driven action begins. 105

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109. So can Facebook predict the future? 107

110. Resources www.addictomatic.com – Conversations all in one place http://blogsearch.google.com/ Blog search http://google.com Filter results by Discussions www.google.com/analytics/ - Measure your website’s success http://www.hootsuite.com – Manage your Social Networks in one place http://www.samepoint.com/ Conversation search, buzz http://socialmention.com/ Conversation search, sentiment http://technorati.com/ Blog search and ranking http://www.twellow.com/ Twitter directory http://twitter.grader.com/search Twitter user search and ranking http://www.tweetdeck – Manage Twitter and track conversations

111. Can Facebook predict the future? Using social media for competitive intelligence David Lakins info@keymultimedia.co.uk www.businesslink.gov.uk/southwest/eventspresentations