Advanced Listening

Great responses to yesterday’s post, mostly off-blog (let’s get with the program people…)

Uncovered the Mack-Daddy / Daddy-Mack of social media monitoring and analysis tools, in the form of Nathan Gilliatt, a.k.a., the Net-Savvy Executive.

Just some of the great stuff on this blog:

• The definitive list of free monitoring tools, at least as of May
• An open source monitoring platform, which I had no clue about
• A special section on social media analysis for workgroups
• A thoughtful classification of competitors in this space
• A for pay report (for you? $595) profiling the 63 top players in this space.

Worth reprinting, this excellent post on the deeper nature of listening online:

Listen to your market
Following conversations about your market—what people are saying about your company, its products and its people—should be your first step in social media. Before you try to engage your market in social media, find out what is already happening. Then, don’t stop. You need to know…

• Who is talking about you, and who is paying attention to them? You must understand the people.
• What are they saying (You knew this one)? Individually and collectively, what are they talking about?
• Where do the conversations happen? Is it in blogs? Communities or social networks? Product reviews? Which sites, specifically? What are the norms on those sites? What else is happening there?
• How do they talk about you? What’s the tone of the conversation?
• Why are they talking? Based on what you learn about the people, what motivates them? If there’s a complaint, is it someone looking for help, or is it just a rant from a critic who will not be satisfied? Can you tell the difference?

Good stuff.

Tagged as: Monitoring