An open letter slash notice of intent to the social media monitoring/measurement industry.

By , March 3 2010, 11:48 pm 22 Comments

Picture 7 Ok.  Enough.  I am sick of the same conversations about measurement so I decided to get off my butt and do something rather than just roll my eyes and say ‘pass the vodka bottle’.  I am putting together (what I and others) consider to be the mother of all surveys for the big monitoring agencies Radian 6, Meltwater (full disclosure: we use Meltwater Buzz at Kindred), Metrica and pals.  That’s right boys and girls.  I/we’re coming for you.  So get your sentiment analysis in check, get ready to be open about white labeling and spend a few minutes on this puppy.  

This is about taking OFF the kimono not just opening it.  I promise it won’t be your regular ‘do you monitor Twitter’ style affair.

The best part?  Any/all who don’t complete it go on a list.  That’s right, a big fat list of non-compliance and that will look less than stellar or at least that’s the plan.  Should shaming be the way forward?  That’s for greater men to decide.  All I will say is that this should have been done a while back and I’m glad I can be a part of it.  It’s less name and shame and more honest conversation and transparency in the industry than becoming/encouraging a Direct Line style approach.

But enough of my pet peeves, what do you want to know specifically?  What are the tough questions you need answering? Leave a comment or email prweekblog@gmail.com (if you fancy the anonymous route).  

Worked for a company named above or another firm?  Get in touch… the industry needs you.

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  • http://humanvoice.wordpress.com Tom O’Brien

    Hi Paul:

    Hope you do this carefully enough to distinguish between the responsibility of the monitoring provider (data coverage, de-spamming, de-duping) and the responsibility of the user (precise, comprehensive linguistic coding).

    These are both critical and non-trivial.

    Try this as an example. Do a brand search for the competitors in the USA rental car industry. Dollar, Enterprise, Budget, Thrifty and Hertz.

    Good Luck.

    (By the way, what is the correlation between brand mentions and sentiment with any real world effect?)

    Tom O’Brien
    MotiveQuest LLC

  • http://www.radian6.com Amber Naslund

    Hi Paul –

    Tom has a couple of points up there. I’d also love to know more from you about what prompted this in the first place, because it’s certainly clear that the monitoring and measurement space as a whole hasn’t met your expectations.

    If you’re interested in talking about that, let me know and I’d be delighted. You don’t specify what your pet peeves are in your article here, but I’d certainly be interested to hear what you and others think is missing or lacking from our industry – especially the measurement side – that we can help address.

    And as a company, we absolutely value transparency and conversation. We’ve got a super engaged community team all the way up through the executive ranks. So I’ll leave an open invitation here for you or any of your readers to email me directly at amber@radian6.com to ask questions, have conversation, or address anything that’s on your mind regarding our platform, or the industry in general.

    Cheers,
    Amber Naslund
    Director of Community, Radian6

  • http://www.twitter.com/munkyfonkey Paul Armstrong

    Tom – I like your style – let’s bring our heads together and ask these (and other) tough questions – prweekblog@gmail.com.

  • http://www.sysomos.com Mark Evans

    Paul,

    Glad to see your interest in the social media monitoring space. If you’ve got any questions about our technology or would like a demo of our Heartbeat and MAP services, let me know.

    cheers, Mark

    Mark Evans
    Director of Communications
    Sysomos Inc.
    mark@sysomos.com

  • http://www.twitter.com/munkyfonkey Paul Armstrong

    Excellent – thanks Amber – email winging your way shortly. I am happy with the monitoring solutions at Kindred (we constantly keep abreast of updates and new products etc etc / sales pitch sales pitch) but there’s always room for more transparency and comparison. Not sure why this hasn’t been done before now. Or has it? Anyone?

  • http://www.twitter.com/munkyfonkey Paul Armstrong

    Mark – per our emailing – appreciate you reaching out – looking forward to getting the questions/survey together and pushing this forward.

  • http://silverbakk.com Fredrik Stenbeck

    This is a great initiative. There is a trust problem in the market right now. At Silverbakk we are transparent and all up for questions and conversation regarding our product and the market/industry.

    Everyone are more then welcome to send me direct question on fredrik@silverbakk.com or have the conversation here (or other place).

    So please feel free to send me any questions to help out with this topic. There are great products out there and this will help us all.

    Cheers,
    Fredrik Stenbeck
    Founder & CEO
    fredrik@silverbakk.com
    Silverbakk Briefing Room
    silverbakk.com

  • Anon

    Will be interested to see how this works out. Good idea though

  • http://www.twitter.com/munkyfonkey Paul Armstrong

    Thanks Fredrik – you made the list. Loving the transparency guys. Why aren’t there comparison charts on all your websites or am I missing them?

  • http://www.monitoring-bootcamp.com Luke Brynley-Jones

    Hi Paul – I’ve already given you my list of questions, but if you’ve got some results by 31st March I’ll share them with attendees at at Monitoring Social Media Bootcamp. Good luck with it! Luke

  • http://www.Infegy.com Gray Dudek

    Hi Paul,

    We at Infegy are very open to all questions regards our system Social Radar. Please feel free to email me direct on:

    gray @ infegy.com

    and include us in the survey. Agree with the point around trust within the industry and it appears we are all (@Amber @Mark @Frederik) so far looking to help solve this.

    We’ll be at the conference Luke mentions so we look forward to the results being shared there if possible!

    Thanks and speak soon.

    Gray Dudek
    European Managing Director
    Infegy Europe
    http://www.Infegy.com

  • http://ci.biz360.com Maria Ogneva

    Paul,

    I’d like to echo the comments from the other social media monitoring companies that posted below. If you have any questions or hesitations about the space in general and about our technology specifically, I am more than happy to chat, and even bring our CTO on the line to provide a more technical overview. You can reach me by email (mogneva (at) biz360 (dot) com), or via Twitter (@themaria @biz360).

    Look forward to connecting!

    Maria Ogneva
    SM Director, Biz360

    P.S. Biz360 Community is a sentiment measurement and social media monitoring and engagement platform, working with small businesses all the way to large multinational enterprises.

  • http://www.twitter.com/munkyfonkey Paul Armstrong

    I am so glad everyone is up for it this – not sure on timings – we all have day jobs but as soon as I have news to share it’ll be here. No answers on the comparison chart claw swipe?!!

  • http://www.Infegy.com Gray Dudek

    Hi Paul,
    Claw swipe is a bit harsh – I would say you’ve got a valid point. Oddly enough I mentioned such a comparison chart to a colleague today (honestly!) but if only we had the data to do it…
    Maybe via the survey we can deduce one for potential clients to review so they can see which systems ‘do what’ and which systems ‘don’t do what’.
    I’d certainly help out here as there are monitoring tools, engagement tools, planning tools, combinations of the formers, etc, etc…so market education is needed.
    I for one do not want and have never taken on a client who gets, or would get, zero value from our service by buying into the wrong tool/system/product for their objectives – it’s a short relationship and also simply tempting bad tool reviews!

    Openess = honesty = trust & that’s what we are aiming to solve here, yes?

    Thoughts?

    Gray Dudek
    European Managing Director
    Infegy Europe
    http://www.Infegy.com

  • http://www.twitter.com/munkyfonkey Paul Armstrong

    Thoughts? Are you available for children?!! I am just THRILLED everyone is so open to laying their cards on the table and having me prod/poke and point fingers.

    Bring on the transparency. You are integral part of the industry and everyone needs better understanding to move everything forward. Appreciate all the good will. More to come!

  • http://www.yomego.com Joe Hughes

    As well as getting a good data provider it is essential that you have good human analysis of the results. There are and will continue to be issues around sentiment involving the use of slang and sarcasm which can muddy the waters when it comes to results.

    Also the data is only half the battle knowing what the data means and what to do with it vital, without this you could have the best tool in the world but it would still be useless.

    Would love to discuss this subject more if you are going we will be at the social media world forum.

  • http://www.yomego.com Steve Richards

    Yep – good time for a definitive guide. To echo Joe Hughes’ sentiments – stats are great but it’s insight and pragmatic recommendation that clients need, in tune with their wider marketing strategy. Yomego’s Social Media Reputation audits interpret a range of metrics from various tools then provides a relevant critique and index score out of 100, shown in context alongside scores for competitors. We’re running a workshop at the Social Networking World Forum – sure to be a lively debate!
    Steve Richards
    MD, Yomego – social media agency

  • http://www.metrica.net/measurementmatters Kristin Wadge

    Great initiative Paul! Here at Metrica we’re excited about lifting the veil and defogging the smokey mirrors. Social media measurement is central to comms decision making and non-tranparent systems are a threat to the whole industry. Bring on the conversation!
    Kristin Wadge
    Director, Metrica

  • http://www.grapevine-consulting.com Darika Ahrens

    Things I’m interested in:
    - How do you help set-up effective keyword searches?
    - Do you breakdown results by region?
    - How do you limit Spam
    - Do you use any influence or measurement rankings? How do they work?
    - Can agencies create watch lists e.g. lists of influencers, track communities outreached to
    - If you auto measure sentiment is there a way agencies can manually allocate sentiment? Does your software learn from this?
    - Is your offering built on another software that you license?

  • http://www.spiral16.com Eric Melin

    Hi Paul-
    We’re in as well. We always welcome newcomers to our online listening and visualization platform. You can contact me directly at eric.melin@spiral16.com or below on Twitter.
    thanks,
    Eric Melin
    Communications Manager
    @Spiral16

  • http://silverbakk.com Fredrik Stenbeck

    Since I commented earlier, this is a great initiative, but we also need to take it further then just a list of us telleng everyone reading this that we are listening and want to be transparent.

    Paul, your are mentioning something like a survey in your post and many of us have agreed to take part in something like that, it is possible to take it to the next step so that we can be a part of actually help and contribute to those looking for a partner in monitoring and analyzing the social web.

    Please feel free to contact me for ideas or suggestions. (fredrik@silverbakk.com)

    Best Regards,
    Fredrik Stenbeck

    Co – Founder & CEO
    silverbakk.com

  • http://www.twitter.com/munkyfonkey Paul Armstrong

    Thanks Fredrick – send any questions/comments (this goes for all readers etc) to prweekblog@gmail.com and I’ll include them in the survey.