'Net Features : online marketing strategy

Reputation Management and Monitoring for Everyone

MaureenA — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:03:00 GMT

Social media has turned traditional word-of-mouth on its head. Your customers can broadcast their thoughts of your company, products and their experience with you faster and easier than ever before – and reach a much larger group of people. Traditionally, you could assume that one person would likely tell a handful of people about their positive experience, or 10 people if they had an unpleasant experience. But that has grown exponentially with people broadcasting thoughts to hundreds of Twitter followers and Facebook friends.

So what are your customers saying and where? There are many online resources available that can track what's being said and where. Some resources cover all social media platforms such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc., while others are specific to the social media platform such as only blogs or Twitter. You can choose from management, monitoring or both. Management tools help manage conversations, social networks and other information - adding specific qualities to certain information. Monitoring tools provide you with the conversations and where they are occurring. Below are a handful of online reputation resources ranging from monitoring to managing, depending on your business goals.

WhoLinksToMe: Released in March, this tool analyzes inbound links to your website. The philosophy of this company is that links have replaced traditional word-of-mouth, making online management key to any business’ marketing plan. This is a free Web-based tool that evaluates links in real time. According to the original announcement, the company plans to offer more robust offerings for businesses.

BlogPulse: Produced by Nielsen (one of the most credible data companies), BlogPulse tracks blogs, linking to blogs, trends and conversations. It can tell you the most cited blogs, trends, links, phrases and more. You can add your blog for free to its blog search engine for content syndication and analysis.

TweetBeep: A free tool that also offers premium accounts with additional features, TweetBeep tracks conversations about you occurring on Twitter. You notify keywords or URLs that you want TweetBeep to track and you are notified anytime someone uses those words in tweets. You can set how often you want to be notified of TweetBeeps – making your response to those talking about you faster. For example, last week, Website Magazine received a TweetBeep about a reader who wasn't able to read an article on the website because they thought they needed to buy a pro-level subscription. Website Magazine saw the tweet, and responded quickly to let the reader know she only had to log in to read the articles. Quick response can turn frustration into satisfaction.

StepRep: StepRep is another free tool that monitors what people are saying about you, and helps manage your reputation as well as build it. StepRep can tell you everything from people are talking about you on Twitter to posting photos about you and even videos. In regards to managing, StepRep allows users to syndicate content through its website or add a widget to your site. In addition, StepRep has its own social network site where users can interact with customers.

Trackur: Built by prominent Web professional Andy Beal, Trackur monitors news sites, social media sites, blogs, images, videos and other websites based on your keywords. Trackur results are populated on a dashboard allowing users to add and refine keywords, view trends, and add sentimental tagging. The sentimental tagging allows you to tag items based on positive, negative or neutral sentiment. Trackur has different pricing plans to appeal to individuals and large companies. Pricing starts at $18 per month to $197 per month for the enterprise level.

Human Powered Reputation Management?
CARMA International: This organization looks at online measurement a different way. Instead of software and programs, it uses humans to determine how people are talking about you online. Recently, CARMA updated its methodology as well as introduced three additional features: Social Media Access, Tone, and Customization. Social Media Access allows users to combine social media coverage results with traditional media including blogs, tweets, forums and more. Users can choose to have this coverage display in an interface with the traditional media results or separately. Tone provides users with a rating on the tone of articles which was evaluated by CARMA’s team. And Customization provides users with additional data and charts.

You can take management into your own hands by using WordPress and the WP-O-Matic plugin. In September 2008, Peter Prestipino, editor-in-chief, wrote about his experience setting up the WP-O-Matic plugin to manage and implement campaigns within 30 minutes.

For those looking to read more about online reputations, check out a list of books on the topic.

Do you use an online reputation tool not listed here? Tell us about it below.

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Omniture App Measurement for Facebook

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:30:00 GMT

Omniture has created a new tool designed to measure the popularity and success of Facebook applications. Dubbed App Measurement for Facebook, it utilizes the reporting capabilities of the company's online analytics solution SiteCatalyst. The tool is now available for SiteCatalyst customers and is part of the Omniture Online Marketing Suite.

With App Measurement for Facebook, marketers can better understand their users and their engagement with applications. By understanding the relationships among Facebook, site traffic and online channels, marketers are poised to make a big impact with apps and make make more informed, data-driven decisions for social media.

Brett Error, CTO and executive vice president, products at Omniture says: "With more than 200 million active users, marketers are intrigued by the potential of Facebook to help them connect with consumers in personalized and meaningful ways. Yet the relatively young phenomenon of social media has forced marketers to rely on experimentation to tap into that potential. The App Measurement for Facebook solution will deliver actionable insight concerning Facebook applications and help marketers develop data-driven social media marketing strategies that support and positively affect efforts across other online channels."

Sample of the Application Funnel Conversion Report within Omniture's SiteCatalyst:

Online or Offline Marketing: Having It Your Way

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:15:00 GMT

According to a study released recently by Bredin Business Information (BBI), major marketers targeting small and medium businesses are relying less on traditional marketing tactics, but that's one of the top ways SMBs like to receive product and service information.

BBI conducted two surveys, asking 50 leading marketers about their outreach and research efforts for 2009 and 741 SMBs about their online and offline media preferences, top business concerns and brand ratings.

“Marketers are clearly reacting to the difficult economy by using offline tactics much more selectively. They are also moving online aggressively, to reach SMBs efficiently and learn how to get the most from new media opportunities,” said BBI CEO Stu Richards. “However, our survey of SMBs indicates that business owners are not nearly as enthusiastic about many online formats for business purposes – such as social networking – as marketers are.”

Results from the survey of 50 leading SMB marketers include:

- Overall, marketers are more focused on winning new customers than keeping current ones: 48% said they are balancing their acquisition and retention efforts this year, while 32% are concentrating more on acquisition and only 20% are focusing more on retention.

- Marketers said their biggest challenges in 2009 are funding new projects (24%), growing business with limited resources (15%) and increasing awareness (15%).

- Marketers continue to shift their efforts to the Internet. Offline tactics received an average rating of 2.6 on a scale of 1 (significantly decrease versus 2008) to 5 (significantly increase) while online marketing will increase, with an average rating of 3.5. The online tactics that will grow the most are social networking (3.7), resource centers (3.7) and search marketing (3.6).

- Marketers will spend less on market research in 2009 than 2008, with an overall average score of 2.5. Online surveys (3.5) and online focus groups (3.3) are the only research formats marketers plan to use more in 2009 than in 2008.

Results from the survey of 741 SMBs include:

- As offline sources of information about products and services, SMBs rely most on newspaper and magazine articles (43.6%) and direct mail, including letters, postcards and catalogs (43.5%). Phone calls (27.4%) and radio/TV ads (32%) are least popular.

- Online, referrals from friends and peers are the most popular source of information on products and services (71.9%), followed by search engine marketing (57.0%), educational websites (44.5%) and email newsletters (38.2%). The least popular online formats are ads on cell phones/PDAs (8.1%), videos/podcasts (19.2%) and forums/chat rooms (20.2%). SMBs rated social networking at 27.8%.

- Among the social networks, SMBs rate Facebook highest (19.7%), followed by LinkedIn (15.6%), MeetUp (11.3%) and Twitter (11.2%).

- SMBs' top business challenges include finding new customers (76.5%), managing costs (71.2%) and retaining current customers (51.7%). Ranked lowest are avoiding layoffs (2.9%) and keeping employees productive (3.3%).

- The most important purchase criteria in this economy are high value (61.3%), low price (52.4%) and reliability (35.3%). Least important are buying from a leading brand (1.9%) and having a personal relationship with a vendor (6.0%).

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