Social Media Monitoring and Engagement Specialists – 6Consulting – Radian6

LEADERS IN UK PUBLISHING AND MEDIA TO GET TOGETHER TO DEBATE THE IMPACT OF TWITTER ON THEIR BUSINESSES

Media140 will be the UK’s first micro-blogging event, bringing together the worlds of print, broadcast, online and social media together to debate and discuss the impact of new micro-blogging services such as twitter and how they are changing how news is being sourced and consumed.

The non profit event to be held at Iris Digital on the 20th May is being sponsored and supported by Sky News, Telegraph, Iris Digital, Sun Microsystems, 6Consulting, Tweetmeme, Winston & Strawn Bootlaw, Times Online, Capital Business Media and Gorkana.

With speakers from mainstream media including BBC, The Times and Sky and their new media counterparts from Frontline Club and TechCrunch with a number of respected technology critics, commentators and academics scheduled to attend.

This event shows how the industry is starting to look across commercial boundaries to debate the impact of emerging trends such as twitter as the advertising and publishing markets feel the strain of the recession.

Early bird tickets are available from £35 at  www.media140.com

“Being part of this is important as it is an opportunity for us to discuss what twitter and similar services will mean for industry going forward. Critical to that is that this event is independent and non profit allowing a neutral platform for discussion.”

“The twitter storm is with us and I had originally planned to run this event informally to raise money for Mencap as part of a charity run. As I started to talk to colleagues in the industry it started to grow organically and has shown how the industry is keen to debate these trends early and find ways to empower their businesses rather than shy away from them. ”

“Twitter is and will continue to be one of the central tools we use to locate, engage and collaborate with clients, the industry and subject matter experts.  From a news resource to a customer service platform, Twitter and similar services are set to continue there meteoric rise.  We are pleased to be a part of this important event.”

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is the world’s largest humanitarian organisation, providing assistance without discrimination to people affected by disasters and conflicts. In conjunction with UK-based 6Consulting, this non-profit organisation has selected Radian6 as its social media monitoring platform.

‘Our world. Your Move.’ addresses challenges ranging from conflict and mass displacement to climate change, migration and global financial crisis. It is now celebrating 150 years since the battle of Solferino, where young Swiss businessman, Henry Dunant, took action to organise civilians to help thousands of wounded soldiers.

The International Federation will use Radian6 to help it find, and take part in, online conversations revolving around humanitarian related topics. This will allow it to directly connect campaign messages with the people that are discussing key and relevant issues online, on a global basis.

Additionally Radian6’s real-time monitoring capabilities, will help the campaign team to quickly spot emerging crises or new issues trending across the world, something that is a huge undertaking without a specialised service. Radian6 will automatically collect conversations of interest to the International Federation, pointing and tracking viral and influence metrics, allowing them to be quickly classified, analysed, sent to specific campaign members and where necessary, responded to.

Paul Taylor, Managing Director of 6Consulting, understands the value of the work carried out by International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. ‘We are very pleased to be involved with an organisation that provides such essential assistance to vulnerable people in desperate times,” he says. “We are proud to be supporting this cause and look forward to furthering its efforts throughout the ‘Our world. Your move.’ campaign cycle and beyond.’

“We know that global communities are passionate about humanitarian issues,” says Zach Abraham, Campaign Manager for the International Federation. “That’s why it’s so important for us to explore every possible channel of communication and to connect with people that want information or to find ways to work with us.”

“Social media is becoming an increasingly important tool. We know it provides opportunities to contact people who it would previously have taken a lot of effort and ingenuity to find.  Working with 6Consulting and Radian6 means we can be instantly alerted to conversations that revolve around relevant issues. This will provide us with a great opportunity to help our community find the resources and information it needs.”

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About the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

Founded in 1919, the International Federation comprises 186 member Red Cross and Red
Crescent societies, a Secretariat in Geneva and more than 60 delegations strategically located to
support activities around the world. The Federation’s vision: We strive, through voluntary action,
for a world of empowered communities, better able to address human suffering and crises with
hope, respect for dignity and a concern for equity.

For more information on the ‘Our world. Your move” campaign, which is done in coordination with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), visit online at http://ourworld-yourmove.org.

All 6Consulting’s work is underpinned by a passion for social media.

Editors’ contact:
Sarah James, 6Consulting
Phone: +44 (0) 207 923 5616
Email: sjames@6consulting.co.uk
Website: www.socialmediamonitoring.co.uk
Twitter : @6consulting

6Consulting expands to new City office

6Consulting, a leading social media monitoring company which brings the Radian6 platform to the UK, announced today that it has relocated its headquarters to a new City of London-based office.

“The move is the direct result of expansion within the company and is an important milestone for our business,” says 6Consulting Managing Director, Paul Taylor. “We had reached a critical mass and needed a new location that can accommodate our growing team and better serve our customers by being in central London.”

The City office features the latest technology for collaboration with 6Consulting’s customers and partners, including a dedicated training facility which has been designed for both client and staff demonstrations. During training sessions, clients can explore the full benefits of the powerful Radian6 platform and related 6Consulting services.

CEO, Matthew Brazil, adds, “We can now fully demonstrate the value we bring to our clients through the social media industry. We could not have taken 6Consulting to the next level without the incredible support our customers have given us and the hard work of the talented 6Consulting team.”

The office also provides a workspace for employees that enhances the flow of ‘real-time’ information that clients are increasingly requesting. Brazil concludes: “This high-quality workspace will help us continue to attract and retain the most qualified talent in the industry.”
6Consulting’s new address is 74 Backchurch Lane, London, E1 1LX
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About 6Consulting:

By combining an understanding of different business departments with innovative technology skills, 6Consulting is enhancing the ‘Social Media Monitoring and Engagement’ projects of many leading brands worldwide.

6Consulting helps brands listen to conversations in social media. It does this by providing access to its carefully selected SaaS (Software as a Service) partner Radian6, helping agencies and corporates conduct complicated interrogation seamlessly on large data volumes. The Radian6 system operates in ‘real-time’ and the user experience is enhanced by its award winning design, all of which sets Radian6 apart from the competition.
All 6Consulting’s work is underpinned by a passion for social media.

Editors’ contact:
Sarah James, 6Consulting
Phone:        +44 (0) 207 923 5616
Email:        sjames@6consulting.co.uk
Website:    www.socialmediamonitoring.co.uk
Twitter    :    @6consulting

Social media monitoring and engagement specialist, 6Consulting, is offering a Brand Audit service to companies curious about their social profile. Powered by the Radion6 platform, 6Consulting’s service is set to provide both business-to-business and consumer companies with a means of listening to, and engaging directly with, existing and potential customers via social media networks.

“Whatever industry sector you are in, social networks are becoming an increasingly powerful medium,” says Paul Taylor, Managing Director and Co-Founder of 6Consulting. “We can help brands ‘listen’ to ongoing conversations that can have a direct impact on their business.

“We do this by providing access to our carefully selected SaaS (Software as a Service) partner, Radian6. Working with our clients to ensure that the service is specifically targeted to their needs, we actively monitor all forms of social media including blogs, video sharing and social networks, forums, opinion and review sites, image sharing sites, microblogging platforms, online mainstream media and others as social tools advance. All of our work is underpinned with a passion for social media.”

Based on the volume of commentary and general sentiment monitored, companies can quickly decide whether or not to pursue social media as a channel to reach customers, as well as help to realign any anomalies in brand perception that may become apparent.

“Brand Audits are becoming extremely popular,” continues Taylor. “Organisations new to social media receive a quick but comprehensive, summary of where their brands, products and services are within the social web. It is also an extremely useful tool to help companies manage their brand image on an ongoing basis.”

Radian6 has already seen success in the electronics industry, one of the most ‘buzzed about’ and anticipated topics online. Professional and domestic users alike are continually discussing brands, products and services online in their hundreds, and the audience reading this commentary on a monthly basis runs to several thousands.

One company that has used social media monitoring to great effect is computer giant DELL, which took up the opportunity to not only to monitor the buzz online prior to a product launch, but to hear how the community drove the conversation, its expectations and anticipation.

DELL was able to strategically add to the online conversation with bits of product information or corrections about misinformation. It was careful, however, to allow the conversation to happen as organically as possible. As the programme developed and the reports were returned, DELL learned that its product held a distinct competitive advantage.

“By setting up topic profiles on both Inspiron-related keywords and those of competitor’s products, we learned that customers who were contemplating a purchase of a mini notebook were foregoing competitor’s products in favour of waiting for the new Dell Mini 9,” says Geoff Knox, Supervisor, Global Operations for DELL’s Community Team.

Before the Mini 9 was officially released, mentions of the notebook averaged about 200 posts a day up until the month before the launch. Using the Radian6 topic trend graphs, DELL saw a steady increase in mentions during the 30-day lead-up, and during the week before the release, with mentions spiking at around 2,000 per day. “Monitoring the social web allowed us to join the conversation in a completely relevant way,” says Knox.

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About 6Consulting

6Consulting has evolved from a management consultancy background. Its experience comes from integrating software systems across sales, marketing and customer service departments for some of the world’s leading corporate organisations.

By combining an understanding of different business departments with innovative technology skills, 6Consulting are enhancing the ‘Social Media Monitoring and Engagement’ projects of many leading brands worldwide.

Solution partner brings local support to the UK market while providing more focused, regional guidance with social media monitoring, engagement strategy and tactics.

Radian6 has officially unveiled 6Consulting as an Authorised Solution Partner to provide local sales, support and training services to the UK market. Read More…

Saturday is a strange old day! for some reason a sense of calm and a time for reflection descends upon many.  I guess in today’s world any day the markets are closed is a good day, less headlines of economic woe, bank catastrophes or whole countries hitting the wall!

The burning questions for many are how bad will it get? will our business survive? will I keep my job?  Economic downturns, although negative,  do have plus points.  Think about it, as pricing for travel goes up people drive less which means less petrol, less emissions and a respite for our planet.  Less flights overseas which means more audio and video conferencing a plus for companies in this space and of course better for the environment, less train travel which is good for anyone that suffers a daily commute having to stand squashed into a large tin can!

There are ways to win in an economic downturn, it affords us the opportunity to restructure our businesses and focus on that which is important, ‘ROI’.  I watched a great video from Gary Vaynerchuk yesterday on ROI, a truly inspiring chap, perhaps we should get him to give traders and shareholders a pep talk before the markets open on Monday!?

ROI – Return on Investment.  A hugely important question to ask around any activity a company performs.  So if you are in marketing put all of your upcoming campaigns on the table and for each one ask these questions:

1. What is the purpose of this campaign?
2. Who are we targeting?
3. Can we measure the effectiveness of this campaign?
4. Will this campaign generate revenue? how will you know any revenue increase is due to your campaign?
5. Does this campaign make the job of selling easier and more effective?
6. Can I show definite ROI figures?

These are general questions, businesses should be asking many more but If you can’t answer these simple questions with any clarity then stop what you are doing!  Build campaigns that are trackable, measurable and most importantly show an ROI.

What other questions should businesses be asking?

Two weeks ago I had the worst case of MANFLU! anyone has ever had. Or at least that is how it felt, it was much worse than the strain of flu either my wife or children had suffered from but thankfully I have survived and feel much better.  Throughout this illness I started to wonder just how many other people were in my predicament.  With that thought in mind I fired up Radian6, created a topic profile to search the social sphere for conversation threads around ManFlu!

Almost immediately I felt better, hundreds of other people were actively talking about their ailments.

1. Blogs – 579
2. Tweets – 201
3. Videos – 8
4. Images – 11
5. Mainstream News – 8
6. Forum Discussions – 180

You can see from the trend graph below that up until 24th September we moved along at about 10 mentions per day then it exploded peaking on October 2nd.

There is a great opportunity here for ‘Flu Remedy Purveyors’ to listen, learn, engage and help!

For those of you reading this that are not quite sure just how bad ManFlu is, please watch the short video below.

As a business 6Consulting have moved away from the traditional pick the telephone up and bash it sales model. Trust me, from an ‘X’ Sales Director this has been quite the leap for me. OK I instigated it and created the model, but convincing others it is a superior sales model has not always been easy. Read More…

Listen, Learn, Personalise, Engage, Communicate all words used at the Tory party conference. In fact everything I have seen so far not just in politics but business and life in general over the past few weeks/months is pointing towards the need to listen to conversations (I did think we were already doing this!).  If listening is important, understanding how, when, where and on what level to engage is equally as important.

It is no secret that I am an avid follower of politics and have a love/hate relationship with the political establishment.  Indeed not long before I started 6Consulting and throughout its first 12 months I seriously toyed with the idea of giving up business altogether and heading into politics but I still keep my hand in as the Vice Chairman of our area association having regular meetings with District, Local and Parish councilors, property developers and holding a number of public meetings.  For as long as I can remember I have fought for local people to have a voice in shaping their community and for open, honest, transparent dialog from councilors to the public they serve.  It has to be said it is this quest for openness and transparency that perhaps restricted me being appointed as a local parish councilor as the old, somewhat set in their ways hierarchy did not like my idea of being open!

So over the last month or so I have watched with morbid fascination the different political party conferences whilst working (gotta love technology!) from UKIP, Liberal, Labour and now Tory. My days have had a mix of nodding in agreement and shouting at the PC (well live stream actually) saying ‘Is it really that hard to listen?’, is it really that difficult to understand that we live in a different more connected world now.  Social media, the internet and all of the clever, exciting new platforms it has brought us are not a cure all for everything, but what they have given us is the ability to make our voices heard and connect with likeminded communities in a quest to discuss issues, ask questions and proffer advice.  Like I said ‘Online’ is not a cure all and I do have concerns that our youth can only speak in abbreviation and that technology has caused them to have an underdeveloped communication lobe.  However, conversations online have huge, monumental importance to each and every one of us. Conversations in the social sphere have:

1. Influenced my purchasing decisions
2. Accelerated my learning
3. Connected me with a smaller world
4. Recommended solutions
5. Made me money
6. Given me a platform to be heard
7. Amplified my voice.
8. Shaped my business.
9. And much much more

Do we really need to make the case for listening? Surely it is a standard business philosophy? Isn’t it where we get phrases such as ‘Voice of the customer’ and ‘The customer is always right’ from? Surely every business understands the need to listen why else would we have focus groups and market research? So we understand how to listen right? Or have we built a set of rules on listening? If you run a focus group it is on a small cross section, we take the figures and extrapolate them, we do the same with surveys.  We have these things called ‘Think tanks’ or as we like to say ‘Me tanks’ that guide decisions on everything from product packaging to the latest crazy political idea.  Businesses and politicians have become so used to listening to the few and making decisions for the many that the wisdom of crowds has been lost.

At the same time as focus groups and ‘Me Tanks’ started to run out of steam, importance or relevance so Social Media began its rise.  Businesses and Politicians now have an unprecedented never before seen opportunity to really listen, to gauge the mood, feelings and ideas of the crowd.  So it amazes me that people talk of listening but actually do it through ear muffs! Giving us lots of uh huh, ummm, like it, very interesting noises but then do nothing, nothing! with what they have learned.

So it would seem that we DO need to educate business and politics on the art of listening but most importantly once you have listened, dissected, analysed and graphalised (that’s a made up word!) that information you need to engage.  Yes, that’s right join the conversation.  I said join! Not control, manipulate or try to bury. So here are 5 things to get you started.

1. Listen – but listen to more than one person, stop extrapolating so much!
2. Learn – what is being said, why is it being said
3. Analyse – Do your dissecting, putting into boxes and graphalising here.
4. Participate – that’s right, get involved, have a conversation but please try not to control.
5. Co create – why not take a leaf out of lego’s book and co create with your community, it could be fun, save you a ton of cash / make you a ton of cash!

The above is not a complete list, it’s a snapshot, a fraction of the things you need to do, but please, at the very least begin the listening process.

I gave a speech at CaMedia last week on Conversations in the Social Sphere. I say speech it was more of an extended Q&A session where the audience participated rather than just spectated. We discussed what Social Media is, the numbers using it and why businesses should be listening and engaging.  A number of very interesting points were raised about listening namely that Social Media Monitoring can look a little like eaves dropping, snooping or bugging peoples conversations.  One comment was “what concerns me about social media monitoring is the concept of listening to peoples conversations, it’s a bit like sitting in a restaurant talking about Tesco’s and how messy or expensive the products are and turning round to see a Tesco employee with a clip board taking notes”.  I understand the fear people have about being spied on and the very mention of a political party using social media monitoring certainly worried the audience.  However, we all enter into conversations online clear in the knowledge that what we are doing is open, transparent and searchable by anyone.  Indeed the reason many of us engage in social media communities is to gauge opinions and thoughts of others.  We actually want our voices to be heard.  So rather than social media monitoring being big brotherish or Orwellian it is an application we the public should expect big business to have.  We want to use our megaphones and force businesses to meet us at OUR point of need, we are demanding a new channel in customer experience management. I am fed up with pressing 1 for sales, 2 for support and so on.  What I want to do is talk about it with my community and have a customer service rep contact me.

So, let’s see who is listening? I want everyone to reach out via whatever social platform you use, complain about products and services you are unhappy with and praise the ones doing a good job then see who answers the social phone.

I’ll start with BT.  You promised me a new Wireless Hub (the sleek black one 2.1 I think) and all you sent me was the hub phone.  Your customer service is so poor and it takes me on average 20 minutes to actually get through all of the press this or that nonsense that I am reaching out via my blog, please answer this social call.

‘Radian6 – Social Media Monitoring and Engagement Platform’

I am often asked what Social Media Monitoring is.  It is also given other names such as

- Social Media Metrics
- Social Media Measurement
- Social Media Analysis

and so on…

We like to call it ‘Social Media Monitoring AND Engagement’ as the monitoring element is not the end of the story.  If you wish to monitor mentions of your brand, product or service this is relatively simple to do.  A plethora of tools are available that can help you ascertain your ‘Mention Metrics’ but the real question is not just monitoring, it goes further, deeper and wider than that.  Engagement in the conversation is key.

So where do you start with social media monitoring and engagement.

1. Understand what it is you wish to measure

Many agencies will tell you to measure the amount of mentions for your brand and the sentiment towards it.  That’s a great thing to understand but there is more, much more, such as:

- Your competitors - what are they doing and saying, what are people saying about them.

- Your customers – they have a voice, and often want to be heard:

- Compliments
- Complaints
- Concerns
- Suggestions

- Your potential customers – who is your product relevant to? what would they be discussing, what pain does your product/service/application solve.

- Your content – Yes you should be searching for copyright infringement

- Your industry – you are not the only one doing what you do!

2. Select a Social Media Monitoring tool

Lots of tools exist and over a period of time we have reviewed most of them.  This is the part where we become very biased! 6Consulting are a UK focused Radian6 Solutions Partner, with that in mind we are of course going to recommend Radian6 as the platform of choice.  Things to remember when selecting a tool:

- Real time monitoring
Real time analysis of social media interactions is possibly the most important factor.  Social Media never sleeps, it is 24 hours a day 365 days a year.  If someone mentions my business, product. service or industry I want to know about it in real time, not tomorrow.  If using social media monitoring in a customer service capacity what good is finding a complaint made 24 or 48 hours earlier? you need to know immediately, have a process for engagement and a tool to monitor it.

- Feed Farm
How much of the Social Sphere does you social media monitoring tool search? and if it does not pick up something which you know exists you must have the ability to add that source to the system on the spot, not through a support system or by making a telephone call.

- The ability to determine sentiment – not computer generated but with human intervention!
Sentiment analysis has considerable debate surrounding it.  What is important to consider is ‘Context’. I can think of numerous sentences that a computer sentiment engine would determine as negative, but in my native tongue it means the opposite.  Computer generated sentiment analysis is not full proof, you must have the ability to alter it based on human interpretation.  As an example the word ‘BAD’ would be segmented as negative, how often have you heard it used in a positive way?

- Flexibility
Any good system will enable YOU to decide what to monitor, how to monitor it.  If you have a lightbulb moment and want to search on something you need the flexibility to do it, not have to pick up the phone and call your consultant!

- Reporting
It must have a reporting facility, you need to be able to export in PDF, CSV, XML or other.

- Web Based – SAAS (Software As A Service)
Self explanatory, you don’t want a system installed, you want to be able to access it from anywhere and let someone else deal with hosting, reliability, infrastructure.

- Consultancy Independent
Many applications for social media monitoring need a consultancy to do the work, when selecting a platform ensure the system has the potential to be ‘Consultancy Independent’ i.e you have the flexibility to set up and change how the system works and don’t require an outside source to do this.  Of course, some of you may not have the internal bandwidth/manpower/resource to monitor social media and you may decide to work with a consultancy and that’s fine, but have access to the system yourself as well.

That’s enough for you to digest in this post, part two in this series is going to take a look at the rules of engagement, your suggestions and comments are welcome.