Social Media Monitoring and Engagement Specialists - 6Consulting - Radian6

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.

Andy Larks talks about Dell’s marketing strategy and how social media is all important. It should be noted that the listening aspect he repeatedly refers to is via the Radian6 social media monitoring and engagement platform that we here at 6Consulting specialise in.

This is a re-post from the Radian6 Website

With the ease of use of Web 2.0 social media sites consumers are now publishers and broadcasters. They have the ability to share their opinions, needs, complaints, and ideas in a way that is not only immediate but permanently recorded and easily spread. Consumers are no longer whispering amongst themselves. They are shouting from the tops of mountains. They are shouting out to brands.

But are their favorite brands listening to them? And if they are listening are they then engaging in such a way that:

- maintains or grows that brand’s reputation,
- improves a customer’s experience,
- helps someone learn more about a product,
- solves a problem,
- positions properly against a competitor
- delivers valued content
- enables and/or thanks a fan
- encourages participation in that brands future success

But is the act of listening and engaging, in general, good enough? It’s certainly a great start. But the act of embracing the social web in this way begins to create a whole new set of challenges.

For a moment, imagine way back in history when businesses got their first phone. Customers could call them to place orders but they could also call to complain, get help, give feedback etc… So, naturally, departments within companies got phones as well to answer these different types of calls and used a new feature to transfer calls between them. This worked so well that these companies began to grow and with growth came the need to add more phones and more staff. And with more staff meant the need to assign calls to the right people within departments based on skill, availability, language, territory etc… It also meant an increased load at times and a challenge to ensure calls were answered quick enough to maintain or increase client satisfaction. And so it goes. It’s the sophisticated contact centers of today that show us where it can all end up.

Brands listening to and engaging with the social web, or what we like to call, answering the “social phone”, quickly face the same challenges. They are expected to:

- answer or engage quickly because commenting activity usually happens in the first 24-48 hours
- operate in multiple languages and filter content by region so issues and opportunities can be addressed locally
- cover all types of social media be it blogs, forums and opinion sites, picture and video sharing sites, online mainstream news and emerging media like Twitter and Friendfeed
- prioritize by what’s going viral or who’s the most influential in order to be the most effective and efficient
- analyze trends in order to help calculate ROI

So keeping all this in mind, we find it particularly exciting when we get to work with a company that believes in listening and engaging with their community, that shares our vision as to where this is all headed, and that wants to see this become a natural part of any company’s mix of valuable customer channels.

One such company we are excited to be working with is Dell. And it’s through their use of our social media monitoring and engagement platform today that’s helping to generate wonderful feedback as to where to go next (See Dell’s blog post: “Dell and Radian6 - It all starts with listening.” ) Assignment of tasks amongst a workgroup and the ability to track and audit engagements are just a few of these key features.

Conversations about thousands of brands are happening every minute of every day. People are expressing needs, sharing opinions, sharing ideas – hoping to be heard and in many cases, hoping to connect. Dell has decided to be part of the conversation, to assist and to share – and we are proud to be partners in helping make it happen.

What about your company? Can you hear the shouts? And remember – “everyone loves a good listener.”