This document discusses tools for tracking social media buzz and viral activity. It describes several platforms for monitoring mentions across social networks, including Social Mention, Mention.net, and Whostalkin.com. These tools aggregate posts from various sites to track topics and sentiment. Klout is also discussed as a service that measures online influence by analyzing reach and engagement on networks. Businesses are interested in these tools to understand which of their content and communications are most influential in order to improve marketing effectiveness.

1. Chapter 9: Social Buzz and Viral Phenomena: Part D
Web 2.0 and Social
Media for Business 2nd Edition
Roger McHaney, Kansas State University

2. Tracking Social Interest
• Use of social media is inexact
• Creating content and posting it can be controlled but what
happens after is not predictable
• What may happen with postings or community interaction
can be derived by tracking social interest
• Tools have been created to help monitor social media
activity and detect the attitude toward a brand, product, or
organization
• Social interest tools are competing for leadership and use a
variety of approaches
• Each tool provides different social measures

3. Tracking Mentions
Mentions can
be posted to a
service such as
Scoop.It
(www.scoop.it)

4. Challenges of Tracking
Trying to track every social media
mention related to an organization can
be daunting and may not be
completely possible. The combination
of keywords, abbreviations, foreign
language translations and so forth
makes it very hard to anticipate every
way an organization, brand, product,
employee and related entity might be
mentioned by anyone, anywhere.
Budgetary constraints are a reality for all
businesses and impact tracking efforts.

5. Trackable Links Provide Analytics

6. Social Mention
Web site-
based social
media search
and analysis
platform that
aggregates
user
generated
content into a
single stream
of information

7. Social Mention (con’t)
Monitors more than
100 social media
Web sites including
Twitter, Facebook,
Digg, WordPress, G
oogle, and
YouTube. Its sources
come from
blogs, microblogs, b
ookmarks, commen
ts, events, images, n
ews, video, audio,
Q&A, and networks
Social Mention provides
measures of passion, of
whether the mentions are
positive or negative, and
which keywords are most
related to the mentions

8. Mention.net
Mention.net is a
platform for
measuring social
media buzz in
real time. It
downloads to a
PC or Mac rather
than running
from within a
browser.

9. Mention.net
Mention provides a
variety of free and
paid services for
businesses. It
monitors social and
traditional
media, and
provides smart, anti-
noise technology.
Users ‘teach’ system
to ignore particular
types of mentions
that are not of
interest. Mention
provides the ability
to send out live
alerts and to
automate particular
action (e.g.
retweets or
reposting material)

10. Mention.net Web site

11. Whostalkin.com
WhosTalkin.com is a
new social media
buzz search tool.
Permits users to track
topics tailored to
match business
interests. Uses blog
entries, Twitter
mentions, news
stories, images, audio
clips, videos, tags, soc
ial bookmarking
services and other
social media.

12. Klout – Influence Measure
Klout takes a different approach to understanding social buzz by
developing a measure of online influence. It provides insight on the
following (Klout, 2012):
Do others trust your opinions online?
What topics are you the most influential on?
How do you compare with your friends?

13. Klout – Influence Measure
Klout uses metrics from interactions within Twitter, Facebook and
other social media. Then looks at reach (e.g. audience size) and
amplification (e.g. how others reuse and interact with posted
material and tweets) and network (measure of connected
community’s overall influence).

14. Klout
Analysis
Klout provides data regarding connections and allows a business to
understand who they influence or who their competitors influence.
Understanding how online information flows and which sources
provide the most influence becomes possible. This can become
excellent business intelligence that will help guide the direction of
future social interactions.

15. Social Interaction Style

16. Other Measures

17. Other Measures (con’t)

18. Summary
Viral activity can result in a ripple effect where a Tweet is passed in ever-widening circles.
Social media such as StumbleUpon and Reddit can enable even broader exposure to
posted content.
New visual and mobile device focused content can be posted on social media Web sites
such as Tumblr, Pinterest, and Foursquare.
Businesses are interested in understanding viral phenomena and how particular content is
received, discussed, and used by its stakeholders.
Social media buzz measurement tools can provide metrics and benchmarks for determining
the types of posts, comments, videos, and content which exert the most influence.
Tools such as Social Mention, WhosTalkin, Mention, and Klout decipher the complexities of
social media activity and provide a framework to enable businesses to better target their
communications and improve effectiveness.

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Slides Prepared by Professor Roger McHaney
Kansas State University
Twitter: @mchaney
Blog: http://mchaney.com
Email : mchaney@ksu.edu