Deck from my talk @ Leeds Met on social media monitoring March '11.

1. WTF is social media monitoring?
Anthony, Wolfstar Consultancy

2. Contents
• Introduction
• What is social media monitoring and why do
it?
• Procedure
• Free tools
• Paid tools
• Wolfstar case studies: brand sentiment,
smart monitoring and crisis
communication.
• Questions?

3. All about me….
• Intern at Wolfstar Jan 2010.
Refused to leave and became
Account Executive in May 2010
• Clients: first direct, SunGard
HE, Sony Ericsson, Yorkshire
Building Society,
GlaxoSmithKline, Smith &
Nephew, Lee Cooper and
Blackburn with Darwen Council
@ajdevenish
• Responsibilities: account
handling, strategy and
implementation
anthonydevenish.com

4. What is Wolfstar Consultancy?
An independent public relations
consultancy specialising in global,
European and UK social media and
communications

5. What is social media monitoring?
It’s nothing new!
– observing people in areas they
feel comfortable in, gives insight
into influencing factors and
behaviour

6. But seriously, what is it?
• Analysing the way people talk, and act within
the social space
• Tracking the course of these conversations
• Identifying influencing factors and mapping
the relevant zeitgeist
• Actioning and using the conversation data
where appropriate

7. Why social media monitoring?
• Then: markets are
conversations
• Now: conversations
can become markets
Hugh Macleod, cartoonist

8. But seriously, why?
• See what customers, potential customers
and other stakeholders are saying
• Gauge market feedback, desire and need
• Gain actionable insight from these
conversations to make improvements to
products, customer service, marketing
• Discover sites, blogs for outreach.
• Early warning and chance to comprehend a
crisis before it goes mainstream

9. Procedure
Audit mapping
On-going
Crisis comms

10. Free tools

11. Links
• http://www.google.com/alerts
• http://boardreader.com/
• http://www.socialmention.com/
• http://search.twitter.com/
• http://www.icerocket.com/

12. Free tools worth my while?
• Yes- good for gauging a basic sense of
brand sentiment. But they’re often:
– Incomprehensive
– Simple, automated algorithms
– Unreliable in isolation
– Limited historical archives
– Time consuming

13. You get what you pay for right?

16. Money well spent?
• Paid tools:
– Pros:
• Information presented simply, and aesthetically
• Comprehensive detail levels
• Many algorithms are based upon academic theory
• On-going support from providers
– Cons:
• Very expensive
• Takes time to become competent
• Real-time is more expensive and often unavailable
• They all say: ‘we can prove ROI’!

17. There’s no substitute for…
• Human analysis!
– Common sense
– Applying logic
– Judging sentiment
– Knowledge of client, sector and context
• It involves…
– Manually collecting and analysing data
– Recording on spreadsheets
– Turning into graphs
– Many agencies have in-house processes

18. People who explain it better than I just
did…
• http://mashable.com/
• http://www.engagingtimes.com/ (Alterian
Blog)
• http://monitoring-social-media.com/
• http://www.philipsheldrake.com /

19. Any questions?