Internet World, at 12 Noon, on 29^th April 2009, history wasn’t made. However, there was a panel discussion in a very packed and stifling hot Web 2.0, Social Networking, Usability, Design & Build, Strictly, On Ice, Get Me Out of Here, theatre. If ever there was a perfect venue for spreading Swine Flu, this was it. Anyway, the discussion was entitled "The Future of Social Media" and was designed to offer opinion on how brands can find out what people are saying about them and then outline the things you can do to influence the conversation. But instead of that it turned into a discussion about buzz monitoring, which was ok and interesting. The Panel was made up of two representatives from "social media" agencies; a buzz monitoring technology provider and a brand (Huddle).

So was the session valuable? Did people walk out of there having learnt something? Were they subliminally sold too? (I did notice that the "measurement camp" hypnotism trick made an appearance a few times). Well from our perspective, there were some extremely good tips if you were new and beginning to venture into this area of brand consumer interaction. These tips being:-

• Use the free tools available such as Google Alerts; twitter search; addictomatic (usual suspects)
• If you’re a brand make sure you have someone in the organisation who owns this stuff
• Put in place a system and make people aware of it, spreading the word internally
• If you are working for a major brand consider investing in a “paid for" measurement tool such as Radian6, Attentio & Brandwatch
• Ensure the output you take from the measurement is meaningful to the business, have value and can be understood by all; specifically senior executives
• Buzzwords such as influencer, sentiment and relevance were referred to, but not explained in detail.
• “Sentiment” the underlying feeling and tone of the dialogue needs to be interpreted manually. Human interpretation is key and tools cannot be totally relied upon. We’d agree, and here’s an example of text from us: “We think drivers who wear hats are the best; most aware and courteous drivers on the road today…Not!” (See how important that final word is. Would an automated tool pick up sarcasm?)

The session proved so popular that we’re sure Noel Fielding was in the audience (seriously) and Kojak was on the panel! As one panel member was sucking a lollipop throughout…”who luvs ya baby!” Anyway, and probably more importantly here is what was NOT discussed and should have been:-

• What metrics are important at each stage of the brand engagement journey? From creating awareness to achieving advocacy; there are different metrics to be aware of at each stage, both quantitative and qualitative. Number of followers is one thing…but how about the quality of what is being said and how this may have an impact (+ve or –ve) on your brand. Twitter as an example; number of followers demonstrates "interest"; retweets show something else. An individual RT'ing is happy to place their own credibility on the line and repeat your comment/link.
• Correlating offsite “buzz” with onsite analytics. We believe there is an immense amount of value to be extracted from tracking keywords and phrases from buzz conversation all the way to conversion. Yes…it can be done, it’s not that difficult and it provides an overview of the entire “commitment” phase.
• But it goes further than that. It is just as important to measure the brand experience post commit. Being aware helps improve customer service and promotes advocacy, which can then be fed back into creating more awareness into untapped markets. people buy from people and are influenced more and more by fellow consumers having positive experiences.
• How best to identify and engage with the “influencers” with “authority”. How do you know what is good; what is not so good: when you should engage and when you should ignore. I guess it would be difficult for a panel to discuss this at length as each case needs to be taken on its own merits. This could be a whole blog post on its own.

So in summary, a lot of good initial tips, but probably lacking in depth of detail and not in sync with the brand engagement journey.

Based upon the level of interest at the event and the fact there is much more to be discussed we’d happily share our knowledge with anyone (specifically UK retail brands) who’d like to learn some more, even if the intention is for you, as a brand, to manage this in-house. This can be done virtually or in the real world in an interactive manner. Whatever suits you.

For further information visit us at http://www.somatica.co.uk or

email us at engage-me@somatica.co.uk