Tool Kit for Monitoring Social Network Conversations

There are a plethora of tools out there today for measuring and monitoring the converstaions that are being had online about your brand/company. Companies and agencies are using a mixture of paid for and free services.

Here's a few to get you started. I'll come back and add some more as I find them. And as and when I trial each one, I'll make further recommendations on their use and practicality. I personally use Netvibes to organise all my freelance consultancy clients, as I can set up individual searches and pages for each one.

Paid-for & free social monitoring tools:

Free

1. Google Blog Search - very easy to set up and use, also great to see what competitors are up to. Search using key words.
2. Icerocket
3. Twitter Search - very useful and one I recommend, can set up an RSS feed and add it to your google page of netvibes.
4. Yahoo Pipes
5. BlogPulse
6. BoardReader/Tracker

Paid for

1. Radian6
2. Market Sentinel LiveBuzz
3. Dow Jones Insight
4. Precise Media

SN&CK Media TV launches

SN&CK Media TV has now launched! We have teamed up with Square i Media who have superb high quality filming/editing skills.



Also worth checking out our Forumla 1 FanCast Reporter here

Facebook stays on top in UK with 14.35m users

The latest ComScore data has been released and Facebook is still steaming ahead in the lead of the 3 biggest Social networks! And it has had phenomenal growth between March and April of 7.2%. I am not surprised as I am still a huge fan of Facebook, its superb for keeping in touch with people and knowing what they have been up to.

I am surprised that so many people are still using myspace and bebo though, but am excited to see the developments of social networking platforms that will update all the social network profile at once.

Sarah

Worth a read!

Here are a few industry articles that are well worth a read!

When asked to predict the No. 1 business model in five years, 62% bet on advertising-supported models.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_displa/news/e3i06a73bb9ccfd10cfdaeb508884094ac7

Story Bids - this almost deserves it whole own blog!

http://www.storybids.com/

You can put your content on line and see of anyone wants to pay for product placement - highest bidder wins! We may just have a look at this for FootballFanCast.com!

Bloggers unconcerned by legal pitfalls on-line!

Still the debate rumbles on about the accountability of bloggers and people making comments on web-sites. It doesn't suprise me that only 1/3 of posters have actually read the legal T&C's of the forum they are posting on, it actually sounds quite high to me. Web publishers must take the moral high ground and have some kind of system for moderation or a suitable reporting procedures for unsutiable comments so that they can be removed as soon as possible.

DLP Piper are a digital media law specialist company.

DLP Piper offers some useful legal pitfalls relating to user generated content:

• Defamation: This country has tough libel laws and from the earliest Web 1.0 bulletin boards posters have got into difficulty with defamatory comments -- as have the online services that carry them.
• Offensive messages: There are a range of laws from the Protection from Harassment Act to specific restrictions in the Telecommunications Act that can be invoked.
  
• Incitement: There have been high profile cases relating to terrorism but any encouragement of others to commit unlawful acts can result in prosecution.
• Intellectual property: There is a copy and paste culture online, but using other people's material (whether it's an article, photograph, logo or even another blog posting) can cause problems.
• Linking: Bloggers need to think about what is on their own site, but also keep an eye on the links they provide to other pages (eg to offensive or illegal material).
• Reporting: The law of contempt and other statutory reporting restrictions carry strict penalties if breached.
• Corporate blogging: The legal pitfalls can be even more pronounced in the case of corporate blogs where additional commercial concerns will apply.

FootballFanCast.com launches new Desktop application

FootballFanCast.com has today unveiled its newly launched Desktop application in partnership with Zebtab. We're always looking for new ways to get our content in front of our users and Zebtab is a great, and simple, way to do just that!

The application is a direct-to-desktop rich media channel. Zebtab ensures that football fans now get all the latest real fan news, views, podcasts and opinions direct to their desktop.

To find out more and download it yourself click here

About Zebtab

Described as the ‘turbo- charged widget’ in winning the 2007 Real Business Digital Elite Award, Zebtab is the fast growing desktop content channel that enables media owners to deliver their rich media direct to the desktop of their users, driving awareness, consumption, traffic and ad revenue. Launched late 2006, Zebtab already has over 30 content deals in place, including the likes of Manchester United, Setanta Sports, Maxim and firebox.com

Good news for Podcasters!

Was really pleased to receive this piece of research yesterday. It maybe a small step, but it is still one step closer for podcasters! 68% unaided awareness for ads within a podcast is a great claim!

This quote is spot on... "podcasting delivers a level of end-user engagement that is rare in today’s multi-format world.”

Exert from article below and link to full article.

New data from Podtrac and TNS should help.

The companies studied podcast advertising from February 2006 to March 2008 across multiple product categories and ad types. Unaided awareness for podcast ads was 68%, compared with 21% for streaming video and 10% for television.

“The data suggest audiences are paying close attention to show content and the embedded ads within them which greatly increased ad effectiveness in the studies,” said Doug Keith, president of Future Research Consulting. “The high unaided ad recall figures are no doubt the results of a less cluttered environment.”

“The studies showed a 73% increase in likelihood to use or buy an advertised product," said Velvet Beard, vice president at Podtrac. "The studies showed that 69% of audience members have a more favorable view of in-show advertisers."

“Podcasting is, by its nature, a niche medium, and this is not likely to change," said Paul Verna, senior analyst at eMarketer. "But podcasting delivers a level of end-user engagement that is rare in today’s multi-format world.”

Sarah