ThoughtBuzz

Did you know that ThoughtBuzz’s influencer identification framework focuses on measuring Relevance, Reach, Resonance.

At ThoughtBuzz we believe that influence has multiple parameters. It is not only about fans & followers, but also about the ability to connect with the audience via relevant content & on an ongoing basis.

The importance of location based data has grown tremendously over the last few years. Mobile apps, search engines are all clamoring to provide hyper local data to consumers. ThoughtBuzz had made a decision very early in the company’s days to provide customers with region specific data. Services such as Twitter make it easy to provide geo coded data but blogs, forums news websites etc are very difficult to identify on an automated basis. Imagine for eg., that you are running a campaign in Indonesia for a car manufacturer. Apart from the top blogs or forums you would definitely want to know where else has the campaign been discussed. At this stage getting location based data becomes very important.

All the major search engines provide this data to a certain extent but its limited. Identifying region specific blogs, forums etc. is both a manual and automated process. ThoughtBuzz has been providing country specific indexes for more than 3 years and continuously builds on this capability. Through automated crawlers and analysts we are able to pinpoint the exact location of a website even when there is no identifiable information provided. The result of all this region specific relevant and high quality data for our users.

Whenever I talk about social media monitoring to clients, colleagues, I always feel that it starts and ends at Facebook and Twitter. There is a treasure trove of data on blogs, forums which remains unused. Bloggers are confined to writing about events, launches and the occasional rant. I have hardly seen any company taking an active interest in tracking forums and using that platform to achieve any business objective.

It’s understandable considering the press coverage given to Facebook and Twitter and their massive user bases. But that still doesn’t mean you can forget the traditional social media (even if that’s a word). One of the reasons Facebook and Twitter have been so successful in attracting businesses is due to fixed policies. One may not agree with all their policies but it sure gives businesses some level of comfort. In contrast, blogs and forums don’t have any such standards or policies and given that there are a myriad of blog platforms such as blogspot, wordpress it gets even more difficult. A business trying to advertise on a blog has to come up with different ways for each platform. Same goes for forums as well. This limits their attractiveness to any company. In contrast, Facebook and Twitter provide a standard way to reach their entire user base. This is a big plus for companies looking at advertising on social media.

However not all is lost. Blogs and forums can provide immense insights if tracked and analysed the right way. Forums are even tougher than blogs to crack. There hasn’t been much innovation in forum software and as such it’s a challenge to extract data from them. But forums are the right platform to have deep discussions. Any person or company monitoring social media would do good to include atleast some forums in their tracking.

The recent Bodyform saga (read more here http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-feminine-hygiene-bodyform-facebook-20121017,0,6383251.story) has taught us that companies can use multiple platforms to respond to their customers. Don’t be afraid to respond on forums or blogs. Most companies respond only on Facebook and Twitter. You can connect blogs and forums to your Facebook Fan pages and respond directly from Facebook on these platforms. Starting a community could be even better. It lets your most die-hard fans to discuss on a deeper level than Facebook or Twitter allow. And it can help you in understanding consumer psyche and behavior.

Social Media monitoring is not just about Facebook and Twitter. Other platforms can provide as many if not more insights and lead to happier customers. 

The following post was featured on Mediavataar. you can view the full post here. 

In this series, let’s focus on Twitter strategy.

Do you really care about Follower/ Follow Ratio these days ? The strategy doesn’t hold good these days to just follow for the sake of it if you have no intention of reading what they say. Don’t fake it !

But what really would matter is the total number of retweets. A great way to measure efficiency and value provided and people voting with their clicks - an all in one metric is # of Retweets per Thousand Followers

Follower Retweet% is also a great metric to identify if you are appealing to a larger community than your own.

A myth that this series aims to break for all those aiming to move ahead is that Twitter is not a broadcast channel. It’s not like TV/ Radio/ Magazine Ads or Press Releases. It’s a conversation channel where an audience relevant to your brand engage in a conversation with you. You may want to re-read the next line.

Twitter is not for pitching. Twitter is not for pitching. Yes, that’s written twice because it cannot be emphasized enough. Many people make the blatant mistake of promoting and pitching on Twitter. That’s the first step to signing off your twitter death. Twitter is for enriching the value of the ecosystem by participating, the key here is PARTICIPATING!

In our last series, we spoke about various Klout metrics. We can choose the metric reflecting the twitter strategy and monitor progress using that to ensure the strategy is a success. Every individual/ brand’s strategy is different and there is no one shoes fit all!

Have you taken the time to look at the analysis table with trend indicators that Klout provides ? That’s an interesting metric to go by as it shows where you are headed.

With Facebook and other platforms now realizing that platforms are getting bloated with fake and spammy users, its a wake up call for marketers as well. Twitter isn’t an exception to this rule either. If your followers are following more than 2,000 people, the chances are they are non legitimate and not really monitoring your feed!

There are 4 important metrics that can aid as a guidelines to a great strategy -

1. Reach

2. Churn Rate

3. Loyalty

4. Sentiment/ Intention

If you were reading this to pick up some shortcuts, you are going to be disappointed. But the good part is with hard work, the structured approach, tools and metrics you have a formula for success here.

The following post was featured on Social Samosa. You can view the original interview here.

From SMEs to MNCs to whole industries, businesses of all sizes have begun the great migration into social media. One of the newest members of this great movement is the real-estate industry, having already made noticeable strides in harnessing the power of social media. 

This trend began in the US by real estate professionals who saw moving into social media as a gateway to recovery from the housing crisis. The world has caught on since. Singapore too has seen a surge in social media usage by real estate professionals, which compliments, and will probably, soon completely replace the flyers, mailers, billboards and television commercials we are currently used to.

Ascott, CapitaLand’s wholly owned serviced residence unit, has been in the forefront of social media practice among real estate players in Singapore since 2009. Today the group has a healthy following of over 20,000 fans across different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

“Fans following our Facebook page as well as our Twitter feed are privy to exclusive deals, promotions and contests that are only available through our social media platforms. Ascott has also received reservation enquires which translated into actual bookings at our serviced residencies,” said Tony Soh, Chief Corporate Officer of The Ascott Limited.

Belysa Executive Condominium recently had great success, having sold out their 315-unit apartment in just two months! Since May of this year, when they first started offering their units to buyers, their Facebook page saw quite a buzz among prospective buyers. A quick glance at the Belysa page will tell you that they’ve shared the right amount of information, carried out timely and quality engagement with their page visitors and drawn in a healthy amount of traffic into their page.

Blossom Residencies at Segar Road and RiverParc Residence at Punggol - City Development’s latest projects - hope to achieve success similar to Belysa. Their brand-new Facebook pages seem to have gotten off to a good start; it will be interesting to see how their progress unfolds.

More real estate professionals now need to go beyond building four walls and a roof and create a virtual ‘go to place’ where potential buyers and sellers can have an interactive engagement avenue. 

However, most real estate agents in Singapore still think of social media as an avenue to blast out information, not realizing that maintaining dialogue to engage customers is an important aspect of customer relations, and making conversation one-way is just not good enough to maintain a relationship with your customers.

Singaporean’s trust in consumer opinions posted online is relatively high, according to Nielsen. However, social media usage has not been fully realized in the Singapore real estate market. Individual real estate professionals have not yet discovered the full extent of the power of social media, and unless they do, they will not be exploring the full potential of their marketing efforts.

With HDB announcing 25,000 new flats for 2011 and with 10,000 new private homes expected to enter the market in the second half of 2011, real estate professionals need to reach out to Singapore’s rising housing demand - and they can do so by actively and strategically engaging in social media.

In places like the US where social media has become part and parcel of businesses, it is not surprising that 84% of real estate professionals have turned to social media to actively engage with clients, garnering considerable results with leads, sales and brand building. And with 94% of home buyers who look to the internet before making a purchase decision, real estate agents have been successful in making sure their listings, information, advice etc. reach out to the largest number of prospective buyers and sellers.

Could Singapore’s real estate market soon reach a similar figure? Perhaps they can. Judging from the recent Singapore elections and the realization of the effectiveness and reach of social media, the real estate industry in Singapore could do well by fully embracing the potential of social media.

Companies can build excellent customer relations by engaging their consumers online; they can monitor online chatter about themselves, their competitors or the industry at large. or simply build brand recognition - the possibilities are endless. 

Social Media is changing the way we do business. Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford puts it perfectly; “LinkedIn is the business meeting, Facebook is the hallway conversation and Twitter is the cocktail party.”

2011 was witness to probably the most exciting General Elections since Singapore’s founding 45 years ago.
 
The proliferation of social media was probably instrumental in the amount of chatter that was tracked online. Finally people had a space from which they could speak out, and that’s precisely what they did. Social Media sites were full of comments, debates, videos and passionate opinions about the elections, the parties and their candidates.
 
It was exciting to see so many differing views and opinions being broadcast without fear or censorship. But it was not just the public who embraced this new medium. The political parties, from the current ruling party to the various opposition parties took advantage of this medium to express their views, share their thoughts and basically engage with the public.
 
Singapore is not the first country to use Social Media to get reach out to the voters. In the U.S., Barack Obama’s presidential election campaign in 2008, employed social media heavily to win votes.
 
By combining social networking applications under the banner of a movement, the Obama camp  created an unforeseen force to raise money, organize locally, fight smear campaigns and get out the vote that helped them topple all their opposition.
 
As a result, when he arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania, Mr. Obama had not just a political base, but a database of millions of names of supporters who could be engaged almost instantly.
 
CONCLUSION:
 
The power of Social Media lies in the fact that it is free, it has infinite reach and most importantly, it gives people a platform from which they can air their views, express themselves - and converse and engage with other like minded individuals.
 
This medium, still in its infancy, is still catching on in Singapore. With the current government encouraging businesses to embrace this new platform, we hope that in the near future, we will see Social Media being utilized to its maximum potential, crossing all boundaries and uniting people of similar interests together, irrespective of geographical distances.