Social Media Darwinism » Reputation Monitoring

Is It Time To Reconsider Sentiment Scoring?

Paul Dunay — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 18:00:23 +0000

In a recent blog post called The Problem with Automated Sentiment Analysis from Fresh Networks, a social media agency, they evaluated a few sentiment tools and their results are quite similar to what we’ve found in a number of our own experiments:

- About 80% of posts are neither positive nor negative.

- Sentiment tools “accuracy” of 70% to 80% is largely driven by their ability to correctly label neutral posts.

- “In our tests when comparing with a human analyst, the tools were typically about 30% accurate at deciding if a statement was positive or negative”

From the blog comments, it’s clear that the companies in this space are doing their best to obfuscate the truth. To some’s credit, they do state that sentiment alone is not enough information to derive any conclusions.

However it’s NOT better than nothing, it’s actually worse than doing nothing because you are getting INCORRECT information.

With sentiment there is no such thing as accuracy, there is only agreement. The technology can’t become more accurate, it can only agree with people more often. And, “sentiment” does not mean the same thing to all people in all situations. You can’t get more “accurate” at “sentiment” because what you are actually talking about is trying to solve hundreds or thousands of slightly different problems with one tool. Until we can map the human brain into a program or electronic circuits, I just don’t think that is going to happen.

I completely believe that having inaccurate sentiment is worse than having nothing. Here is a good example. In posts about “Blackberry” that have been classified 3 different times by hand, about 32% of posts are positive (with a majority vote). When we take that same data set and have each post classified 10 times, now about 10% of posts are positive (with a majority vote). And, if we only consider the posts we are confident in, only about 3% of posts are positive.

So, which is it: do 30% of people like “Blackberry” or do 3% of people, because that’s a BIG difference. Of course, the answer is probably neither because we aren’t actually measuring how many people like “Blackberry”. Unfortunately, that’s how it can be interpreted. Hence, bad information can be worse than no information.

Marketers need to be ware that a lot of these companies say they do monitoring and provide analytics like sentiment but in reality they are really keyword-focused listening platforms with limited analysis capability. If you really want to go beyond sentiment analysis you need to use semantic analysis. With semantic analysis marketers can better understand the conversations about their brand or product category– here is a white paper that compares Semantic vs Sentiment Analysis and can help you make a more informed decision about when and how to use Sentiment.

Is Sentiment Making Brands Stupid? I loved the article by Nick Carr a few...

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Social Media – the Next Frontier!

Paul Dunay — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:00:20 +0000

Many BtoB organizations these days are spending time and money to listen to the conversations that are happening about their brand, which is a basic essential for any brand. It’s good to be able to see those conversations and have some indication whether they are positive, negative or neutral so you have your finger on the “pulse” of what is being said socially about your brand.

I spent the last 2 years developing a strategy to deal with each one of those mentions. Negative mentions are actually a great opportunity for you to engage and turn the situation from adversarial to something more like an advocate. If you can find, respond and delight those customers that speaks volumes for your customer service. After all customer service is the new PR and it also provides a great ROI! Positive mentions provide an opportunity for you to capture them and stream them on your website or in other places like a blog so think of them as a new form of the customer reference!

But after 2 years of reading, trafficking and routing both positive and negative mentions in my organization I realized there had to be more out in the social sphere than just monitoring social media.

If you think about it there is at least 2 solid years of user generated content out in the social sphere. The most recent Super Bowl is a prime example of just the sheer volume of conversations that can be created about a brand and how badly the advertisers will go to tap into those conversations to get some “Social Lift” for their brand even. But all of this monitoring for mentions of your brand is very reactive and I think the next frontier of social media is something much more proactive.

One of the things I can tell you from reading 2 years of mentions is if you read them closely enough you will begin to find some unmet needs of the customer. Whether that mention was directed at your brand or someone other brand’s product or service in your space they tend to talk about their wants and desires. The problem is you have to always be listening to find them. And Boolean searches won’t help since you wont know what to search for. The very act of searching presupposes you know what you are looking for!

You need a way to objectively mine social conversations to help pre-inform your marketing spend with insights like: what does the market really want from vendors in my space, where there are adjacent markets we can move into, what content really resonates with your audience, where to place your advertising dollars so they provide the greatest reach.

There is a vast sea of unstructured social data about everything you can imagine out there which can be used to help pre-inform your decision making in marketing – the challenge is are you ready for the next frontier!

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Paul Dunay joins Networked Insights as the CMO

Paul Dunay — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 18:00:40 +0000

Almost 5 years ago I started this blog with the notion exploring the changing definition of Buzz Marketing in light of this new thing I saw on the horizon called “Social Media”.

I remember questioning where all this blogging was going to take us. I even asked others in my podcast series like Douglas Karr from the Marketing Technology Blog, who built strong following on his blog record time, where are we going with all this blogging and where will it take us? The answer was – neither of us knew!

Like Doug I was experimenting with this new technology in all of its forms from RSS, blogging, podcasts, videos, twitter, social networks, Facebook applications, mobile, location based applications and as you have seen me speak about before I think the role of marketing is changing to one that is becoming more like a Marketing Technologist. But it always felt like we were on 2 paths – our day job of running marketing and our night job of experimenting with these technologies to find something we could then add into the mix of our day job.

Well fast forward to today 5 years, 7000 tweets, 413 blog posts, 78 podcasts, 21 awards, 4 “for Dummies” books and numerous eBooks later and I am happy to announce that I have finally converged the 2 paths I was on into one meaningful path that really makes me happy.

After 2 years of developing a strategy to deal with various types of social media conversations within Avaya we finally got the monitoring and routing of those conversations to be institutionalized within the firm. No small feat by any means but I just couldn’t imagine that the sum total of social media in B2B was just about monitoring and reacting to tweets all day. I felt there had to be more we can do with the social data that we just cant get out of monitoring. So I started looking at the social media analytics space for social technology that can provide real insights. You can read about all of my findings in my post on Monitoring vs. Analytics [Infographic].

During the process of looking for the next big thing in social media, I ending up finding some really exciting technology at Networked Insights. Having owned both Radian6 and Networked Insights side by side I realized there was a big difference between “data and insights”. Data is reporting on what has already happened, Insights are ideas that come from the data that allow you to find new market opportunities, new ways to place media and new ways to find customers who exhibit purchase intent, which is why I hired Networked Insights in the first place!

I believe there is a vast sea of unstructured social data about everything you can imagine out there which can be used to help pre-inform your decision making in marketing, its up to the marketers to harness the insights of what the data is telling us to challenge the norm and transform marketing into the revenue generating center it should be!

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11 B2B Marketing Predictions for 2011

Paul Dunay — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 18:00:43 +0000

Around this time last year I wrote about the 10 B2B Marketing Predictions for 2010 and while I would say 7 out of 10 have already materialized and the others are on their way. So that begs the question – what’s on the horizon specifically for B2B Marketers next year?

Here are 11 concrete ways I think the environment in which B2B Marketers operate will evolve in 2011.

Enjoy!

Facebook Advertising – will continue to improve and unfortunately get more expensive. After 9 years of Search Engine Marketing – I think it is safe to say any keyword you are going to buy is maxed out when it comes to the Google AdWords auction process. So people are looking for an alternative and that’s Facebook Advertising. I even wrote a book this year on just this topic called Facebook Advertising for Dummies (Wiley). And as more people find out about this gem of an advertising experience CPC and CPM prices will continue to march upward – I have already begun to see this in my own ad buys!
Mobile Marketing – I know I said last year was the year of mobile marketing but I just saw a stat from a Mary Meeker presentation that smart phones will eclipse PC sales in 2012 (that’s just a year away) which will lead us to more mobile usage than PC usage so you better start your Mobile Marketing program now. Keep in mind we all start in the same place and that’s at ZERO! Mobile it totally optin and you need to start building your mobile optin list now.
Facebook will move into Mobile Ads – having said what I just did about us marketers not having a good mobile optin list – its just so natural for Facebook to ask you (you will ask us first Mark right?) if he can extend his advertising into your mobile device which he already has (if you put it on your profile). I have been thinking about this play for Facebook for a while – glad I am getting it down on virtual paper for my grandkids to see!
Social Media Strategists will become Chief Customer Officers – ok so you know I am also @Avaya_Support on Twitter so perhaps this is a closet fantasy for me but it may just come true – perhaps not this coming year but in years to come. Think about it marketers have been given this gift of Social Media which is reinventing areas of your company on the fly. In my company alone we have seen it touch Product Development and R&D, to Billing and Finance, to HR and Recruiting, to Customer Service and the Contact Center. You need someone to own the customer experience now in all those external channels and your internal channels as well!
Ecommerce will hit Facebook – Next year the deal that Facebook has with oodle.com for the Facebook Marketplace will be over. My predication would be they cut the cord there and open up a marketplace of their own. Startups like Payvment, and Alvenda will help companies large and small to open up shop in Facebook. Delta, Levis and 1800 Flowers are already there – can Victoria Secret, Brooks Brothers, and Godiva be far behind?
NFO is the new SEO – that’s News Feed Optimization on Facebook. Basically .2% of fans return to a fan page and in some cases it’s more like .02% (hat tip BrandGlue) So people on Facebook who “like” your Fan page basically never go back to it. So stop thinking of it as a micro site and making it all fancy. What you need to focus on is the content and optimizing the content to get comments and likes which will help you drive amount of people that Facebook will show your page to. It’s all based on Facebook’s algorithm called EdgeRank.
Advocate Marketing comes into Focus – you know all those people we are delighting with great customer service using Twitter – well they have become a strong voice for our brand. Now we are looking at ways of collecting and harnessing them. Tools like Zuberance are helping to do just that and allowing firms to do special things with their advocate base like provide them special events, invites to live events etc. We are just scratching the surface on this one but I can tell you its going to be big!
Reputation Management emerges in organizations – Toyota, United Breaks Guitars, Dominos Pizza, Motrin Moms, Dell Hell – we have had some major disasters all brought on my lack of speed in this market. Many firms are listening now for their brand (I know I spoke to 50 of them this year about this issue) but I don’t think they are ready for a crisis. I did a Reputation study on this topic two years ago and it proved how many companies lack the infrastructure then – we have come a long way since but do you really have a process to react quickly?
Real Time Marketing makes headlines – ok so I am reading David Meerman Scott’s latest book called Real Time Marketing but you know what – he’s right! He’s got tons of examples of firms that capitalized or failed to capitalize on Real Time issues (United Breaks Guitars!) We all need a lesson on how to be more real time – it’s a great book, I can’t put it down – I have read every book David has published and I can tell you – you need to read this one!
Someone better win the SmartPhone Application race soon – I can’t keep building 4 versions of the same application in order to cover the SmartPhone market – Blackberry aps, iPhone aps, Android aps (what the growth rate on Android) and Windows aps. Ok yes HTML5 should help this but throw in iPad and various other tablet aps and marketers are starting to look like Technologist which brings me to my next prediction.
The Rise of the Marketing Technologist – Marketers for the last few years have been closet techno geeks and its time for them to rise up – companies need digitally fluent marketers who can apply technologies to help make marketing more measurable and scientific. Then we can really change the dynamic from marketing as a cost center to marketing as a profit center!

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Brand Advocates vs Brand Adversaries – it’s a Very Thin Line!

Paul Dunay — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 18:00:02 +0000

Everyday I provide support on the social web to customers. For the last 18 months we have solved hundreds of issues both small and large for customers around the globe, some as quickly as 15min others as long as 24 hours. But what’s becoming clear to me is that real time communications is essential in this new multi channel world where you better be listening for your customers and delighting them with Social Customer Service.

Xbox Support found that people they help on Twitter are far more satisfied than people they help via the call center, not to mention the cost of providing that service is significantly cheaper as well.

It’s a great double sided ROI story for Social Customer Support. It saves customers who are having an issue call them Brand Adversaries and delights them into becoming a Brand Advocate while it also provides a cost reduction ROI when it comes to the call center.

I see this in my travels talking to Avaya customers about how social media can be integrated into their contact center.

But I also hear all the horror stories about the customer who they ignored and it got worse. I like to say I never read a Social Media case study that was titled “We Ignored this Tweet and everything was Great!” in fact it is always the opposite of that.

I think there are 2 factors at play here – the first is listening and being able to react quickly – if you don’t have a listening engine in place and a routing for that complaint to get fielded you are just tempting fake – its not IF there will be an issue its WHEN is there going to be an issue.

The line between a happy customer who is now having an issue (a Brand Adversary) is VERY thin. Which brings me to my next factor which is time – when a customer is having an issue they want action – when they tweet you they expect you to be there and unfortunately Twitter doesn’t have an Out of Office feature so you better be ready to help (I have seen Xbox Support post hours of operation – lets see how that goes for them).

You can use this to your advantage and make your Brand Adversaries your best Brand Advocates if you surprise and delight them with outstanding customer service in by using social. Then it unlocks all the great things about social when they tweet and tell others about the great experience they had with your brand.

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Social Customer Support: AT&T is doing it Right!

Paul Dunay — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:00:42 +0000

I have been an avid iPhone user almost since the day it came out. I just had to have one and it killed me that it took a week to get one when it first hit the market. I love everything about the iPhone except the fact that it has been hard to actually use it as a phone! To make matters worse it is almost impossible to use in my home but that is a network issue rather than an iPhone issue.

So recently AT&T sent me a letter offering me a FREE 3G Microcell, which is like a mini cellular tower for your home! It connects to AT&T’s network via your existing broadband Internet service and is designed to support up to five simultaneous users in your home. I quickly asked my social network if it was worth it and I got a unanimous YES back from my Twitter and Facebook connections. So I decided to give it a try. The only issue … is it was impossible to get one! I tried every store in a 30 mile radius, first by showing up and then just by phone but it was sold out everywhere.

So I asked my local AT&T store to keep an eye out for a shipment for me and let me know when one comes in. I finally found one about a month and half later. So I asked them to hold it for me and promised to be in the store within the hour. When I showed up they took one look at my letter and informed me the promotion had just ended and that if I wanted one I would have to pay for it. I mumbled something underneath my breath and left the store.

On the way home I decided to share my customer experience with my social network …

And within 24 hours ATTSusan came to the rescue with a tweet asking for more information …

And with a few back and forth tweets we decided to communicate directly and bingo within 72 hours I had my new 3G Microcell courtesy of AT&T with special help from ATTSusan. And best of all it makes my iPhone work really well in my house!

There is a customer service lesson in here for all B2C and B2B Marketers – this is the type of support customers are expecting today on the social web. I think a lot of B2C and B2B Marketers are listening but they tend to think that actual customer support is someone else’s job when in reality Marketers need to own customer support! It’s your most pure form of customer advocacy and lot easier and cheaper to save an existing customer than it is to do constant marketing campaigns to get new, ambivalent customer to sign up with your company! Bravo AT&T!

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Social Media is not a campaign it’s a commitment!

Paul Dunay — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:47:04 +0000

A while back I created a post called – There is no “campaign” in Social Media because when marketers use the word “campaign,” it tends to suggest an initiative to get a message out to a targeted group of constituents. It also implies there will be a beginning and, somewhere down the road, an ending.

And I still believe that is the case …

And despite a number of comments I got about that post both positive and negative – I think I stopped short of really nailing the issue which is – social media is more than a campaign it a commitment!

Its a commitment to your organization to be more open and transparent, its a commitment to your customer to listen and respond, its a commitment to your community to always be there when you need them, its a commitment to be open to developing new products and services that take input from your community, its a commitment to take the high road when issues arise (as they always do) and most of all its a commitment that tells everyone in your company that this is the way things are going to be and we are going to be part of this – good bad or indifferent.

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Reputation Management for New Media Survey – How ready are you?

Paul Dunay — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:33:00 +0000

One of my goals this year was to do a study on reputation management. As we all factor in the effects of new media on our brands, I felt this was a topic with long-lasting appeal to every marketer.

My hypothesis going into the creation of these questions was that B2B marketers (including yours truly) just aren’t adequately prepared for an online reputation crisis. Dell wasn’t, Wal-Mart wasn’t. If those big B2C brands weren’t ready, I was betting we weren’t ready either. And I was right!

To be totally transparent with you, I wasn’t surprised by many of the responses to my survey. The bulk of you are monitoring your reputation in some way, shape or form. But are you poised to respond in the case of an online reputation crisis? 55% admitted you weren’t.

Perhaps you need stronger guidelines in place, like a blogging policy. Two-thirds of respondents don’t have one!

Many of you are do-it-yourselfers when it comes to monitoring your reputation. Is that perhaps because your company hasn’t made this a strategic priority? 53% admitted it wasn’t a strategic priority for you – yet!

My goal here is to give you the state of the union when it comes to monitoring reputations online. This data is bound to change, so I hope I get you thinking of ways to close the gap with your organization’s reputation!

Click here to download the free research report

Special thanks to my sponsors – Trackur.com, run by the renowned Andy Beal of the blog MarketingPilgrim.com, and Marketing Profs’ equally renowned Ann Handley for their support on this survey.

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Monitor, Track and Participate in Social Media – a podcast with Michael Spataro

Paul Dunay — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:14:00 +0000

Over the past few years marketers have been working on tracking conversations about their brands on the Web (you are tracking and listening, aren’t you?). But once you have that in place, then what?

Strategies for understanding and dealing with the flow of all these conversations are the natural next step. As more and more conversations are coming online, you need to respond quickly. So knowing things like “sentiment,” who in your organization is on point to respond, and whether they have been doing so are becoming more important. It’s like being at a party and having several conversations going on that you want to participate in.

I met Michael Spataro a few weeks back as I was researching tools to help me with this exact problem. I think what I found out was important for you to hear as well. I hope you agree.

Link to Original Audio Source

Signup for this Podcast Series

About Mike

Mike is vice president with Visible Technologies, a leading provider of social media analytics and online reputation management services. An early pioneer of interactive marketing and PR, Mike has been devising and implementing digital communications and social media strategies for global brands for more than 10 years, including The Walt Disney Co., General Motors, Panasonic, Hewlett-Packard, MasterCard, Eastman Kodak, Verizon, Hanes, and the renowned “Got Milk?” campaign.

Prior to joining Visible, Mike led the interactive and new media divisions for Interpublic’s two largest PR agencies, Weber Shandwick and GolinHarris. He was the strategic force that established both agencies as leaders in digital communications and consumer-generated media services. During his nearly 10 years at Interpublic, Mike created and executed a variety of award-winning campaigns that blended traditional and new media ideas that produced outstanding business results for his clients.

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5 Ways to Prevent a Reputational Disaster

Paul Dunay — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 01:48:00 +0000

Lots of brands are finding out the hard way that there are plenty of conversations taking place about them online. For good or bad.

Many brands choose to ignore this. But hope is not a strategy.

Since consumers rely heavily on the Web as an authoritative source of information, managing a brand’s online reputation has become a top priority for companies. Here are 5 tips that could help you avoid a major disaster and reduce the risk of a flogging in the blogosphere.

Tip 1: Monitor the New Conversational Terrain

You have to be listening. As Woody Allen said, “half of the battle is just showing up.” Create a custom feed based on keyword searches using tools like Technorati, Feedster, IceRocket and news.googlecom.

Tip 2: Measure

Agencies like Nielsen BuzzMetrics and TNS Cymfony (trackback to a podcast on how to measure the blogosphere) have more advanced tools for monitoring social networks, blogs and communities. They also can measure the volume of buzz, track the sources and gauge the emotion of the content, be it positive, negative or just sarcastic.

Tip 3: Engage

If you don’t join the conversation, you have no control. We’ll say it again: hope is not a strategy. Tools like BuzzLogic can give you a picture of a blogger, as well as the influencers that surround any given blog. Also sites like BlogInluence.net and SocialMeter.com can provide a snapshot of any blogger’s street cred.

Tip 4: Buy Keywords?

Yes. If you do end up with a firestorm surrounding your company or brand, why not buy keywords and get your story told? Jim Nail from Cymfony says “for a company to protect its brand, they should be buying keywords.” Consider Wal-Mart as the classic example. “Wal-Mart Sucks” yields negative results for the first 10 listings. So why not own those keywords as paid links to sites that put Wal-Mart in perspective, covering, among other things, the company’s substantial economic benefits to society?

Tip 5: Use PR to Strengthen Your Digital Footprint

Another obvious tactic would be to issue a series of press statements to address whatever the concerns are, and optimize them for the Web. Consider using a press release distribution company such as PRWeb, which sends releases to journalists’ email boxes and makes them Web ready. This will help increase the rankings in news engines such as Google News, as well as in the general search results. When a press release ranks high in a search engine, it’s just one more spot a negative listing won’t appear!

BONUS – why not take my Reputation Management for New Media survey which will give you a sense of how ready your organization is for a reputation disaster? If you leave me your email I will send the results back to you in about a month.

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