We’ve written about the potential of using social media (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Yelp, etc.) as resources for offline marketing efforts, including digital signage. The idea is that through conducting regular scans of social media networks, marketers can have a better sense for what their customers are talking about and (especially when the discussion is about one’s own organization) respond appropriately.
A number of services are now available that will help marketers not just identify what is being discussed online, but how people feel about products and services (and whatever else one wants to monitor).
Alex Wright highlights this trend in an article in NYT and lists a few services that are giving it a go:
Scout Labs
For as little as $99 per month, this SFO startup offers real-time monitoring of “sentiment, trendspotting, buzz trend, share of voice, email alerts, customer rants and raves.” At first blush, the interface seems fairly robust. The “sentiment” interface is shown below:
Jodange
Billing itself as the world’s first opinion utility, Jodange “automatically filters and aggregates thoughts, feelings and statements from traditional and social media. The NYT article describes some interesting features:
“…the service uses a sophisticated algorithm that not only evaluates sentiments about particular topics, but also identifies the most influential opinion holders.”
“Jodange…is currently working on a new algorithm that could use opinion data to predict future developments, like forecasting the impact of newspaper editorials on a company’s stock price.”
Twitteratr
As the name suggests, this free service focuses just on Twitter. While the interface is fairly simple, it seems they still have some work to do in order to avoid false positives, negatives and neutrals. In the capture below, you can see that what’s clearly a negative comment “don’t ever go to Chase/JP Morgan…” has been identified as a neutral.
Tweetfeel
This free Twitter-based monitoring service attempts to boil things down even further, providing you not only with the relevant tweets, but a ratio of happy faces to frowns. Again, one has to wonder how sophisticated the filters are that run behind the scenes. The English vernacular is a tough nut to crack.
Related articles:
- Digital Signage Today: The convergence of digital signage and Twitter
- John Ryan Blog: How to use Twitter and social media to fuel your offline marketing
- John Ryan Blog: Can user-generated and commercial content coexist? Thoughts on the future of digital signage
- John Ryan Blog: On the Internet, it’s “caveat venditor” (seller beware)
