Yipee! Microsoft Enters the Social Media Monitoring Space

Microsoft is building a social media monitoring tool called Looking Glass.

Now, at this point, you’re probably thinking that I’m panicking. After all, isn’t that what my own company, Trackur, does? Aren’t I scared stiff that Microsoft will hurt my business?

Nope. In fact, when I spoke to Microsoft executives in 2008, I asked them why they didn’t already have a tool like this? If I can build Trackur, shame on Microsoft for not having its own offering.

Am I insane? Possibly, but for different reasons. Let’s explore this announcement.

The idea is to connect social-media-monitoring tools to the rest of a marketer’s organization — customer databases, work orders, customer-service centers and sales data. Looking Glass will pull in a variety of feeds from platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr and work with third-party data sources as well (the folks behind it have already talked to some firms such as Meteor Solutions and Telligent). All of the data collected will connect into Microsoft’s enterprise platforms, such as Outlook and Sharepoint.

If you read the entire Ad Age article, it becomes clear that Looking Glass will be tightly integrated with other Microsoft products–a feature that will delight some and completely repel others. In addition, there’s no news on how much Microsoft will charge for Looking Glass–will it be free or come with a hefty licensing fee.

Either way, I’m actually excited that Microsoft is getting into this space. They have many more dollars to throw into advertising and awareness campaigns. Let them spend the millions of dollars that are needed to convince businesses they need to monitor the web. Not all of those potential customers will feel comfortable with Microsoft, its platform, or its pricing, and so they’ll likely compare Trackur as an alternative. What is it they say about a rising tide?

In fact, Visible Technologies has more to lose than Trackur–Microsoft currently pays them a hefty fee to use their social media measuring technology. I suspect, we’ll see that relationship come to an end at some point.

OK, but Andy. What if Microsoft offers Looking Glass for free?

So what? When Google rolled out Google Analytics for free, many suspected it would be the death knell for other analytics firms that charge for their product. There are 1.8 billion reasons why those fears didn’t materialize.

Personally, I expect Microsoft’s entry to the space to be a wake up call for its mid-size competitors. Do they build a competing social media measurement product or acquire existing technology? If it’s the latter, they know where to find me!

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Twitter Takes to the Air

We are all getting comfortable with the place that social media outlets can have in the business process. Public relations, human resources, legal and sales can all benefit. At the present the most common application is customer service. While customer service is always important, the advent of social media has created customer service in ways that most companies never imagined.

The airline industry has had a virtual crash course in handling customer issues via social media outlets with Twitter leading the charge. One main reason for this is the fact that frequent travelers are likely to be heavy smart phone users and what else can they do while suffering thorough a delay? Complain of course. Now just going to the desk at the gate and airing your concerns is mere child’s play. Why not tell all of your friends and followers about how terrible the airline is that you are having trouble with? How airlines handle this can determine who that flyer decides to go with in the future.

It looks like the winner thus far is Southwest. I learned about their particular approach to social media at a conference in Dallas and it was impressive. An Ad Age article tells more by showing how the airline used Twitter to diffuse the situation from earlier in the week where a foot wide hole ripped in the fuselage of a Southwest flight but was safely landed enventually.

Shortly after the plane landed, the tweets began pouring in from those who heard the news: “Emergency landing for a Southwest flight … A one ft by one ft hole in the fuselage is to blame … yikes.” The incident was documented by those on board via Twitpic and YouTube. The airline’s lead “Twitterer,” Christi Day, immediately began posting updates that included links to an official company release, a statement that all planes would be inspected overnight and news that all passengers on board would be refunded.

“It was important for us to set the tone as soon as we saw those conversations begin online,” Ms. Day said. “We were able to distribute factual information to our customers before they saw it on the 10 p.m. news, which is extremely powerful.”

Nice job. Now the other side of the same coin; Delta.

On the more serious matter of customer service, the airline took a bit of a bruising yesterday on Twitter, following a letter Andy Azula, the creative director at the Martin Agency and the actor in the UPS Whiteboard commercials, wrote to Delta that he posted on his blog and linked to on his Twitter page (he has since taken it down). Apparently Delta delayed Mr. Azula’s flight, keeping him and his family waiting at the airport for 13 hours and causing him to miss a number of meetings and a family gathering. The airline didn’t offer any type of compensation in the end. Not only did the link get re-tweeted dozens of times, but people started adding their own commentary, such as “Yep. Delta Airlines is screwed if they don’t rectify this.” The airline did not tweet any type of reply.

Delta responded that they are developing their social / emerging media processes. Not exactly the sharp witted response you need when you get hammered by someone in the advertising industry who knows how to work this stuff.

So here are two pretty distinct sets of results. Our question to Pilgrim readers is where are your strategies? Do you even have any? Do you feel the need for them? Are they more industry specific than general? Tell us your stories. One of the best ways to maneuver through this new area is to share successes and failures. Maybe we can even help each other in a friendly, social media, community kind of way?

Stronger than Twitter, Faster than Facebook: Product Reviews as a Marketing Tool

As a marketer, which of these would you find more useful?

Tweet: @sumbuddy dont buy the BrandCo table it sux–hasnt stood up at all

or

On site review: (2 stars) For what we paid for this table, my husband and I expected something more durable. The wood dents way too easily for a kids’ table. We expected a lot more from BrandCo.

While both product reviews are negative, the on-site review giving a client’s product two stars might make us cringe a bit more than a single Tweet (even if the Tweet was as specific as the other review). But the on-site review might also be the better marketing tool, at least according to Ad Age today.

Ad Age contends that product reviews are more useful to companies and marketers than the oft-touted media sweethearts of social media: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube (the triumvirate of YouTwitFace), and the like.

The big difference between those on-site reviews and the other feedback (aside from the fact that the rest of the feedback is spread throughout the Internet instead of right at the point of purchase)?

And while Twitter conversation and Facebook chatter is interesting and important, it’s not structured, and can be difficult for marketers to implement into their processes. Review data, on the other hand, address a particular product — and when a consumer is in the mode to talk about it.

People do tend to be more specific in on-site reviews. And while site owners can just make negative reviews go away, that doesn’t mean they should. In fact, the Ad Age article gives specific examples of companies that took negative reviews to heart, examined the criticized product and actually worked to improve it.

The Ad Age article has a sidebar with five techniques to use reviews right:

• Embrace the feedback—”Both the positive and negative feedback provides hints to what you’re doing well and where improvement is needed.”
• Figure out who needs to know—Have someone who can react and fix product problems to read the low-rated reviews
• Tout customers’ favorites—positive product reviews “can make great ad copy.”
• Incorporate customer service—Let customer service reps know about potential product problems or complaints in reviews
• Don’t stop there—If your customers really enjoy talking about your products, develop a larger community. Oriental Trading Co., for example, “asks users to help solve each others’ problems and share their stories.”

We’ve discussed the same phenomenon with five ways negative reviews could actually help your online reputation. Andy’s fifth reason take the use of negative reviews to another level:

Learn from competitors’ mistakes. Don’t just read your negative reviews, read those of your competitors. If you learn where your rivals keep slipping-up, you can fine-tune your offering to make sure you don’t make the same mistake. Better still, how about reaching out to an unhappy customer of one of your competitors and fixing their problem—you could win a new customer for life!

What other ways can negative reviews lead to a better product or help companies?