Filtrbox for Monitoring Your Brand on the Web
The internet is big, right? And there are a lot of people on there, huh? So how do you know when one of them says something about you? This has been a problem for businesses for quite awhile. They want to know when somebody is complaining about them, or praising them. Or maybe they are praising their competitors. (if you want to learn more about why you should monitor your brand, read this article from The Online Marketing Blog). So services like Radian6 came along and helped enterprises begin monitoring and filtering out the “noise”. These services are hugely expensive for everyday people, so many (including me), began “rolling their own” using tools like Dappr (for creating RSS feeds), Yahoo! Pipes (for combining and filtering feeds) and NetVibes (a dashboard for displaying all your data). In fact, I had always planned to write about it here, but I have found a better tool. It’s called Filtrbox. It is a Radian6 for regular people. In fact you can create 5 filters (meaning 5 terms/brand names/etc) for free. I have been using Filtrbox for a few month now and have been really happy with it.
Here are some of the main benefits of using it.
- It monitors blogs, social networks, social news, etc for any mention of your brand.
- It tells you the sites “FiltrRank” which boils down to how influential a particular site is.
- You can set the “FiltrRank” so that you don’t have to see unimportant mentions.
- It emails you daily with a listing of your brands mentions.
Filtrbox creates an easy way to see what is being said about your brand/competitors/industry on the internet. End of story. Check it out!
**UPDATE**
Want to see proof of how these services work? Both brand monitoring companies that I mentioned (Radian6 & FiltrBox) have left comments below thanking me for write up, both are now following me on Twitter, and FiltrBox has contacted me personally and offered to send some schwag. How’s that for response? In less than 24 hours, both companies have made contact and are trying to build a brand relationship! The real test will be if any other brand monitoring service that I didn’t mention follows suit.
L.i.S.A. 08 (Lessons in Social Advertising) Panel Recap & Notes
Last night I attended the L.i.S.A. 08 (Lessons in Social Advertising) Panel. L.i.S.A. is a 4 city panel discussing how businesses and consumers use social networks and where the opportunity lies to connect. I have been to a few of these types of event and panels and increasingly I am realizing that there is no secret to social marketing. The users need to “invite” your brand into their circle. Gaining that acceptance boils down to 3 major aspects:
- Content - provide content that your customers are interested in and is relevant to your business
- Authenticity - being transparent, trustworthy, and credible
- Help users socially connect with you and the community. Make it easy for them to use your service.
If you are not into the whole brevity thing. I have compiled my notes from the event below. I hope you can find a useful bit in there.
L.i.S.A. 08 (Lessons in Social Advertising) Portland, OR May 28, 2008
Moderated by: Kent Lewis, President of Anvil Media
Panel:
John Furrier Furrier.org former CEO of PodTech
Michael Berkley - CEO of SplashCast
Dave Allen - Director, Insights & Digital Media of Nemo Design - formerly the bassist of Gang of Four
Hashem Bajwa - Director Digital Planning at Goodby, Silverstein & Partner
What is social advertising?
Enlists consumers to help tell your story
Building ambassadors to evangelize
Brands being invited in by consumers
Being accepted by the conversation
Web 1.0 was about website, self service, Web 2.0 is all about relationships
How do people communicate - peers, groups, context to the person
Interesting way: Using the “old media” model alongside social media - YouTube presidential debates
Wrong way: Budwieser spent millions to build Bud.tv, but the almost all of the ad views are on YouTube
Creating content for social media in your down time - HungryMan a production company has produced videos in their off time to post on YouTube that have been extremely popular
Do banner ads on Facebook constitute social advertising or is it old media model?
Clickthrough’s on MySpace and Facebook are extremely low
Would argue that this is still the “old media” view. A banner ad is a push ad. It is not social.
Just spamming your ad on a banner doesn’t work, you must be invited in. Consumer: “I want to be associated with this brand” & “I want to talk about this brand with my friends”
Companies need to understand and adjust for the “real time” environment we are in. How can you use this to add value to the user.
How is social marketing different from product placement?
Product placement is not authentic
Right way: Red Bull - gets popular athletes to organically promote & endorse
Endorsement in the community by a major player and influencer
Endorsement is one of the most cutting edge techniques right now
How does a brand get invited or be accepted?
Brands have fans that want to be associated with them
Start out with the consumer in mind
Example: people on Facebook care about recycling - HP focuses on recycling. Where is the connection
What do the customers think and care about
The metrics to measure social advertising are terrible. We can measure everything, but we don’t know WHAT to measure
Find your value and figure out how to apply it to social media. Understand your niche do something remarkable and the marketing and social media takes care of itself. You need to figure out what you want to do and accomplish.
How do you measure distributed content?
Are you gaining brand ambassadors
Track influencers (super distributors) - how many of their friends saw it and added it to their page
No one is more authentic than a friend
Build commerce into the distribution model
Brands must get invited into a social network that already exists. They can’t develop their own network, because it will automatically be viewed as an advertisement and inauthentic. The users won’t come.
Always put out content!
Content about your value proposition
People come from search - they find you on their own
Get in front of the eyes that are looking for you. Don’t try to make people look for you.
“The content is the ad”
Whoever creates the best user value win
AUTHENTICITY must be a core value
User experience is also key. What does my target audience look like? Jacob Nielsen is a usability guru.
The internet is an opt-in network. Aided (search engines) and unaided (offline marketing) awareness.
Single user on a small site can be a carrier to a bigger site and spread a message / opinion
Let the users do what they want to do. Stay out of there way. Let them talk to each other and try to measure it.
Be part of the experiments or at least talk with the people who are. Tap into the people who are doing interesting stuff.
Recommended Books
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz
Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin
The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
