Everybody has seen the fallout from the airport incident between Mon Tulfo and the Santiagos, and how Cebu Pacific ended up being caught in the middle. A salient point that appears to have been highlighted by the situation is the importance of social media monitoring in maintaining your brand’s reputation.

Introduction

Regardless of what reaction you think may have been appropriate, Cebu Pacific would have been better off if they had anticipated their name entering the conversation early on. For any brand, this can be better accomplished when you use  social media monitoring tools, not just to look at immediate reactions, but to understand and analyze prevailing opinions about your brand and how quickly they can change.

There are several free tools that can help jumpstart your social media monitoring. As you get deeper into it, tools can become more complicated and demand more, but yield more useful data. Ideally, the best tools will aggregate the information you need to make it easier to understand and analyze immediately. If you have a small business, or just starting out in social media, it’s best to start with free social media monitoring tools.

Before we get to these tools, however, we need to think about what exactly to monitor. It’s one thing to constantly be online and keep tabs on everything, but on a higher level, what should we be looking for? What guidelines should we use in our use of these tools?

The Social Media Measurement Compass

Susan Etlinger at Altimeter Group made some preliminary research on how to measure the ROI on social media, and came up with the Social Media Measurement Compass. More than a set of guidelines, the different points of the compass represents six identified use cases brands can focus on to align their social media goals more closely with their business goals. These points/use cases are innovation, brand health, marketing optimization, revenue generation, operational efficiency, and customer experience.

We’d like to put the focus on brand health. To quote Etlinger, this is

a measure of how people feel about, talk about, and act toward your brand.

Measuring brand health can direct social media marketing efforts. It can also anticipate potential crises and opportunities so that brands can be better prepared for them. The following is a table indicating the different elements of the brand health use list.

More information on the Social Media Measuring Compass and the other specific user lists can be found in the Altimeter report here. With these in mind, let’s look at the different tools available and what information they provide.

Built in SMM Tools

First off, many social networks come with their own built in tools, and it’s a good place to start.  Facebook Page managers have their own analytics, called Insights, and Facebook has integrated Insights such that you get a small preview window at the top of the page when you open it.  (more on Facebook Page Insights here). Twitter Search and Google Alerts both function to let you know when a certain keyword appears on the web, and you can use these to track your brand’s names and trademarks. URL shorteners, like bit.ly, goo.gl, etc, also have their own analytics, but to leverage these, you have to go out of your way to use these shorteners in all the places you share your links.

Spotlight on: Google Alerts

Google Alerts is one of Google’s simplest and earliest services, and remains one of the most relevant. You enter a search query (say, your brand name or a keyword) and Google will periodically email you when new search results come up. Google Alerts can be fine tuned to send results based on how often you receive them, the volume of updates you get per email, even send them via RSS or export to a CSV file. You can also focus on new search results from blogs, web pages, videos, news or Google Groups.

With Google Alerts, you can track down who are the new entities talking about your brand. With the increasing demands of social media monitoring, however, you will need to use this to complement other free tools.

Social Media Dashboards

Hootsuite, Seesmic and Tweetdeck all started as social media dashboards that allowed you to manage Twitter and Facebook accounts. As the years passed, features were added and eliminated to all three services, but even now all three offer all the basics required for good social media monitoring of Twitter and Facebook. In a single page, they will allow you to monitor your Facebook feeds, Twitter feeds, mentions, and keyword use.

Spotlight on: Hootsuite

Hootsuite is the most powered up among the three services, offering integrated analytics for its own ow.ly URL shortener. Even more services are available for pay (discussed below). Irregardless of which package you use, Hootsuite is best used by people who need easy access to analytics but pay more attention to engagement across multiple channels.

Spotlight on: SocialMention

SocialMention is an amazing tool offering a service that is usually paid for for free. In its own words, it aggregates user generated content from ‘across the universe’, and organizes it in real time. Not only do you get your mentions collated, it will also make calculations on ratios to help you assess things like your influence, the reach of your network, etc. Social Mention’s reach across the web is astounding, including over 1000 services including Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, Friendfeed, Digg, Google, etc.

Spotlight on: Klout

Klout is the innovator when it comes to measuring social media engagement and influence. It’s also streamlined its system so that Klout scores would not be as easy to game as it used to, although gamification features remain on the surface. In general, using algorithms to measure influence and engagement have their limits, and scores have to be taken with a grain of salt. It’s not practical to compare one’s Klout scores with others; however, it makes a good measure of how much engagement and influence one has developed over time. Klout is more geared towards personal than corporate brands, but will be useful for companies with brand ambassadors and employees in the public eye.

Paid vs Free Tools

Depending on the size of your business and its dependence on social, however, you may ultimately have to go beyond these apps and use paid solutions. Paid social media monitoring tools are light years away from free tools. However, using these tools are an investment of time, money and energy. For most businesses, free tools should provide all the information you need. If you are curious enough to give paid tools a try, these are our top recommendations.

Hootsuite paid services

If you are already using Hootsuite, the transition to using their paid services should be easy, if expensive. They offer Pro solutions, with further payments for several features, and Enterprise, which is everything they have at a hefty $ 1499 a month. Pro and Enterprise solutions are geared towards entire teams using Hootsuite in sync. Pro Services include enhanced analytics reports for ow.ly, Google Analytics and Facebook insights. Enterprise Services layer on top of that prioritized customer support and custom branded use of ow.ly. Hootsuite is also periodically involved in the social media events circuit, organizing its own seminars as well as participating in others. If you ever decide to make the jump from free to paid tools, Hootsuite is a good choice if you can afford it.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social emerged as a prime product for its easy to use and understand user interface. Sprout Social uses an integrated social media inbox to track incoming and outgoing messages. It also has its own Klout like influence and engagement system, with should be used with the same caveats. Other features are constantly being added, but Sprout Social’s greatest benefit is that it cuts down the time needed in social media monitoring overall. Fortunately, Sprout Social also comes with a 30 day free trial so you can try it out for yourself.

Conclusion

Social Media Monitoring is an unavoidable necessity. The good thing is, some of you may already be doing this on instinct. However, to be most efficient, it’s necessary to know what metrics are most relevant in providing ROI, as well as what tools are most useful. There is a wealth of free tools that can provide basic and some advanced uses, but fully featured paid tools are available for those who need it.

Facebook’s move is also a great equalizer, so that even smaller businesses who do not have the resources to invest in making a landing page would not run short. However, if everyone has the Timeline, how can a business make their Facebook page stand out from the rest?

Fortunately, there are still a few page elements page owners can edit and optimize to suit their needs. One of these elements is the page’s cover photos on Facebook’s new Timeline. As the first thing one sees at the top of a Timeline, it defines that page and gives it personality, so it’s important to pick a picture that describes one’s brand best.

What makes a good cover photo?

In truth, there are no rules. The picture does have to be sized at 850×315 px, and it has to follow Facebook’s Terms and Conditions, but aside from that, everyone is still figuring out how to best utilize these. Social media professionals have applied what they already learned in branding and promotional campaigns elsewhere in creating their pages, and especially in choosing cover photos. Let’s look at these local businesses, what they chose to feature for their cover photo, and why.

Sulit

Sulit is the Philippine’s biggest online selling website. It’s managed to get there even without major advertising by word of mouth, building a reputation, online promotion, and by being a straightforward effective and useful service. Sulit is now being more aggressive in their online advertising, their Google Ads prominently appearing in YouTube and other Google Ad supported sites for Filipinos.

Sulit’s cover page is simple and elegant. No frills, no brand sponsors. Just a purported screenshot of the Sulit search box with the words ” Ano hanap mo? (What are you looking for?)”. Sulit users know that these words appear by default in the actual search box when you go to the site. It’s straight to the point and promotes not just brand recall, but makes current users reminisce about using the site itself. That is what makes it so effective.

AyosDito

AyosDito is Sulit’s closest competitor in the Philippine online marketplace space. In contrast to Sulit, it’s pushing for mainstream advertising to increase brand recognition. In many ways, AyosDito has a completely different business philosophy than Sulit, and this reflects in their Timeline as well.

AyosDito’s cover page prominently features brand sponsor John Lloyd Cruz and enables recall of their recent TV commercial. Like many big brands that use mainstream advertising, their brand sponsor is a vital and ubiquitous part of their campaign. Although it uses brand recall differently from Sulit’s campaign, it has the potential to also be very effective.

Holy Kettle Corn

Holy Kettle Corn’s cover page is again the epitome of simplicity. Instead of a pure illustration of the Holy Kettle Corn logo, they opt to take a photo of the logo on an actual Holy Kettle Corn bag, with some popcorn flanking it. As a photograph, the picture is very well framed, and it helps make the page look more personable and less corporate.

TalkTV

TalkTV is a UHF channel that features morning and evening talk shows, as well as some news and TV magazine programs. Owned by Solar Corporation, it serves to complement their other existing channels and fills a particular niche. Their programs may have fans, but not necessarily the mass appeal of other programs on their other channels. Instead of fighting for the same space, they try to reach out to a particular niche.

TalkTV’s cover photo features hosts of their most popular shows, framed under large quotation marks. The hosts in question are Matt Lauer (Today), Brian Williams (NBC Nightly News), Julie Chen (The Talk) and David Letterman (The Late Show). They are prominent personalities abroad, but may not necessarily have name or face recall locally. The relevance of putting them in the forefront is that TalkTV is reaching out to fans of these celebrities and their shows. The quotation marks are a nice personal touch that helps give the photo, and their page, a bit more personality.

Power Plant Mall

The Power Plant Mall’s cover photo is a nighttime shot of the Power Plant Mall itself. The building is brightly illuminated and the Power Plant logo is visible at the left side. They chose an unusual shot of the mall, but perhaps one that makes it look at its best. Again, the brand benefits from using an actual photo instead of a corporate shot, giving it an air of authenticity.

As you may have seen, we can identify some key traits these cover photos share that we can assume are best practices. As I mentioned above, these cover photos attempt to define the brand on its own. You may also note that these cover pictures use real photos or screenshots were applicable, although we can guess that digital editing may have also been used. Using real photos make them appear more authentic. Finally, these cover photos are simple and uncluttered.

These are examples of only some great cover photos for Timeline pages. Cover photos that have corporate logos, glamor shots or used to advertise monthly promotions or events were not featured here, and may not appear to be suitable cover photos on the surface, but might be best for a particular brand’s needs.

Some of the best practices mentioned above cannot be applied to all brands, so be discriminating. For example, if you are a graphic arts studio, a scanned sample of your artwork would make a better cover photo than a photo of the employees or the building. In essence, you can look at cover photos already used by other brands in their Timeline pages, as well as landing pages used outside Facebook, as inspiration and points of comparison when choosing your own cover photos.

The demographic window where the average age of Filipinos will be 25 years old is expected to occur on 2014. It is one economic “sweet spot” that the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor expects to bring growth to the Philippine economy.

And yet, with this projection, the major question is — Where are the jobs?

The crazy ones would answer back — Why not create your own?

Entrepreneurship is one thing that I advocate for in Third Team Media. I support freelancers, solo professionals, nonprofits, and anyone who is just starting out. It is my belief that this bravery – trying to achieve what you want to do regardless of what others think – can be a great fuel to drive change and growth within communities.

Thus, we are pleased to announce that Third Team Media is a proud sponsor of Startup Weekend Cebu – the first ever in the region.

Startup Weekend Cebu will be held in UP Cebu this May 11-13th at UP Cebu. Developers, designers, and non-tech people will gather together and create a viable business at the end of 54 hours. Last April 11th, the press  conference was held in Ching’s Palace in Cebu. We gathered the media and the organizers/volunteers of Startup Weekend Cebu in order to have an overview of what the event is about.

Being a startup ourselves gives me that desire to also help out and support the grassroots tech community in Cebu. Surely with the emergence of bootcamps and events for startups, we won’t be surprised that the PH economy will grow. Maybe 2015 will be a little too late?

The idea of a Pinterest is, of course, not new. Many social bookmarking and curation websites before it allowed you to share pictures, with the same kinds of functionalities. Just before Pinterest, Instagram also made it big as a social picture sharing service. What makes Pinterest special is that it struck a nerve with the female demographic, which comprises most of its user base [source]. This is unique in the social media space, and is worth paying attention to as it means social media campaigns on Pinterest need to be handled differently than they are on other social networks.

Here are a few Pinterest marketing case studies on how the platform has been successfully utilized in social media marketing campaigns and what you need to know to start one yourself.

1) Calypso St. Barth – the Pinterest niche

Calypso St. Barth is a women’s apparel luxury brand, and one of the few brands ahead of the curve on Pinterest. They were quick to partner with Pinterest user Christine Martinez to take photos behind the scenes of their latest summer photo shoot.

The Calypso St. Barth campaign works on Pinterest because their brand matches the kind of interests Pinterest users have. They were also able to conduct the campaign in such a way that it did not seem intrusive to the existing user-generated culture prevalent within the site.

2) McKay Flooring – using Pinterest and Instagram together

Who’s to say you cannot use ‘competing’ social media services together? Not McKay Flooring, a wood flooring supply company in the UK. McKay identified the key differences between Pinterest and Instagram, and leveraged each services’ strengths in their own promotions.

In this case, when McKay Flooring observed how Instagram conveniently connects to Twitter and allows hashtags, they used the service to run a hashtag contest. On the other hand, they also noticed how Pinterest allows users to categorize their interests onto different pinboards. Consequently, McKay Flooring used Pinterest to promote brand awareness, making their Pinterest account a virtual catalog of their products, as well as connecting with other Pinterest users and even running contests.

Here, it’s important to remember that just because these networks are competing for attention does not mean you have to choose one or the other. It’s better to spread your influence across different networks and figure out how to best utilize each to your advantage.

3) Toys-R-Us: pinning from email to Pinterest

Finally, Toys-R-Us reminds us that it’s not too early to come up with innovative new ways to use Pinterest. Some marketers may be unaware or even dismissive of using email to drive people to social networks, but of course, social network accounts being email based themselves, it makes perfect sense to connect email marketing to social media marketing.

For more details on how to run campaigns on Pinterest, read the provided links. I also recommend and share the McKay Flooring case study. It goes into detail on what they have done and achieved, and gives suggestions as well.

As is true with other social networks, Pinterest is not for everyone, and there is a right way and too many wrong ways to market on it.

Startups like social media marketers do business across physical borders. These companies have to anticipate the eventuality of registering their businesses offshore. Not everyone is going to enjoy the success of the likes of Facebook and Apple and have to setup shop everywhere around the world. For many of them, though, it makes sense to take the initiative and seek out where business is booming or where there is potential for growth.

“[Hong Kong] opens up the lucrative China market, but also gives easy access to nearby countries Singapore, Malaysia and India. “

Given the choice, Hong Kong is definitely a prime choice to incorporate in. It opens up the lucrative China market, but also gives easy access to nearby countries Singapore, Malaysia and India. As a special administrative region of China, Hong Kong has worked their laws around to provide the most conducive business atmosphere possible, with low tax rates, privacy and noninvasive business regulations. Hong Kong itself is rated as one of the best business regions in the world, with the highest number of international companies and a reputation as one of the best places to setup offshore.

Startupr, in its capacity as an official registered agent of the Company Registry of Hong Kong, can help you in the process of online Hong Kong company formation. After checking for your company name in the Registry, you can download the order form from Startupr’s website and email, fax or snail mail it back to them. After they review the application and receive payment, they will submit the application and you need only wait for the notification email back from the Registry.

Startupr can also help process your application for a Hong Kong bank account. Due to prevailing market conditions, the only bank accepting applications for offshore accounts is HSBC. You need only forward the paperwork to Startupr after filling it out, and have your choice of making an appointment for a physical appearance in HSBC or let Startupr do everything for you.

Connecting to your group of audience is a challenge though. It suggests a deeper understanding of your readers’ persona, feelings and behaviors for you to be able to send a relevant message and elicit comments and feedback from them. With the use of technology, the flow of information is just unbelievable that an average person receives more than 10,000 messages everyday. This cutter then creates a problem among individuals and businesses who wish to catch the attention of the concerns and engage them.

The problem is that getting people to speak up on your channels takes time and effort. You might even need visit your analytics and see which of the updates you have are truly engaging your community.

A problem however, is not without solutions and ways to deal with it. David DiMuzio for instance has successfully captured the hearts of thousands of Filipinos with his great love for Tagalog songs and render those his own way. He is an American singer and has made the “power to connect” his competitive edge among other singers.

Screenshot of David di Muzio's Facebook fan page

David diMuzio has a lot to teach brands on engaging your audience online. Here are some community engagement tips we can learn from this artist.

Organizing a certain event can be a daunting task for the facilitators. It necessitates careful planning for a well guided implementation and effective monitoring tasks. A major concern for event planning is the number of attendees you need to convince and how many of them will eventually join the affair. The success of the gathering will be influenced by the presence of guests without whom the event would be boring and unsuccessful. Here are 5 doable tips for event organizers like you.

• Create shareable photos for the event. But first define: What is the event all about? This suggests the theme of the affair. Is it a birthday celebration, a wedding party, a concert or a seminar workshop? If you are the host, you won’t have a hard time gathering relevant information for you to organize the event. If you are requested by someone to facilitate, close coordination is advised so that important details are discussed well.

• Define the target audience. After knowing what the event will be, you need to specific of who will be the audience or participants of the event. Then you need to compile a list of special guests to invite and do Facebook marketing to inform, persuade and remind your potential clients about the event. Given the theme and keywords, you can visit related Facebook groups where your audience are members of and announce your event.

• Create an attendee list. Search their names over the Facebook if they have accounts. Put a mark opposite the name of the guest indicating they have Facebook accounts. Doing this gives you the idea of how to reach them online. You can use email addresses as an option in communicating to them online. Collate them in a special list so you can easily reach out to them even after the event.

• Create an event in the Facebook. The social networking site has a feature where you can make an event and invite people by letting them respond “I’m attending,” “I’m not attending” and “Maybe” as options. This will give you the idea how many of them are interested to join the party. You can also post some updates through the event’s wall so that everyone will be notified about some developments.

• Send a private message. You can also remind those who have not responded yet of the upcoming event as well as inform further those who will join the recent updates so that they too will be encouraged to attend. Do this at least once a week and some few days before the scheduled date. But take note never send them spam messages.

Bonus Tip: Make sure you direct your users to a form to capture their details so you may contact them about the event. Do not rely on the Facebook Event feature for RSVPs.

Apply these tips and you will have a well-attended event which is also an indication of how effective you are in online promotion. Savor the advantages of digital marketing because millions have become active netizens (online users) through Facebook.

• Name: ROOTCON 5
• Date: September 9-10, 2011
• Type: Event

Support Given:

• Online / Digital Marketing
• Event Coverage
• Press Releases
• Exclusive Site: http://rootcon.thirdteam.org/

Users who have been using Klout also know that you can give +Ks to influencers of a certain topic and curate lists that will give people who are experts an edge over other users. It is sort of like a vote or a like to “agree” that the person is influential about a certain topic. And who wouldn’t want to be influential when you know you can get perks for being one.

This gamification of the system has proved to be useful for Klout to ensure that people keep their profiles and Klout accounts up to date.

For other people who just browse around the net for things they like, they just might not see benefits of having a Klout account. Scoring and influence – what’s the use of those anyway? Do we need to keep track of scores? Depending on your industry, you might find it helpful. Here are some of my thoughts on how it might be beneficial.

For headhunters and PR professionals

Headhunters and PR professionals who are looking to reach out or hire people in the digital marketing scene will find Klout a useful tool to know which users are influential in specific industries.

Do you need an influential blogger? Look up the blogging topic page. Do you need someone who’s into tech? Look up the influencers in the tech list.

If you are business looking to hire a social media manager, it will be good to look into their  Klout score as a way to know if the person really “gets” digital and multichannel marketing can find Klout a good basis for considering someone.

For those seeking social media positions

 My Digitentrep classmate, Ryan, has already mentioned local agencies here in the Philippines who put up their requirements that include a Klout score.

If you are looking for a digital marketing person and want to showcase the communities that have handled or the activities of your own social media channels, you will find Klout a tool to consider and show to your potential clients. Of course, you would also have to explain to them what the number actually means and why it’s beneficial to have a high score.

For business owners

Business owners who self-study on digital marketing may find Klout to be another app they have to explore. From forums and other blogs, they might be forced to jump in with this new platform that claims to be the “standard of influence”. But one good thing about using Klout is the capability to give away perks only to inluencers of your industry.

You don’t need to go about and wonder if the tweep or the blogger you have on your PR database is really influential. You can easily contact Klout and inquire about giving away perks for influencers. Just like what the others on the list are doing.

For “regular” users

For regular users like most of us, I found it interesting that you can get perks from different brands. The only sad thing about it is that most of the perks are applicable only for those who live in the U.S. I tried signing up for a beta invite for Spotify only to learn that it is for U.S. influencers only.

How do you use Klout? Care to share?

But as a business owner or a social media and community manager leveraging social media for business though, you might be wont summon frustration due to the rest of the emails. One of the most annoying part is when you are made admin to a fast growing page or added to a group that you are not really interested in.

The effect? A clogged up email inbox.

That’s until today though. Facebook has recently announced that they will be turning off these notifications and sending just a summary instead. Hallelujiah!

Hi Fleire,

We’re trying out a new feature to reduce the amount of email you receive from Facebook. Starting today, we are turning off most individual email notifications and instead, we’ll send you a summary only if there are popular stories you may have missed.

You can turn individual emails back on and restore all your original settings at any time.

Thanks,
The Facebook Team