At Kilgannon, we’ve made the decision to use Social Radar as our new social media monitoring tool.

We did not take this decision lightly. We also scoured the blogs and websites. We also asked partner organizations which tools they were using and then decided on what criteria we’d use to evaluate the tools. Then spent several months looking at various tools – some we demoed and others we looked via webinar.

The tools we looked at included:

Techrigy SM2

Radian 6

Sysmos

BuzzMetrics

Visible

ScoutLabs

eCairn

Webtrends Social Measurement

Collective Intellect

Honestly, we gave all of them serious consideration. And many of them also would have been excellent selections. What it came down to was the before mentioned criteria. These are the main criteria we focused on:

Features: What the tool can do that will benefit our customers.

Training and support: Interestingly, some require more of this than others – as all tools do not allow you to create your own queries.

Cost structure: Notice I said cost structure and not cost.

Much of the discussion among bloggers has been about the wizbang features that these tools have and not the business case for choosing one over the other.

And some of these these tools make more sense for in-house marketing departments than agencies, which we are.

When talking to software providers IN GENERAL (this means not just social media monitoring folks)  I’ve found a reluctance to create a model that works for smaller companies, smaller agencies, and even mid-sized b2b companies. It seems they’re mostly interested in the big fish. That means, just like in media land, they’re catering to the non-niche, consumer audience. There is no reason that a b2b software provider should pay the same for the service as a consumer goods company – they simply do not require the same kinda of band width that Coke or Apple do.

I plan a follow up article with more detail about what I learned in the selection process that should be helpful to anyone looking for monitoring tools.

Update: Follow up here.

They’d just gone through a war in which the rules had changed thanks to a technological transformation. The whole country had just been connected by a transcontinental telephone line. And mass production and a changing labor market made products radically cheaper but also caused uncertainty and resentment from workers. Sounds kinda like the world today except back then they hadn’t yet plunged into to their economic crisis.

Nowhere is the world more uncertain today than in marketing and advertising. Will we return to a sense of normalcy in this industry?

That depends on what you mean. Will the pace of change get back to a slower rate and will we get our lunch hour back? Nah.

But those that do accept that we’re now living in a state of constant change where we are 24/7 connected to our work may find a new normal.

Let’s face it. This has always been a brutal business. It chews people up and spits them out. It used to chew people up for not being creative enough, hip enough, smart enough, or connected enough. Currently it is chewing up and spitting outdated business and career plans. Plans that aren’t adaptable to change.

Don’t worry, this business will chew you, but you can survive the mauling and get a little “normalcy” back to your marketing career if you adapt to the constant change. So go ahead and skip all that denial and resentment stuff and go ahead with acceptance. And get a Twitter account while your at it, for crying out loud.

What this provided was a window into what people hated and occasionally liked about what was happening on the stage. Some of it was the kind of commentary, in polite company, people keep to themselves. This provided a wake up call for the event organizers on how little patience the audience had for promotional blather. It also informed some of the speakers on how they should do their presentations after the previous presenter got low marks on their PowerPoint. It also informed how nasty some people can get with what normally would be their would be internal dialog.

Jeff Turner mentioned the conversation and even let it influence his presentation. Later, Chris Brogan took the demon by the horns and put BackNoise up in place of his PowerPoint. I think this actually worked in his favor. He definitely had one of the best presentations of the day, many would say the best.

Other folks have done a more extensive job about dissecting what happened and another has written about how speakers should react. So let’s talk about what it means as marketers.

Imagine your corporate website was subject to this kind of brutality. Well it is now thanks to Google Side Wiki.

Or folks were trashing your commercials while watching a program. Thanks to Twitter, they are.

Now people are commenting during meals at your restaurant and posting while staying in your hotel. Frankly, the marketer, the speaker, the business and the actor have all lost control of the conversation. But if, like Brogan, and embrace the conversation, you can make it work for you. Because, what choice do you really have?

In case you haven’t heard, volume of social media is absolutely huge, including 133,000,000 blogs, 250,000,000 active Facbook users and, now, over 33 million Twitters. This vast sea of information contains connections and ecosystems that even the most adept brand manager or CMO will find confounding without the right tools and people with a dedication to finding them.

After the individuals and connections are found, marketers must learn what customers are saying and gauge their sentiment about their product, brand and company. Marketers may discover there’s a lot being said by more people than they would have thought possible.

Once all this information is gathered, it becomes obvious that simply getting a line in the water isn’t enough. Marketers need to develop a unique strategy to engage their audience that’s a lot deeper and more involved than getting on Twitter and Facebook with the same message they’ve been using in traditional marketing.

OK. You get it and you’re ready to start and want to know your options.

Hire an agency or consultant to do the listening and strategy for you.

Buy a tool like Neilson’s, Radian 6, or Social Radar and make a go of it yourself.

Don’t have the budget or buy in on the importance of social media? Start with the free tools and and Excel spreadsheet. A couple graphs and some solid numbers may help you illustrate the importance of social media to decision makers.

A couple free tools are:

Google Blog Search

Twitter Search

Social Mention

Ice Rocket

One Riot

There are literally hundreds of tools out there, these are just a couple I’ve used. The important thing is pick a tool and stick with it if you want to do any tracking because they will all provide different results. What they won’t give you is easy tracking, graphing, and sentiment.

Agencies have heard loudly that serving the same old sauce isn’t going to land new clients and keep old ones. Things have to change so I’m going to go way out on a limb and make some predictions.

1. Agencies won’t be siloed the way they are in the future. Media, creative, and account service. We will still have creative girls and numbers guys, but media, planning, and some of what account service now does will be blurred. This will help produce better solutions for clients.
2. Successful agency/client relationships will touch a lot more departments. Working with a mid-level marketing department executive for the day to day won’t be enough. Customer experience, outbound communication, and even inbound communication will become so important to the brand that great client/agency relationships will work on all of this and more on as part of a branding effort.
3. Agencies will finally stop talking about the big idea and start talking about getting the details right. Who cares about a big idea when the brand experience is the new media? Getting the details right will make the brand successful.
4. Long thought of a slick hucksters, ad folks will be preaching truth, trust, and respect for the customer. Remember David Ogilvy’s “the customer isn’t an idiot, she’s your mother.” Well, don’t forget it. In fact, repeat it once or twice and you’ll be on the cutting edge.

Bonus prediction: Agencies will be confused about what to call themselves for near future. Using monikers like group, Inc., collective, partners, labs, and idea factory because they’re afraid to commit to being grouped as just a digital shop or a old school advertising agency. Eventually, they’ll all agree on what their industry is called and rename the AAAA.

Notice this doesn’t say “Top Ten.” Just ten things, as a modest practitioner of copy and social media, I think aren’t obvious to people coming to social media from advertising.

I expect some people will have a few problems with this list. That should be expected, we are still defining social media. Got a problem, leave a comment. I’m listening.

1. The PR people are way ahead of you in this arena. Their business has been shifting more dramatically and longer than ours.
2. Social Media isn’t a threat to your job if you still have one and you take SM seriously. But if you don’t have a job, it could be your savior.
3. Social media isn’t just about user generated content. You have to give people something to talk about.
4. If you dig in and dedicate yourself to social media, you’ll gain more than you’ll give.
5. Social media still needs a concept. If you just build it, they won’t come.
6. Don’t concept for the technology. Social media isn’t usually “paid,” so do what makes sense for the brand and the concept. Just because the client said they want a Facebook page, doesn’t mean you should make one.
7. Social media is about learning and sharing. Your social media executions should share something of value.
8. You can’t tell half truths or even spin. The bloggers will skewer you.
9. Social media isn’t a fad.
10. Learning is more important than in other media.

I’m sure I must have missed something…