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In a continued effort to showcase the best and brightest minds joining us at Converseon, we will highlight recent additions to the Converseon team through our blog. Our eclectic POV’s will be on display on a range of social media related topics. We’d like to introduce all of you to Mallory Dash, who authored the below post.

Some would say we’re transitioning to a new era in social media, as new sites and tools change the way we create and consume content, interact with our peers, and engage with brands. I often find myself comparing this change (along with most other aspects of my life) to Star Trek: The Next Generation, minus Geordi’s visor (but including Wil Wheaton).

A recent article from iMedia Connection discusses the opportunities and challenges brought about by social media, and goes through a slew of new tools and features available to marketers. To ignore these methods of reaching your consumers online is to forge some sort of attempt to defeat the Borg- simply put, “resistance is futile.”

But what does this mean for marketers and those trying to make a brand impact online? It can often seem overwhelming to keep track of all the tools made available to marketers in the online space, and as powerhouses like Facebook and Google continue to add more social features to external sites around the web (ie Google Buzz, Facebook Connect or their Open Graph initiative). However, it’s important to realize that these tools are still only as effective inasmuch as your brand’s key messages make sense and inspire your target audience to action. All the Holodecks in the world won’t change the reality that your brand is what consumers perceive it to be. How you use these tools will always make more of an impact than which tools you choose.

It’s all comes back to what Captain Picard would say to Riker… “Engage.”

Today Converseon is pleased to announce the launch of CHORUS™, the first measurement solution designed to holistically track and measure the relationship between online and offline word-of-mouth.

At Converseon, will have long recognized the need to integrate other measurement approaches to capture not just an individual’s digital persona, but also their offline dimension.   After all, Word of Mouth is an online and offline phenomena.  It is incumbent on brands to understand both these worlds and the interplay.   As such, we are proud today to announce another industry innovation that we have been working on for the last few months.

As a first in its field, CHORUS™ comprehensively fuses advanced social media listening and analysis together with offline word-of-mouth tracking, in partnership with WOM analytics company ChatThreads.

“Until now, online social media listening and offline word-of-mouth tracking have essentially been two parallel universes,” said Rob Key, CEO of Converseon.  “While an increasing number of brands are measuring online conversation, there has been a significant void in the measurement of online’s impact in offline word-of-mouth, and vice versa.  CHORUS™ solves the problem of how social media conversation impacts the proverbial offline kitchen table discussions.  For the first time brands can clearly understand and measure word-of-mouth in all its forms.”  Key notes that even with the growing proliferation of online social media conversation, an estimated 80 percent of word-of-mouth occurs offline.

Converseon’s proprietary Conversation Mining™ technology, together with the mobile-enabled touchpoint tracking developed by ChatThreads, bridge a long recognized chasm between what is put forth in multi-channel advertising and marketing campaigns, and what enhances brand affinity, stimulates word-of-mouth discussions, and drives purchasing decisions.

CHORUS™ combines, organizes and reports data gleaned via these two methodologies to create unique actionable insights to improve media and message optimization. This product now gives marketers a deeper understanding of what media fuels consumer discussions and decisions.

More details about the announcement are available at http://bit.ly/chorus-solution

Converseon will be hosting a WOMMA Wine Wednesday on March 24 at our New York headquarters. The event aims to bring together word of mouth marketing enthusiasts, WOMMA supporters and wine appreciation, in a unique networking opportunity.

Under a view of the Empire State Building, guests will sample a selection of fine wine and cheese, whilst mingling in the good company of their online peers.

During the evening, remarks will be made by Dr. Walter Carl, founder and Chief Research Officer of ChatThreads Corp, and Converseon founder and CEO Rob Key on new developments in converging online and offline WOM. Their experiences in listening and engaging will offer some enlightening thoughts on where these two, traditionally separate conversations, are headed.

To join us at WOMMA Wine Wednesday on March 24, please register here: http://bit.ly/networkingevents – get in soon as space is limited!

You can also find more information at our Facebook event page

Date: March 24

Time: 6PM – 8PM EST

Host: Converseon

Location: 53 w36^th St. 8^th Fl

New York, NY 10018

(212) 213-4297 x302

Parking is available for $26

Dr Carl and Rob Key will also come together next week in a separate event, the WOMMA Webinar ‘Listening 2.0: Social CRM and the Future of Social Listening’. They will also be joined by Jeff Zabin, CEO of Gleanster and Amy Laine, Principal Client Research Analyst from IBM.

The March 18 event will focus on the next generation of listening and how companies can apply this technique to drive business results and sustainable competitive advantage. In a digital environment where unprompted and unsolicited conversation is continuously expanding, listening has become the key tool to allow businesses to gain “deeper insights and actionable analysis”.

You can find more information on the Webinar here: http://bit.ly/dl5Zil

This week we are attending the iMedia Brand Summit in Las Vegas, with our CEO Rob Key leading a spotlight session title ‘Listening 2.0: Activating Social Media Across the Enterprise’ on Tuesday morning.

We’ve been supporting iMedia events for some time as they tend to bring a mix of the biggest brands, smartest minds in online marketing along with an arry of innovative vendors. We anticipate this summit to be no different with presentations from the likes of Bob Garfield of AdAge & NPR fame and attendance from senior marketers from Kraft, General Mills, Zappos, American Express and more.

Rob’s presentation will focus on how our clients are using Conversation Mining to drive insights and strategy across the business, along with the process we’ve developed to take brands through a social media evolution and some tactical tips on how to apply social media with your brand today to drive business results.

We’ll be live tweeting the event via our @Converseon Twitter account so make sure you’re following us for updates, we’ll also be taking another poll of the brand marketers in attendance on some key social media issues, as we did at the  San Diego Brand Summit last September.

Friday, Mike Moran will be speaking at the 2009 Search Insider Summit. At this event Mike will be sharing his knowledge and insights on ‘How to Sell Search to the C-suite.’ His advice will help fellow search advocates develop build buy-in with the upper echelon, prepare their organization for success and understand what it takes to create an enterprise search solution.

Mike will be speaking a 9:00 a.m. on Friday, if your attending the Summit we hope you’ll stop by and say hello

Also, be on the look out for Mike’s tweets from conference.

We’re happy to provide a free download of the new Aberdeen report “The ROI on Social Media Monitoring: Why It Pays to Listen to Online Conversation” – just click through to download a free copy.

Converseon sponsored this report and it has some very interesting findings, including:

• Best-in-Class companies are 2.6-times more likely than Industry Average companies, and 93-times more likely than Laggards, to improve their ability to generate consumer insights that drive new product/service development

• 78% Best-in-Class companies of Best-in-Class organizations, compared to only 8% of laggards, have improved their year-over-year customer retention rates

• Best-in-Class companies are 3.3-times more likely than Industry Average companies, and 82-times more likely than Laggards, to improve their ability to identify and reduce risk to the brand

Jeremiah Owyang recently published an interesting post on ‘The Eight Stages of Listening‘ for an organization, this research not only outlines some of the best practices from companies doing the deepest social media monitoring to date, but also how they’re providing value across the business.

Please click through to download your own free copy of the report (link expires: 01/01/2010)

In an article published on Sunday — Mining the Web for Feelings, Not Facts– The New York Times gives some well-deserved ink (and clicks) to sentiment analysis, a research area that hasn’t received a lot of attention so far. With the exponential increase in consumer generated media and businesses’ realization that these opinions do have influence on reputation and sales, there’s more interest then ever in finding scalable, accurate and (as much as possible) automated solutions that will be able to take in large amounts of data, and push out insights and trends that can be used as real-time, actionable market intelligence.

The article does a great job at describing some of the challenges of opinion mining and sentiment analysis, but it’s hard to understand the difficulties of creating automated solutions without diving deep in the theoretical underpinnings of the algorithms used by these solutions. If you want to get an idea about what’s out there start by following the sample of links provided below.

What we’re seeing right now are very early steps on a long road, and –although one could think that the solution is at hand when they read in The Times that some algorithms get around 80% accuracy– well… there’s still a way to go. There are many technical and conceptual problems that need to be solved, and they’re far from trivial. Of course, we have a horse in this game, and we’re betting on it. Stay tuned.

Resources:

• Opinion mining and sentiment analysis, book by Bo Pang and Lillian Lee
• Research papers by Bing Liu, University of Illinois at Chicago (for an overview of the challenges that remained to be solved read his keynote talk at the 5th Annual Text Analytics Summit, Boston, June 1-2, 2009)
• Research papers by Jan Wiebe, University of Pittsburgh
• Research papers by Claire Cardie, Cornell University

Last Wednesday, Mike Moran our Chief Strategist hosted a WOMMA Webinar on Listening 2.0.  The webinar featured presentations from Mark Kovscek, Senior Vice President of the VivaKi Nerve Center and Pauline Ores, Pricipal Analyst, Social Engagement Strategy of IBM.

If you missed it, don’t worry we’ve got you covered.  Below you’ll find  a the Cliff’s Notes version of the webinar, an audio recording of the session and the program slides.

Major Themes:

• What marks a good Listening 2.0 solution?
• How companies should use Listening 2.0?
• Where is the future of listening technology?

What marks a solution as Listening 2.0?

What the technology and service should provide:

• The ability analyze sentiment, particularly complex commentary such as sarcasm
• The ability to note complex and multiple mentions of a brand within a consumer conversation
• The ability to identify key topics and subtopics for your brand’s conversations
• The ability to demonstrate how topics and conversations are connected to each other and to the brand
• The ability to integrate multiple data types and imaging to create new more holistic views of the world
• The ability to create a global and scalable methodology

How companies use should use Listening 2.0

• Listening should be done at an enterprise level. To be effective it needs to cross over the silos of business units and lead to shared solutions
• Commit to “being in sync” with the market – be willing to reconsider marketing approach, content development and offerings, it can be about joining and taking their lead
• Be ready to take action, whether that is internal change or external engagement. To find ROI brands must be ready to take consumer comments to heart

Where is the future of listening technology?

• Technological improvements in computer translations
• Advanced tracking of message consumption and how it relates to purchase behavior
• Predictive modeling of  conversations and conversions

Resources: Twitter commentary , Audio Download, Slide Share

Tomorrow, Wednesday June 24 at 12pm EST our Chief Strategist Mike Moran will lead a free webinar for WOMMA titled ‘Listening 2.0: How the Web is Changing the Way Companies Listen to Their Customers‘.

Here’s the full introduction, courtesy of WOMMA:

Listening 2.0: How the Web is Changing the Way Companies Listen to Their Customers

12 pm Noon EST, June 24
Free for Everyone!

The Internet has added new ways for companies to listen, augmenting surveys, focus groups, and other traditional market research. But the first generation of Web listening tools were heavy on automation and light on real insights and actionability. Learn how Web listening is changing, and how your company can take advantage of it now. You’ll also get a sneak peek into what you should expect in the future, so that your company is ready.

Mike Moran is the author of the acclaimed book on Internet marketing, Do It Wrong Quickly, on the heels of the best-selling Search Engine Marketing, Inc., which is now in its second edition. Mike frequently keynotes conferences on Internet marketing for marketers, public relations specialists, market researchers, and technologists and serves as Chief Strategist for Converseon, a leading digital media marketing agency based in New York City.

Prior to joining Converseon, Mike worked for IBM for 30 years, rising to the level of Distinguished Engineer. Mike writes marketing columns for Revenue Magazine, Search Engine Guide, and WebProNews. Mike can be reached through his Web site (mikemoran.com), which is also home to his Biznology newsletter and blog.

Register for the Webinar!

The Aberdeen Group has released a new research study called Brand Reputation Management: Using Online Monitoring to Protect the Company’s Crown Jewels

As a leading company providing social media monitoring we support the growth of the research and sharing of information in the field of online brand monitoring.

Here are a few tidbits from the study:
*Class determinations for this study are based aggregate web performance scores. Best-in-Class companies consistently use more monitoring services.

• Best-in-Class companies are 2.4-times more likely than Laggards to improve year-over-year performance in customer retention rates. On average, Best-in-Class companies improved customer retention rates 11%, compared to 1% for Laggards.
• Best-in-Class companies are 400% more likely than Laggards to improve year-over-year performance in return on marketing investment (ROMI). On average, Best-in-Class improved annual ROMI rates 16%, compared to a 1% improvement amongst Laggards.
• Best-in-Class companies are 16-times more likely than Laggards to improve their ability to protect online brand reputation.
• Best-in-Class companies are 2.7-times more likely than Laggards to improve customer satisfaction. On average, Best-in-Class improved year-over-year customer satisfaction levels by 14%, compared to a 3% improvement amongst Laggards.

Results like these add proof to the pudding we’ve been dining on for years, that listening to customers and responding to their need leads to a more engaged, satisfied and loyal customer base.

Access to the report is free until July 3 (just requires a registration), simply click here to download your copy.