Tagged with: Converseon

Last week at the WOMMA conference, Converseon released a new white paper entitled “Listening 2.0:  Leveraging Social Intelligence to Meet Business Objectives.”    The report focuses on how basic monitoring services are giving way to deep level intelligence that can be infused across organizations to provide competitive advantage.  In short, the report, finds, social intelligence is growing up.
An excerpt:

As we enter 2011, social media is passing a tipping point in the enterprise. For many brands, social engagement is no longer seen as a set of small experiments on the fringe of the organization. They are becoming a core component of business strategy. As such, we are witnessing a rapid evolution from ad hoc and sponsored exploration to a desire for enterprise enablement, whereby social media and social intelligence become competitive advantage and help enables critical business performance.

For these organizations, they will need to address four important areas to help achieve business outcomes through social media:

1. Determining how and where listening can significantly impact business outcomes and objectives.
2. Understanding how to manage the vast rivers of data, find meaningful insights, and support business processes and use cases — for today and tomorrow.
3. Determining what should be automated and the role that people need to play; and determining the balance of internal versus external resources and capabilities.
4. Creating frameworks to infuse social intelligence into the far reaches of the organization and ensuring timely action with a systematic, best practice approach and measure impact.

Today we announced expansion of our social listening capabilities in China through a partnership with CIC. The full announcement is here.

The social media conversation is increasingly global.   And we at Converseon continue to expand our social listening so that brands can understand these conversations across regions and languages.   One of the most dynamic regions is China.

CIC is based in shanghai, independent, and is a leader in social listening in china, which is a very complex market with tremendous potential. For example:

• There are more people online in China than the entire population of the United States (420 million)….with room to grow. China’s population is 1.2 billion.
• While Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are all blocked in China, local equivalents exist in China for every online ““““social medium. These are more than just copies. In fact, they have localized and transformed social business. For example, Taobao (the ‘ebay’ killer) launched a ‘group purchase’ flash sale recently that sold 205 Mercedes Smart cars in 3.5 hours.
• There are almost as many people on social network sites in China (210 million on Facebook equivalents) as total people online in the US (220 million).
• Chinese netizens are creating 2x the volume of original online content per person, according to Forrester.

CIC is independent, like us, and they share a similar vision, methodology, etc.  In addition, we have enjoyed a successful working relationship to date.  This announcement builds on that relationship to bring their social listening into our global Conversation Mining solution, while CIC can now offer our consulting and multi-language solutions to their clients.

We look forward to growing and evolving our partnership as brands continue to evolve from basic monitoring to deeper global understanding of online conversations.

Converseon has long had a strong contingent in Detroit, including a core part of our development team.   Some of the DNA of our top executives trace back to the Michigan area.

After facing so many challenges, Detroit is, in our view, a great base for some amazing talent, and we’re proud to have brought on some of the best.

As part of our commitment and investment to the Detroit area, just last month, we upgraded our facilities with a new office in the Detroit suburb of Plymouth.

So please join us in welcoming Converseon Detroit.

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

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.

Update: If you missed the presentation or want to study up, You can access Rob’s slides on Slide Share.

Rob will be speaking at PRSA’s  Digital Impact Conference taking place on Thursday April 30, 2009.

Rob will be speaking on:

Listening to the Conversation — The New Communications Imperative: New Listening Techniques to Gather Intelligence for Communication and Product Strategies

He will discuss how the use of listening technologies can help companies learn how people are relating to their brand, product and customer experiences.

The Digital Impact Conference was created to bring Digital Thought Leaders to demonstrate how to:

• Build a business case in the boardroom for public relations-led online communications and ensure ROI for your company from online initiatives.
• Assess your risk and successfully navigate the often rocky rapids of Web-based communications channels for public relations purposes.
• Ensure your future in the realm of digital communications.

The conference be held at:
Conference Location
101 River View
101 Sixth Avenue
New York, NY 10013

You can catch Rob on Thursday from 1:45 – 2:45 pm in Grand Hall B.

If you’d like to join us Register Here
You can also check out the Conference Blog for more information from some of the speakers