Sunday, June 8, 2008

Measuring Marketing Buzz Web 2.0 Style

Twitter. Love it, like it, or hate it. Whichever you prefer, Twitter is THE talk of social networking and communication nowadays. Twitter is considered a “micro-blogger” platform. Think of it as a short IM typed to the world. Twitter allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter web site, via the Twitter web site. Think of it as text messaging on the web. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. What makes Twitter interesting is that if you have the right tools, this is one way of measuring your product or brands “buzz” on the internet. One such tool or “application” that will tell you if your new product or brand is the talk of the net is SUMMIZE.com. Summize is the twitter search engine that will give you conversations in realtime. It crawls through Twitter’s public timeline in realtime, thread together associated tweets (text messages) and lets you search for buzz words, keywords or whatever terms you might want to search for.

Did you just introduce your newest product? Search Twitter via Summize and see what people are saying about your product. Has your branding campaign been less than steller? Search Twitter via Summize and try to figure out why? Want to find out what people think of your website or blog? Search Twitter via Summize and find out. You get the picture. There are many other applications that leverage Twitters user base to chart tweet data. I have even seen an application that allows you to see trends on Twitter over time (I will cover that application in a subsequent post). Online Marketers must be able to use these Web 2.0 tools to test and measure their company’s overall strategy. These types of tools keep evolving, so always keep an eye out for updates or new applications that will leverage social media sites.

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