Radian6, one of the primary social media monitoring tools we use at Ignite, recently launched a new feature: automatic sentiment analysis. As Christ Newton, Radian6 Founder and CTO, explains in his blog post: “Radian6 automated sentiment reviews on-topic posts as they come in, determines the sentiment of the post at the sentence level, and aggregates a positive, negative, or neutral designation at the post level based on specified sentiment keywords and phrases.”

I should mention that Radian6 continues to be one of our primary tools at Ignite. The noise filtering is second to none, and we should know – we are tracking some very “noisy” keywords for our clients. So, while we consider the addition of sentiment analysis to Radian6 to be a great bonus, we would have continued to use their service even without it.

Opening Skepticism

Our social monitoring guru at Ignite, Brian Chappell, has often questioned the accuracy, and therefore, usefulness, of automatic sentiment analysis, typically done with what’s called [...]

Tue Dec 22, 2009 07:45 am

I’m going to be speaking at the New Communications Forum (see sidebar link) in April on Social CRM.  I’m currently collaborating with Esteban Kolsky on a what I hope will be a killer presentation.  I reached out to Esteban because I greatly admire and respect his research and his work; I consider him to be one of the top leaders in the space.  I’ll talk more about some of the things we’re going to be putting together as we get closer to the event.  For now, I wanted to provide a high level introduction to social CRM for those that are not familiar with the topic.

In order to understand what Social CRM is we first have to understand traditional CRM.  At the very basic level CRM is essentially a contact list with information about who you know, how you know them, and how you have interacted with them.  You categorize people in your CRM tool as leads, friends, prospects, or anything else that helps you define who that person is and how you know them.  What we are dealing with here is a collection of data about people that you “know”; you then use that data to help manage your relationships (which in most cases is with your customers).  CRM has been around for over 20 years and has been used by both small and large companies to keep track of their customers.  CRM systems are designed to create a process around the interaction that your company has with its customers in hopes of more efficiently closing a sale or resolving some sort of an issue.  Examples of popular CRM systems include Salesforce, Zoho, Sugar CRM, and many others.

So what is Social CRM?  Well, first let’s take a look at what has happened to get fro/> [...]

Sat Jan 02, 2010 14:05 pm

As you know, Microsoft and Yahoo were recently granted regulatory approval on their search and advertising deal, and we've discussed what this might mean for search engine optimization. WebProNews stopped by the Yahoo Headquarters in Sunnyvale before heading to SMX West in Santa Clara this week, and talked with Shashi Seth, Sr. VP of Yahoo Search Products about the deal, how it will be integrated, and timing, among other things.

Seth says that the integration of Bing results into Yahoo Search will take somewhere in the range of 18 to 24 months for it to happen worldwide, and they'll start with the U.S. first. He says the core thing users will find is a compelling set of experiences that go on top of just the algorithmic and paid results that come from Microsoft. In other words, Yahoo users will still find the Yahoo experience.

Shashi says he feels like Yahoo can surface a l/> [...]

Sat Mar 06, 2010 12:30 pm

Yahoo has shared the results of a survey that not only looked at how parents monitor children's online behavior, but how adults take control of their own digital reputations. The survey (conducted among 2,003 Internet users in the U.S., ages 18–64) revealed the need for a great deal of reputation management education.

According to Yahoo's findings, 65% of people don't know or are not sure what a digital footprint is and 31% don't feel they are in control of their online image. Although I will add, you only have so much control over this anyway, for reasons discussed here.

Yahoo also found that 48% of respondents don't realize or are not sure if the info they put online will remain online forever, while 7% think that it will go away if they delete it.

Yahoo offers these simple tips:

1. Know your connections
2. Think before you post
3. Protect your personal info
4. Configure your settings
5. Understand your digital footprint

"Everyone should conduct an online search of their name or their child’s name once a month. It's not a vanity search," says Catherine Teitelbaum, Yahoo's director of child safety. It's learning what's out there and ultimately taking control of your digital reputation."

20% of people plug their own name into a search engine once a month or more, while 49% do it 2–3 times a year /> [...]

Sun Jun 13, 2010 09:01 am