With a variety of social media listening and measurement tools, we can track, analyze and measure any brand’s presence in social media, as well as the conversation that’s taking place about that brand, trending topics in the community, influencers and more. Just as important, we can track and assess how our social media listening, audience generation and community engagement is shaping the online discussion and brand awareness, and calibrate our approach to meet existing or new benchmarks

We use an array of different social media “listening” tools, including Radian6, Nexus, Google, Google Alerts, Twitter Search, and the various search functions of different Twitter client platforms. We also keep abreast of emerging listening technologies and research their ability to help us better meet the needs we establish for each program.

Key metrics for any social media measurement program:

The World of Discussion

• The River of News.
  What are people in communities, social networks, on their blogs, or other online media saying? Whether they are speaking directly about your brand or discussing topics that relate to your products, you need to know what’s going on out there. We constantly monitor this for trending topics, discussion entry points, customer raves and rants, and more. We also prioritize the ongoing flow of information—some of it is relevant, some of it is not, so we determine which conversations have value and which should be allowed to flow by.


• Daily Monitoring and Engagement.
  The majority of interaction on any given topic happens within hours of news breaking or a post going live. We constantly watch for relevant news, opportunities and issues, and react while the discussion is young. In social media, reaction times must be immediate.


• Conversation Frequency, Depth, and Quality.
  We follow what people are engaging with. Tracking numbers of blog posts, commenters and comments, Tweets and Retweets (RTs), and more, we identify the topics and conversations that resonate with your target community. By pinpointing passion points, engagement entry points, direct customer interaction needs, we can determine the best ways of interacting with the community, assess current outreach, and recalibrate if necessary.


• Influencer Identification.
  We’ll figure out who the most influential bloggers and community members are. What are they saying—good and bad? And if they aren’t saying anything at all but they should be, how do we get them to engage?


• Conversation Reports.
  Depending on your needs, we can send members of the in-house team daily, weekly or monthly detailed or overview trend reports of brand or topic news and commentary.


• Social Media Scorecard.
  This is a custom scorecard created by the CVM team. It will measure the exact quantitative metrics that support all benchmarks established before starting our program. Like the conversation reports, this can be provided weekly or monthly, depending on the program. (A sample scorecard follows.)

Your Brand in that Discussion

• Brand Association Assessment.
  We’ll monitor what words are most often associated with your brand, as well as those you would like to have associated with it and those you would not. By regularly following these keywords and phrases, we can see the effect of our social media work and also figure out where we need to work harder.


• Current Brand Messaging Relevance.
  Is our current strategy for reaching consumers and communities on target? We may think a community is concerned with a particular issue, but are its members really? We can monitor the discussion, identify the central community issues and topics, and make responsive recommendations for brand social media strategy and engagement.


• Voice Share.
  How much of the conversation do you own or shape? We’ll compare you to your competitors and track your share of trending topics.


• Public Sentiment.
  What is the public perception of your brand? Are people saying good or bad things? You need to know. And once you do, this information can really shape the direction of your programs (social media and otherwise).

Program Measurement and Analysis

• Program and Specific Campaign Effectiveness.
  We’ll start monitoring online reaction to any new messaging (whether it appears in print, broadcast or social media), platform or application from the moment it launches. By tracking the number of conversations and keywords, we can measure community reaction and effectiveness and success.


• Crisis Response and Management.
  Has news broken that either directly or indirectly affects your brand? We’ll watch it, track its reach, and decide how to respond. Thanks to overarching measurement, we can track the effectiveness of our work.

General Measurement

• Crisis Monitoring.
  We keep an ear to the ground, listening for any words, comments, or discussions that might damage your brand.


• The Competition.
  Want to know what your competition’s up to? We offer overview tracking of their online presence, and share that analysis with you.


• Market Trends.
  What’s causing buzz? What’s catching the consumer’s attention? We can track your specific interests and make recommendations for online strategy and outreach.