I've been reading lots of blogs recently for research to aid me in my own blog (and for assignments for my social media class). I've always thought that for our industry looking at main travel advisor sites (like Tripadvisor), monitoring one's own blog, and associated social media sites were enough to get a good idea of customer's, and opinions of the general public were enough. I never thought about how beneficial measuring the other hundreds of other tiny conversations, forwards, and tags (etc) going on elsewhere in cyberspace could be and how it could greatly impact a company's reputation.
To do a test of my own, I wanted to use for an example, a company that I've been following, Westjet. They have a great way of keeping connected with their customers (I thought especially through social media), both on and offline, have amazing customer service. I assumed with the way they are so interactive, and being in the service/hospitality industry, they would have some great up to date feedback that could be analyzed. Also a great opportunity to judge whether or not people saw the company with the same views that I had, and if there was any negative feedback, and how to use the different types of tracking websites and tools available.
There are many tracking sites out there, offering tracking even specific to one particular platform of social media (like Twittalyzer and Topsy specifically for Twitter) I had tested about 10 different sites before choosing to use 2 that included a variety of sites:
Addictomatic, and visibility from
Howsociable.
Howsociable allows tracking of social
networks such as: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc, and allows you to see what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web's social media sites.
A few comments regarding service rated
positive or
negative:
An
article from Reddit posted about rising fairs from Air Canada and Westjet with comments (I chose this article because of the negative nature to see if there were any positive comments - unfortunately not, but I expected this) :
black_as_nails 2 points3 points4 points 19 days ago[-] Air Canada + WestJet...Bell + Rogers...Yeah, I see where you're coming from. shawnpeps 0 points1 point2 points 19 days ago[-] Remember when everybody loved Westjet?
and comments via Twitter and Facebook
terrible service from delta airlines this wknd, missing flight due to flat tire on the highway. seriously, nobody tops @westjet (twitter.com/multikaren/statuses/49659547727568896)
I can't remember the last time a @WestJet flight I've taken has been on time. Delays suck.(twitter.com/irisdias/statuses/49642382664282112)
Too bad WestJet does not fly to Boston.....(twitter.com/aykate/statuses/49636804709711872)
Addictomatic "searches the best live sites on the web for the latest news, blog posts, videos and images" and allows you to personalize the results on your dashboard. It includes posts through channels like Wikio, Friendfeed (Twitter posts), and Wordpress.
A few more recent notable posts about Westjet while searching via Addictomatic:
Some pictures of the planes via Flikr and comments
Generally comments were positive, unless of course people were tweeting about delayed flights and price hikes. There were very few service related complaints.I also came across this additional site Socialmention which had tools to determine frequency of sources, top users and keywords, and rank percentages of reach, likelihood of discussion in social media, "passion" - posts written by the same author pertaining to the company, and a ratio calculator of positive vs negative conversations. Which I found useful and interesting. A few notable comments via socialmention:
@WestJet You have one heck of a customer service rep at Vancouver Airport. Props to Tyler for keeping it professional! twitter.com/MellaMooney/statuses/49698673864609793
well if @WestJet starts flying to IAH straight from Calgary or toronto, then im good ( twitter.com/texastoker/statuses/49687554106208256)
Ultimately, I think that although social media tracking is useful in improvement strategies and tapping into what peoples may be about a certain topic, sometimes the results can be biased depending on the sites they choose to review and that a mix tracking sites must be used to come to conclusions. (and I still think they're doing great for comments and visibility through social media, but I think a good thing for them to do would be stretching out a little further still and even commenting on articles to give their side of a story.)
After that long post, what sites do you use to track your social media progress? I'd love to hear any new ones to try or pointers on how to use...