Since 2008, Internet Week has been a rapidly growing city-wide festival celebrating the openness of the worldwide web and the digital community in New York, while bringing the brightest minds and largest brands together to discuss their innovations, thoughts, opinions and best practices around the ever-changing digital landscape in New York and beyond. This year’s focus at IWNY is exploring how technology has disrupted and revolutionized every section of business from food to fashion to healthcare to education.

The event kicked off this past Monday with an explosive start, including panels, parties and networking events with high profile keynote speakers, featuring the likes of – Lauren Zalaznick, EVP of NBC Universal, James McQuivey, Ph.D, Forrester Research, Pete Cashmore, Founder & CEO of Mashable, BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief, Ben Smith and Founder & CEO, Jonah Peretti, Andrew Ross Sorkin, award-winning columnist for The New York Times, and Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough of Proenza Schouler.

At Synthesio, we eagerly jump on the opportunity to track global conversations around an event of this magnitude with such a web frenzy surrounding it, so we decided to take a sip from our Twitter Firehose and track all Twitter conversations surrounding Internet Week 2013, to provide you with engaging insights around the overall online reach of the event, and our list of top influencers driving the conversations.

So, now it’s halftime for IWNY and we invite you to stand up, stretch, grab a drink, and enjoy the Synthesio IWNY Halftime Report. Congrats to the top influencers, and don’t forget to check back for the full Post-Game Analysis!

Check out our live microsite – The Top Influencers Driving the Social Conversation at Internet Week New York – and see where you rank! Our microsite is updated in real time, so if you don’t see your name – start tweeting!

Every region has a unique social media landscape. Many countries, like China and Russia, even have their own social networking sites. If you’re a marketer for a global brand, it’s important to stay on top of the latest news in global social communications – to ensure you can effectively leverage social media to connect with your customers and community, worldwide.

We’ve put together a collection of social media blogs from around the world, to keep you up-to-date with the latest in social media trends, statistics and technology, all over the world.

North America

Cindy King

Through her personal blog, Social Media Examiner writer, Cindy King, strives to inspire professionals to get more international business through social and digital strategies

UK

NevilleHobson.com

Communicator, blogger and podcaster, Neville Hobson, analyzes and discusses global trends, behaviours and practices in digital communication to help you understand what they mean for people and organizations.

FeverBee

Richard Millington is the Founder and Managing Director of FeverBee Limited, a community consultancy, and The Pillar Summit, an exclusive community management training course. Richard’s blog, FeverBee, which attracts a readership of 6000 community experts, is ranked amongst the top 10 UK marketing blogs and is widely cited as best practice in helping organizations around the world improve their community efforts.

Ireland

Krishna De

In her blog, Krishna provides guidance on how to develop your social media policy and access examples of social media guidelines. She’s an award winning digital communications, online publicity and content marketing strategist, and mentor.

Europe

DreamGrow Digital

DreamGrow is a Digital Marketing agency with roots in Northern Europe. They have a great blog featuring frequent post on social media news, social media marketing trends, cases and examples, and global research and statistics.

Media Culpa

Media Culpa is a Swedish blog about media and public relations – with a focus on social media – written by Swedish PR practitioner Hans Kullin

Mastercom

Mastercom is a French blog about viral marketing, social media strategy, twitter advertising and viral video advertising –  by adrien de malherbe, based in Paris. You’ll find the top creative advertising campaign in viral, social media, digital, print, outdoor, TV commercial and more.

ViralBlog

ViralBlog is a French thought leading global blog that has been sharing opinionated marketing related stories on a daily basis since 2007.  Here you can expect awesome viral ideas, social marketing trends and disruptive innovations that are changing the rules in the marketplace.

India

Marketing Amnesia

Ishwar Sundararaman launched Marketing Amnesia to deal with the biggest shift in marketing – a more intelligent, a more networked, and consequently a more powerful consumer. With local news in social media trends and best practices from India and beyond.

Australia

Digital Buzz

Featuring the latest digital ad campaigns, hot new websites, interactive marketing ideas, virals,industry news, social media, insights, and other great digital trends from all over the world. Digital Buzz gets about 300,000 unique visitors every month – and encourages their audience to share their latest creative and innovative marketing campaigns – as long as it has a video.

Jeff Bullas.com

Sydney, Australia’s Award-winning Jeff Bullas, is a consultant, coach, mentor and speaker. This blog is about all things to do with Social Media and Online Marketing, including Twitter, Blogging, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and inbound and content marketing.

South Africa

Socialmedialogue

Socialmedialogue is a social strategy blog run by a group of CapeCoders Web Engineers in South Africa. The blog features tips on best practices and the latest in social media news, trends and events, unique to South Africa.

East Asia

Techinasia.com

This blog brings Asia tech and startup news to the world. Tech in Asia has a social media section – reporting on the latest news, trends and technologies in Asian social media.

Social Media Philippines

Rob Angeles is the founder and principal blogger for the first Philippine Social Media blog  - he shares tips, strategies and best practices, and also reports on local Philippine Social Media events.

Ask Aaron Lee

Aaron Lee is the Malaysian ‘social ninja’ behind Binkd, a complete social media marketing platform for promotions. His blog, Ask Aaron Lee, provides strategies, tips, guides and updates to help you fully utilize social media to grow your business.

Resonance China

Resonance China designs digital & social relationships between the world’s best brands and their China customers across the Middle Kingdom’s most popular social media networks. Their blog reports on the latest in Chinese social media statistics, trends and insights from the Resonance team.

Middle East

Bigumigu

Bigumigu is a Turkish blog – a source of independent innovation in marketing, advertising, marketing, design and technology – delivering the latest digital news from the Middle East and beyond.

Global

AdverBlog

Italian Martina Zavagno founded Adverblog.com in 2003 and has a team from across the globe to bring it to you 24 hours a day. Matrina’s global team is Italian, Australian, Danish, Japanese, French and Mexican – reporting on innovative digital marketing ideas from across the globe.

Did we miss any? Tell us what your favorite international social media resources are in the comments section! If you’re interested in learning more about social media in other countries, check out our white paper below, Defining the World’s Social Media Maturity.

Almost every industry has embraced the unique opportunities offered by social media to engage their customers and community in a two-way conversation, while implementing innovative, real-time marketing initiatives. So, why are many pharmaceutical companies reluctant to join the social media party?

Social media participation is still surrounded by a number of question marks for the heavily regulated pharmaceutical industry. The industry’s regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and their equivalents in Europe and Asia, have yet to provide clear guidance on how the rules currently in place (most of which were originally drafted without social media in mind) apply in a social media context. The complexity for global pharmaceutical companies is further multiplied by the very varied regulatory approaches in different markets.

Despite this, some pharmaceutical companies have already taken the leap into listening to social media conversations, having realized that there’s a huge amount of value to be gained from having a real-time, unvarnished view of medical professionals’ experiences of working with them and the patient journey surrounding different therapeutic areas. In doing so, they have ensured that they have the right listening tools and processes in place to satisfy Adverse Event reporting requirements.

Find Out Where Patients Are Discussing Your Products

Find out where your community lives, and listen. Social media provides a unique new platform and opportunity for learning about patients safety concerns, questions or comments. Patients are turning to open-access chats such as health advocacy group sites, Facebook, and Twitter to share stories, symptoms and reviews on various products. Listen to the chats and conversations – and look for any red flag mentions of your products or services. You can capture patient data of interest; but you can also capture additional data that may include safety-related information, which may need to be reported as adverse events.

Children with Diabetes is an online community for parents, children, adults, and families living with type 1 diabetes. The site offers advice from health professionals, gives  updates on research progress  and provides care suggestions.  A forum with over  600,000 conversations  is available for visitors.  

Implement An Alerting System For Adverse Events

Use a monitoring solution that is capable of implementing a system of automatic alerts based on chosen keywords. These alerts will notify the department in charge of pharmaco vigilance immediately – allowing them to take the necessary measures quickly.

UCB‐Sponsored
 Patients Like M
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Community deployed 
a system 
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 finding and reporting
 adverse
 events found in their online community 
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FDA “UCB has an ethical and legal responsibility to report adverse events associated with our drugs. If adverse events for any UCB drugs are mentioned on the site, UCB is required to report these directly to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Therefore, we are working to develop and deploy a solution that will allow us to assess and process potential adverse events, report them to the FDA, and capture them in the UCB safety database.” — Peter Verdru, MD, UCB’s Vice President of Clinical Research

Develop An Adverse Event Decision Tree

Create an adverse event decision tree (like the one above) to give your team a clear process; define what adverse events are, and provide the questions to ask find out which mentions are adverse events, and solid instructions on when to report an adverse event.

For more information on adverse event reporting and social media best practices for the pharmaceutical industry – check out our white paper below – Leveraging Social Media for Pharmaceutical Companies.

For many of us, social listening and sentiment analysis has become a part of our daily lives – brands are turning to social listening for crisis management, lead generation, customer service, real-time marketing and more. But do you really know how your social listening tool is finding and classifying conversations about your brand? There’s a lot going on behind the scenes to help you with your social media strategy.

From my personal experience, social listening has become the holy grail for marketing and PR – but how does it work? I’m certainly no expert when it comes to the science behind Natural Language Processing and Sentiment Analysis, however, that is exactly why I’m writing this post – chances are, you’re not a computer sciences expert either. It’s important to understand what’s going on behind the scenes with your monitoring solution, to make an educated decision on which tool to go with based on your needs – and to fully utilize and leverage the power of your listening technology.

What is Natural Language Processing?

NLP (Natural Language Processing) refers to computer systems that process language in terms of its meaning and analyzes language patterns to understand social media conversations. NLP offers valuable insights by tracking sentiment — the tone of a social media post, tweet, LinkedIn update, etc — and tags that post as positive, negative or neutral.

Thanks to our talented and tireless NLP team, we have developed a unique Natural Language Processing system, that works for variety of different languages – combining machine learning information with hand improved data. Here’s a high-level overview of what’s going on behind the scenes with Synthesio’s Natural Language Processing System.

Automated Sentiment Analysis

At Synthesio, our technology automatically builds lists of key terms in native languages, so we have the colloquial terms unique to each language. Our Automated Sentiment Analysis (ASA) weighs each term based on how charged the word is — really, this means the strength of the negativity or positivity. Our system will then find those key terms in each online mention, and weigh the key terms against each other in order to get the average sentiment for the mention.

To make this process scalable, our dictionaries automatically improve using manually coded data samples in each language and industry.

To date, Synthesio can offer auto-sentiment analysis in 12 languages including English, German, Spanish, French, Polish, Portuguese, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Italian and Turkish – making it very simple for global brands to gain valuable actionable insights into their consumer base – that may be implemented into PR, Marketing, Advertising, Sales and Customer Service efforts.

Machine Learning Word Classification

Synthesio’s machine learning algorithms learn how humans classify data – and copy it. Once enough data (social media verbatim) is manually tagged, we can activate the system and start classifying verbatim – and our machine learning algorithm copies our classification process – and begins classifying automatically. The benefit of auto-text analysis, is that computers can analyze and classify much more data at a much quicker rate than humans and sometimes with better accuracy! So, basically, the technology is learning how to be smarter and more efficient than humans… this may seem a little scary, but this system is saving you a ton of work – if you’re a large company, you’re probably seeing hundreds of social media conversations happening around your brand every day.

Word Clouds

Thanks to our NLP team, we now have word clouds that seek out and display trends in negative, positive and neutral words and phrases associated with a specific brand or term. Advanced word clouds simplify the detection of insights among very high volumes of data.

This NLP word cloud displays the positive, negative and neutral terms associated with a new Microsoft TV ad – highlighting areas of concern, and trends in language around the ad. By simply clicking on each word, you can drill down and gain context by viewing the posts associated with each word.

Among many other things, NLP gives you the opportunity to seek out the negative mentions of your brand, to prioritize your engagement and manage your reputation – but also find negative mentions of your competitors, too, for competitive intel and lead generation. For reporting purposes and market research – you can get a high level global snapshot of the sentiment around your marketing campaigns, and drill down for more detail and context.

No social media monitoring vendor would dare say NLP and sentiment analysis is 100% accurate – however, the industry is changing and growing at a rapid pace – we may need an additional human touch for 100% accuracy for the time being – but as an industry, we are well on our way to more sophistication and accuracy in the near future.

More more information on Natural Language Processing – check out our White Paper below – The Truth About Sentiment Analysis and Natural Language Processing or sign up for the Text and Social Analytics Summit 2013 in Boston (June 5-6), and learn about the latest in NLP, from text analytics gurus – Seth Grimes and Tom Anderson

Internet Week New York is just a week away, and as usual, the agenda is packed with exciting sessions on everything-to-do-with-digital, bringing together 10,000 attendees to the the IWNY HQ at the Metropolitan Center and city-wide, for four days of celebrity keynotes and lively panel discussions, interactive displays, workshops and tutorials and parties. This year’s focus at IWNY will be how technology has disrupted and revolutionized every section of business from food to fashion to healthcare to education.

Navigating the schedule can be dizzying with so many exciting sessions to choose from, but if you’re a marketing professional interested in developing and maintaining a successful social media strategy and learning about the latest industry trends and technologies in social, here are a few social media fuelled IWNY events you won’t want to miss.

OMMA Social

OMMA Social @ Internet Week is designed to guide marketers and agency execs through the terrain of social media and how it relates to their brand. Twitter, Macy’s, Expedia, Bravo Digital and other industry innovators will share secrets for connecting with and activating consumers via social media.

When: May 20th, 8:00am – 5:30pm

Where: IWNY HQ – Metropolitan Pavilion – Internet Week Theater, 125 West 18th Street, NY

Hashtag: #mpomma

Value of Online Communities for Broader Social Good

This panel will look at how online networks are creating offline communities, which have positive impacts in the physical world. It will ask how the social infrastructure of these online networks and offline communities can be repurposed, quickly and effectively, to respond to new opportunities and problems. This comes in the form of capacity, advocacy, charity and more. Community-driven innovation can work collaboratively with government to achieve great results.

When: 1:40pm – 2:10pm

Where: IWNY HQ Metropolitan Pavilion, Stage B, 125 West 18th Street, NY

Hashtag: #iwny

Connecting Both Sides Of The Digital Divide – The World Will Win

This panel will focus on the challenges we face with increasing noise and chatter in the Interwebs. Social good is everywhere – it’s being sung from NGOs, advocacy groups, brands and corporate boards. But is it reaching those who do not have “access.” Panelists will discuss the above-mentioned challenge and also explore how to change the following: How the people who have the most limited online connectivity have the least ability to characterize their own lives in public, in a way that other people can see and act on.

When: May 20, 3:30pm – 3:55pm

Where: IWNY HQ Metropolitan Pavilion, Stage A, 125 West 18th Street, NY

Hashtag: #iwny

Loud & Clear: How B2B Marketers Can Turn Up the Signal-to-Noise Ratio

Social media has matured. So what does this mean for business-to-business brands? It means that now is a perfect time for marketers who value engagement analytics, quality over quantity and targeted messaging. Yes, content is king and yes, anyone can self-publish, but that doesn’t mean the content is necessarily effective.  The impact of social as it becomes more deeply woven into emerging and existing media channels. How b2b marketers can leverage media to communicate their message out loud and clear. Moderator: Meredith Kopit Levien, Chief Revenue Officer, Forbes Media Panelists: Ethan Hays, Search Director, gyro Maikel O’Hanlon, Director of Social Media Strategy, Horizon Media Mark Howard, Senior Vice President, Digital Advertising Strategy at Forbes Media.

When:  May 20th, 9:00am – 11:00am

Where: The Forbes Galleries 60 Fifth Avenue (at 12th Street)

Hashtag:  #iwnyb2b

Social Advertising : Sharing and Powering Relevant Conversations

The rise of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have made it even easier for us to connect, discover and share news that matters most to us. It has also provided brands and advertisers an opportunity to engage with users on a more personal, emotional level by creating content that users want to read and share. Join Jon Steinberg, President & COO, BuzzFeed, on this panel, as he shares how social advertising is shaping the new digital landscape and how creating the right content can turn users into brand advocates, super sharers, and increase purchase intent.

When: May 21st, 10:30am – 11:00am

Where: IWNY HQ Metropolitan Pavilion, Stage B, 125 West 18th Street, NY

Hashtag: #iwny

AOL Social Media Salon

A cocktail hour, panel and discussion asking and attempting to answer one of the issues facing media at this time: “Are Social Media and Community Management the same thing?” Join our panelists: Meg Peters, Community Manager at Mashable (@petersmeg) Tim McDonald, Community Manager at HuffPost Live (@tamcdonald) Devin Desjarlais, Social Media Director at Omaze (@ddesjarl) Katie Morse, Social Marketing Manager at Billboard (@misskatiemo) Moderated by Matthew Knell, Social Media Director at AOL Cocktail hour begins at 5:30, panel at 6.

When: May 21st, 5:30pm – 8:30pm

Where: AOL, 770 Broadway, NY

Hashtag: #iwny

Synthesio Global Listening – ReportBuilder Launch Party

Stop by Tuesday evening after the IWNY excitement – a quick walk from the IWNY HQ – for Synthesio’s ReportBuilder launch party! If you’re into social media listening, this is one party you won’t want to miss! Mingle with fellow IWNY digital enthusiasts in the hip relaxing setting of Toshi’s Living Room. Great vibe, live music, drinks and food. – Come early! Entrance is free, and the first 50 guests will get their first drink free!  Meet some of the team at Synthesio, Global Social Media Monitoring – the award-winning company behind global listening projects with Microsoft, Nissan, Toyota, Blackberry, MTV and many more… – Get a sneak peek demo of the groundbreaking new launch – ReportBuilder – a bleeding-edge social listening innovation that you won’t find anywhere else… the #1 top Influencer tweeting about the ReportBuilder Launch party will be the proud owner of a brand new iPad Mini! (Must be present to claim) #IWNYsynthesio

When: May 21st, 6:00pm – 9:00pm

Where: Toshi’s Living Room, 1141 Broadway, NY

Hashtag: #IWNYsynthesio

Social Media Club Long Island

Join Social Media Club – Long Island as we begin a new “chapter” on Long Island. Author and nationally recognized speaker Ric Dragon (CEO of Dragon Search) will be speaking about all things digital and search related. Come for the education, stay for the networking. After the meeting,  relax at the Hilton Long Island, and network!

When: May 21st, 6:00pm – 8:00pm

Where: Hilton Long Island, 598 Broad Hollow Road, Melville, NY

Hashtag: #iwnySMCLI

 MCC Quarterly Tech and Social Media Networking Event

Join the MCC Technology & Innovation Committee for a morning of networking and short presentations by MCC members working in the technology sector who will be bringing you up to speed on their businesses, the hottest technology trends and important innovations. Speakers; To be announced Space is limited and pre-registration is required. Don’t miss this meeting which will provide you with new contacts, fresh ideas, and valuable insights into the technology sector. Light breakfast will be provided. MCC members interested in presenting their business should contact Laura Bucko at laura@manhattancc.org Prize MCC members: Free MCC non-members: $15 Please note that there is a surcharge of $5 at the door.

When: May 22nd, 8:30am – 10:00am

Hashtag: #Tech

Where: WithumSmith+Brown, 1411 Broadway, 9th Floor, NY

How to Build a Social Audience with Peg Samuel

In an increasingly growing landscape, with a new social network coming out every month how do you navigate through all of the options and build your audience without your message from getting lost in a sea of communication?  This discussion focuses on ways to utilize social media to not only reach your target, but to also engage and excite them, focusing on practices in digital and social media through an integrated multi-marketing approach.

In an increasingly growing landscape, with a new social network coming out every month how do you navigate through all of the options and build your audience without your message from getting lost in a sea of communication? This discussion focuses on ways to utilize social media to not only reach your target, but to also engage and excite them, focusing on practices in digital and social media through an integrated multi-marketing approach.

When: May 22nd, 9:00am – 9:50am

Hashtag: #iwny

Where: IWNY HQ Metropolitan Pavilion Classroom125 West 18th Street, NY

Big Data vs Big Engagement

Success doesn’t just mean driving big numbers, but ensuring big engagement in real time. In 2013, we have seen the rise of real time marketing and its impact on engagement. It’s more than numbers and passive consumption, but detecting if your content is connecting with your audience. Beverly Jackson (Senior Director Marketing and Social, The GRAMMYS) leads this discussion with Next Big Sound, IND Music, Mass Relevance and Stache Media on going beyond the numbers, dissecting authenticity, and using brands as a media outlet.

When: May 22nd, 12:00pm – 12:45pm

Where: IWNY HQ Metropolitan Pavilion, Stage A 125 West 18th Street, NY

Hashtag: #iwny

Storytelling & Social Media: Are We Genetically Predisposed?

This year at Internet Week in NYC, DDB will be hosting an interactive presentation titled Storytelling & Social Media: Are We Genetically Predisposed? The presentation will delve into the historical parallels to modern behaviors in the digital space. The evolution of behavior in the digital era and what’s next as we evolve will be discussed. As prehistoric man, we painted on cave walls to tell our stories and make our marks for the next passers-by to see. We evolved to verbal storytelling in groups, then written text, then music and so forth to share our tales. Today, we use the internet and platforms like Instagram and Foursquare as our vehicles for story telling and sharing where we’ve been. The presentation will examine points on storytelling: prehistoric to present, what’s next and explore the concept that social media is in fact, not “new”.

When: May 22nd, 4:00pm – 5:00pm

Where: TBD

Hashtag: #iwny

The Care and Feeding of Social Media Superfans

Whether you call them Mavens, Influencers or Superfans, it’s no secret that there’s a select group of social media users out there that can help make or break your brand campaign or entertainment property. This session will talk about 1. How to find them, 2. How to talk to them without scaring them off and 3. How to manage them effectively, harnessing their powers for the forces of good – that is, for making your project successful. Teaching the class is Josh McHugh (CEO, Attention Span Media).

When: May 22nd, 5:00pm – 5:50pm

Where: IWNY HQ Metropolitan Pavilion, Classroom, 125 West 18th Street, NY

Hashtag: #iwny

How to Teach Anybody How to Use Social Media

Learn proven methods for teaching people with no understanding of social media how to set up their profiles and become comfortable sharing content online. This session will be led by Crain Communications’ Tracy Samantha Schmidt, who has taught social media basics to more than 20,000 people nationwide.

When: May 23rd, 9:00am – 9:50am

Where: IWNY HQ Metropolitan Pavilion Classroom, 125 West 18th Street, NY

Hashtag: #iwny

Social Platforms vs. Social Behavior: Adapting an Industry Approach to a Rapidly Evolving Practice

DDB will host Social Platforms vs. Social Behavior: Adapting an Industry Approach to a Rapidly Evolving Practice during Internet Week New York. This panel will explore the constant changes within the digital landscape, and adaptation to this constant change from an industry/agency point of view. Many social campaigns consist of Facebook tactics, Instagram Images, Pinterest Boards or Twitter hashtags, but often fall short when it comes to supporting the brand’s overall goals and objectives. The panel will focus on thinking “outside the platform” as an industry and concentrating on leveraging social behaviors to meet broader business goals when developing digital strategies. Other points to be discussed are the current state of social media, the ad industry approach, the need for change and using social to meet business goals.

When: May 23rd, 1:00pm – 2:00pm

Where: TBD

Hashtag: #iwny

You Said You ‘Like’ Me But We Never Do Anything Together

How does a brand channel the power of those sought after “likes” to create meaningful customer engagement? Like any successful relationship, it takes hard work, clear communication and sincere effort. All those people who ‘like’ a brand don’t appreciate being taking for granted, and certainly want to know what they can expect from the relationship. How can a brand make their loyalists feel special and empowered? How can communication be personalized to unique user groups so that the right messages reach the right people at the right time? Is it all worth it?

When: May 24th, 1:00pm – 2:00pm

Where: TBD

Hashtag: #iwny

The Power of Marketing in the Moment

As more and more consumers are heading online during big cultural moments – whether they be awards shows, large-scale sporting events or major political moments like presidential debates – social media has become a real-time echo chamber of public opinion. This gives brands today an incredible opportunity to achieve newfound relevance and really resonate with their audiences. The beauty of real-time engagement often lies in improvisation, it’s also about planning ahead: building the right muscle memory, culture, and technological backbone. Looking at everything from the Oreo Super Bowl blackout ad to Justin Timberlake’s comeback at the Grammy’s, to the many Oscar imitators (hits and misses) – social experts at this event will explore what brands need to do to become an authentic part of the consumer conversation – and affect the bottom line.

When: May 23rd, 12:30pm – 1:10pm

Where: IWNY HQ Metropolitan Pavilion, Stage A, 125 West 18th Street, NY

Hashtag: #iwny

Social media has shifted the power to consumers and given them a platform for their voices to be heard – in real-time. Not only has social media created this opportunity for consumers to voice their complaints and concerns around products and brands – it has also created an environment of transparency, and Retailers and Manufacturers must work harder than ever before to manage their reputation and find new and innovative ways to harness the power of social media to connect with their consumer base.

To gain a competitive edge, the Retail industry needs to listen and analyze these conversations about their brands, their products and industry –  to make better decisions about their merchandise, stores, service and promotions – and develop and nurture long-lasting relationships with their consumers and community.

Understand the Retail Social Landscape

Listen to social media to find out where your community “lives”. Do your customers and prospects engage on twitter, blogs, forums or mainstream news? What keywords do they use the most? Maybe they’re discussing “coupons”, “malls”, “stores”, “retail” or “shopping”.

A listening platform will help you seek out these conversations to give you a firm understanding of who your community is, and where they are – this information will be key when you’re ready to engage.

One of the world’s leading luxury watch manufacturers used the Synthesio dashboard to discover the bulk of conversations about which expensive watch to buy, were taking place not on fashion or luxury goods sites, but on automotive forums – particularly those relating to Formula 1 Racing. The luxury watch brand used this insight to connect with their customers by sharing a passion for fast cars through sponsoring Formula 1 events.

Gain Insight Into your Consumer Base

By effectively listening to social media you can find out your consumer’s preferences, behavior, perceptions about your brand, and trends in products and shopping. Monitoring and analyzing social media sentiment can help you fully understand the market reaction to product launches, and help you track and measure the success of your promotional campaigns. By geo-targeting your search, you can focus on what’s important in that region, analyze the effects of your marketing campaign in specific areas, or seek out new potential consumers to engage with.

Synthesio worked with a leading skincare manufacturer to provide ongoing monitoring of verbatim relating to their new foundation. Through social listening, they discovered that consumers loved the product however, said it made their faces a little too shiny. The brand took action with an early launch of a new product in the pipeline – an oil-free version of the cream.

Provide Shoppers with Real-Time Customer Service

Retail shoppers expect exceptional customer service offline and online – and if they don’t get, they’ll tweet about it. By listening for these conversations and helping in real-time – you will turn a negative situation into a winning customer experience, and develop strong, lifelong relationships with your consumers – some will even become active advocates for your Retail brand throughout the social space and beyond.

Kohl’s is one of the most proactive retail brands on social media, reaching out to customers via Facebook, Twitter and incorporating social media for product reviews and shopping assistance into the Kohl’s website for easy sharing.

The Walmart twitter team is also proactive, thanking consumers, inquiring about customer issues with care, and requesting further feedback.

Keep Tabs on the Competition

Monitor your competitor’s social media channels and see what their strengths and where they fall short.  Are they engaging with their community? Are they responding to customer complaints? Or maybe they’ve developed some new innovative social campaigns, and now you need to up the ante.

Track your Retail Brand’s Reputation

Your monitoring solution should also track and analyze all conversations and sentiment around your company and industry across multiple social media channels. By implementing a monitoring tool into your listening strategy, and knowing what topics to listen to, you will help your brand catch and address any issues before they escalate.

And depending on the global reach of your retail brand, it may be important to consider investing in a tool that provides vast global coverage and language capabilities. For example, if you have a consumer base in China, you’re missing out on a wide range of opportunities (or issues)  if you’re not paying attention to the Chinese sites, like Renren, Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo.

The online gaming market has certainly come up against their share of challenges: the growing number of gaming sites competing for players, industry regulations, regulated environments, and more. For online gaming companies like Bodog, these hurdles present a powerful opportunity to set themselves apart as industry leaders, in a competitive market.

Bodog is never shy of embracing new concepts that break the mould and set them apart from the competition their approach to social media is now different. As ever, Bodog is looking to adopt a totally different strategy from those falling over themselves to provide a social gaming product.

Bodog’s Asian Social media Director, Ysobel Hamidjojo, explains: “The key component at the heart of any social media strategy is listening and with Synthesio as our partner-of-choice we can do just that so we provide the content and interaction our customers actually want. Guessing doesn’t work and like any part of a business if you’re not providing what the customer wants – you are not doing your job, why should social media be any different?”

The online gaming market is moving at a rapid pace – the amount of sites that host online games are growing at lightning speed, and increasingly more players are coming up online looking for the best online gaming platform. Without the right technology – it’s impossible to stay on top of it all. Bodog uses social listening to identify the top sites, and reach out to eager new players to introduce them to the Bodog platform.

Bodog has baked customer support into its listening strategy – by listening to customer support issues and responding in real time, they are able to deliver outstanding customer service, and build long lasting relationships with their customers and community.

A big thanks to all the publications that have joined us in sharing our exciting news!

Wall Street Journal, adotas, Marketing Interactive , M&M Global, CalvinAyre.com, The Sacramento Bee, Sys-Con Media, 6wlns.com, SiouxLandNews.com, Central Coast News, News Channel 10, KATV, ABC6, The Business Journals, Fox42 News,  KSFY abc, Database Marketing & London: The News

WHEN: Tuesday May 21st – 6:00pm – 9:00pm

WHERE: Toshi’s Living Room (26th & Broadway) Only a few blocks from the IWNY HQ!

HASHTAG: #IWNYsynthesio

RSVP HERE

Stop by Tuesday evening after the IWNY excitement – a quick walk from the IWNY HQ – for Synthesio’s ReportBuilder launch party. Join us at this exclusive event – Entrance is free and your first round’s on us! Just RSVP above.

 Here are the highlights:

-  Mingle with fellow IWNY digital enthusiasts in the hip relaxing setting of Toshi’s Living Room. Great vibe, live music, drinks and food.

 - Come early! The first 50 guests will get their first drink on us!

 -  Meet some of the team at Synthesio, Global Social Media Monitoring – the award-winning company behind global listening projects with Microsoft, Nissan, Toyota, Blackberry, MTV and many more…

 -  Get a sneak peek demo of the groundbreaking new launch – ReportBuilder – a bleeding-edge social listening innovation that you won’t find anywhere else…More info here

 - Guests are welcome to a personal test drive of Synthesio’s Global Listening Platform, so you can see for yourself how ReportBuilder will save countless hours and help reclaim your social life.

- We’ll feature a “Synthesio Happy-Listening Hour” throughout the night with discounted $10 cocktails – just ask for the SynthiaSpecial!

This is one party you don’t want to miss!

SIGN UP FREE HERE

About Synthesio

Synthesio is a global social media monitoring company, helping the world’s leading brands and agencies to listen to, understand and engage with consumers worldwide. By delivering social media data of the highest quality within 190+ countries & 50+ languages, brands receive crucial insights into their market’s opinions, wants and needs.

Driving positive business change, and building stronger relationships with consumers since 2006.

www.synthesio.com

Fast Food giants have historically ruled the television and radio airwaves with high-budget ad campaigns – but, in recent years, smart Fast Food companies have taken to social media to reach their audience and engage with their community.

The Fast Food industry is faced with the challenge of navigating through a widespread negative perception towards their industry – unhealthy food and poor customer service – which makes the task of developing and nurturing a great company image even more important – and many Fast Food brands have demonstrated some great examples of doing just that with social media.

Supersize Your Community Engagement.

Chipotle does an excellent job of subverting the Fast Food industry’s stereotype of delivering cold, impersonal customer service, by taking a one-on-one engagement approach with its customers through their social media platforms, responding to most questions within a couple of hours. Chipotle’s twitter team – Joe, Nicole, Myra, Todd and Rusty, respond to all company mentions with an engaging  human-tone, and also sign off each tweet with their individual names. It’s clear that Chipotle’s twitter team actually really enjoys engaging with their community on a personal level, therefore building a community around their brand, humanizing their company and creating a loyal customer base.

Tell Them What’s on Their Plate.

Last year, McDonald’s launched a highly regarded campaign to provide complete transparency to its public, including videos of behind the scenes at the restaurants and an open invitation to their community to ask questions on their microsite, “Our food. Your Questions”. The site has received over 5,000 questions and has a dedicated 10-member social media response team to answer the questions through text, photos and video.

Build a Team of Super Customers.

White Castle Craver Fans are strong brand evangelists. White Castle defines a Craver as “going beyond, staying up and driving far. It’s road-tripping two hours just to reach the nearest sack of Sliders. And it’s coaching friends on what to order…”.  White Castle has successfully created an online community and culture of brand advocates through providing fun incentives and promotions, as well a platform for Cravers to connect with one another and share stories.

Ask Your Customers What they Want – And Serve it.

KFC asked its community – what occupation would be most extreme where KFC could deliver its new $5 Everyday Meals? After sorting through more than 100 “out-of-the-bucket” occupations (including working at Area 51, changing the lights that top water towers and skyscrapers and trimming trees), KFC decided to send its KFC Colonel up in the air to bring lunch to high rise window washers in Chicago. This campaign created enormous buzz around their brand and significant engagement with their community and fans.

Listen to What Customers Are Saying About Your Menu.

Five Guys listens to social media conversations about their brand to provide better customer service and gain insight into the public’s social media response to their products. They have recently been monitoring sentiment around their new product, “little fry”, to ensure their customers are happy with the new addition to their menu – and as it turns out, “little fry” has been very well received.

Whether you’re an airline, cruise ship, hotel, amusement park, casino, restaurant or a destination marketing organization – effective social media marketing and engagement is crucial to the success of your business.

Tourism is an important pillar in almost every country’s economy – and in the last few years, some countries and organizations have been leading the way in leveraging social media to entice tourists to visit their locations and businesses, with some truly amazing and innovative social media marketing initiatives.

These successful social media fuelled marketing pursuits have provided the travel, tourism and leisure industry with inspiration and best practices around leveraging social media to create buzz around their destinations and businesses, and for providing world-class, real-time customer service through social listening.

1. Be Your Community’s Concierge

Planning for a vacation can be very difficult. There’s so much to plan – where to go, where to eat, where to stay, how to get there – social media gives travel & tourism organizations the tools to develop creative ways to help tourists plan their vacation. Inspire, engage and add value for your customers and community by providing them with useful insider travel information and a holistic overview of the destination.

Virgin Atlantic’s award winning travel website vtravelled.com links travellers around the world through an online community. It uses a special recommendations service to suggest site content from similar users, to provide helpful and relevant travel information tailored to each community member. The site includes real time updates on the top 50 events happening in the destination a traveller is visiting.

2. Create a Social Tourism Information Booth

Use your brand’s social media channels to provide useful updates and information on local events and situations that may affect their vacation, with helpful ways to plan around these events.

Big Five Tours & Expeditions Takes Proactive Approach in Egypt Crisis: Concerned about their guests amid the crisis in Egypt, Big Five directors recorded a series of audio messages and videos and uploaded to their Facebook page. They also posted real-time reports to Twitter.

3. Encourage Travelers to Share their Stories

Travel stories are typically the most engaging and fascinating stories – they’re colorful tales of discovering new places, people and food – full of excitement and wonder. They tell a very personal experience, but they inspire and entice your audience to create their own adventure. Find innovative and exciting ways to encourage your community to share their own experiences, through stories and photos.

In Tourism Queensland’s 2009 “Best Job in the World” campaign they created a global search for an Island Caretaker, whose job was to live on Hamilton Island for 6 months, explore the islands around the Great Barrier Reef and blog about it. Tourism Queensland saw over 34,000 video applicants from 197 countries, over 8 million website hits, 378,735 Facebook referrals, a 93% increase in followers and over 610 hours of user-generated content.

4. Show Them What They’re Missing

When it comes to traveling, a picture really is worth a thousand words. Images are a great way to excite your community and inspire them in planning for their next trip. And the more beautiful and enticing photos you post, the more your community will pin your photos to their pinterest boards. Also, encouraging your community to upload their own photos is a great way to curate content and build a community around your brand.

Explore Canada Like a Local: The Canada Tourism Commission’s microsite and app allowed users to curate and share lists of destinations around Canada they’d most like to visit, as well as upload their own photos.

5. Encourage Travellers to “Check-In”

Whether you’re encouraging tourists to check in to your bar, airport, hotel or casino – implementing mobile geo-location apps into your social media strategy is an excellent way to create buzz around your brand or destination – and an even better way to leverage mobile apps – is to get creative with fun promotions and contests.

For a Thanksgiving promotion, the San Francisco International Airport tweeted photos of a turkey named Pardon at spots throughout SFO. Users who tweeted or checked in (on Foursquare) to the correct location were entered into a sweepstakes.

6. Listen to Your Community’s Travel Experiences

People are constantly sharing their experiences from your destination, hotel, airport, aircraft or cruise ship on social media – so you need to be listening in order to be aware and ready to chime in with help. Chances are you’ve seen frustrated tweets or facebook updates in your network, complaining about the delay of a flight – the airlines that respond to these complaints with helpful information are regarded highly throughout social media. By listening for these conversations and helping in real-time – you will turn a negative situation into a winning customer experience, and develop strong, lifelong relationships with your customers – some will even become active advocates for your organization throughout the social space and beyond.

American Airlines not only informs and responds to customer questions on Twitter, but does so in a sincere and human approach.