CustomScoop Blog

Choosing the Right Media Monitoring & Analysis Service

Not surprisingly, I am often asked about the best solution for meeting someone's media monitoring and analysis needs. Of course, I am very biased in favor of CustomScoop, but I also recognize that some solutions may be better fits for certain individuals, organizations, and needs.

That's why I wrote a white paper on the subject. In it, I try to address some of the questions and dilemmas I most often see:

• Can I get by with a free service like Google News or Google Blogsearch? Sometimes, that answer is yes. The paper explains this in more detail, but the most basic assessment must be the volume of search terms and clips that result. The fewer things you are searching for and the fewer clips it returns on a daily basis, the more likely you are to be able to get away with free. For instance, most solo bloggers just doing ego searches are better off using a free service than paying a company like mine.
• If I need a professional service, how do I pick among all the monitoring services out there? You need to look very carefully at your needs and make sure that the service you select has the tools and information you need to be effective. At the same time, you want to make sure you aren't paying for too many bells and whistles that you won't be taking advantage of. Ultimately, it will all come down to your comfort level with the solution and the people behind it.
• Should I go it alone on analysis or use a service? Like the free vs. paid monitoring question, the issue of using DIY tools provided by your clipping service versus paying for specific analysis largely comes down to volume. Is your time better spent compiling reports or doing something else while you pay a vendor to analyze coverage? Of course, there are other considerations as well, including third party validation and resource efficiency.
• What about automated sentiment analysis? A number of companies provide the ability to "automatically" rate clips as positive, negative, or neutral based on computer analysis. This can be a great time saver -- if you are willing to sacrifice a bit on accuracy. 
• When is expert human analysis the right answer? If you want daily digests of just the key information and/or regular reports with careful, detailed analysis of trends, a professional analysis service may be your best bet. As good as comptuers are at organizing raw data (and even applying some sentiment scoring), there really is no substitute for people. That comes at a cost, so you will need to decide whether or not the media intelligence provided and the time savings offered justifies the expense.

The white paper, titled "Choosing the Right Media Monitoring and Analysis Solution," goes into much greater detail on these and other points to help you evaluate your options for effectively and efficiently tracking traditional and social media.

Social Media Breakfast NH #2 - Great Event

This morning I attended the 2nd Social Media Breakfast NH. It was my first Social Media Breakfast, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, it was a great event!  Social Media Enabler Extraordinaire, Leslie Poston (@geechee_girl) did a fabulous job in organizing the event and bringing in high quality presenters and attendees. Nice work Leslie!

While all the presenters were good, to me the highlight was Martin Murray from Public Service of New Hampshire.   He talked about how they used Twitter during the power outages in December 2008 to deliver messages and answer questions from customers while the electricity was out in New Hampshire.  It was a great way for them to reach thousands of people and deliver near real time updates.  Martin also shared how PSNH is using Flickr and YouTube as additional social media tools to reach their customers.  Nice work PSNH!!

I was also impressed with the other attendees at the event, and the time we had to network was great.  It was invigorating and exciting to hear how so many different New Hampshire companies are integrating Social Media into their businesses.  It also confirms our commitment at CustomScoop to continue expanding our coverage of monitoring social media for our customers.  We were proud to be the sponsor of the Social Media Breakfast NH and look forward to the next event.  Hopefully, we'll see you there too!

Ps.  If you want to see the slides and audio from the event, click here.

Do More with Less

I was talking with a friend of mine, Chris, the other day and he mentioned that "Thrift" needs to come back in style.  Of course, being a frugal New Englander, I never thought that thrift was out of style, but that's another story.

It did get me thinking, however, about the late 80's when I was working for a software company that specialized in design software for Architects & Engineers (Softdesk, later acquired by Autodesk).  The real estate bubble had burst back then and the stock market had taken a beating, yet our company actually thrived in the tougher economy.

The reason?  Simple.  People needed to do more with less.  Instead of people spending countless hours doing things manually, they invested in automation.  This enabled them to spend their time on higher value tasks.

Today, companies are facing some of the same economic challenges and are looking to do more with less.  This has been something we have been evangelizing at CustomScoop since our company was created back in 2000.  Let computers and automation do the repetitive tasks and free up the brain power of your employees to perform analysis and take action.

I see this as a no brainer and our customers seem to agree.  For less than $10 per day, an organization can have a fully automated monitoring solution that not only tracks news and blogs on the Internet, but also has a powerful set of charting and graphing tools to turn the information into intelligence.  Plus, as I look out our window and see the ice storm that continues to beat down on us in New Hampshire, our system never has to worry about missing work days due to snow and ice, the monitoring is 24 X 7.

One last thing on the "Do More with Less" train of thought.  I'm still perplexed as to why some of the vendors in our industry continue to force customers to sign up for their solution a year in advance and pay up front.  Our philosophy is to let the customers sign up for an account with a month by month subscription.  How does this tie into the "Do More with Less" you may ask? 

Well, we at CustomScoop will do "More" for you with "Less" of a commitment.  We believe that we should prove ourselves to our customers each and every day.  Therefore, we don't require a lengthy contract and a year's payment in advance.  Let us deliver the results, and if our customers see the benefit, they can renew again next month.  We even offer a free two week trial of the system to prove our system works for the customer.

Team Power!

I've always appreciated a Team effort, so it was great to see the Celtics win the NBA Championship last week as a Team.  Okay, I must admit, that being from New England, I might be a bit biased, but the reality is they played as a Team and won as a Team. It was exciting to see everyone contributing on offense and on defense and then win the Championship!

You may ask, so the Celtics won, big deal, what does that have to do with CustomScoop?  Well, it highlights the "Team" concept that has been our minds at CustomScoop for quite a while.  For you see, behind the scenes we have been working very hard and are now excited to introduce our newest level of service, the ClipIQ Team Edition to our product portfolio.

The Team edition is perfect for companies both large and small that have the need for a monitoring and analysis solution that multiple Team Players can use.  ClipIQ Team Edition combines our powerful online news clipping technology with state of the art media measurement tools all wrapped in an easy to use interface.

When you add to the service, our Team of Experts to help with the crafting of the search & filtering criteria, you get a winning Team combination that can't be beat.  I encourage you to Sign Up for a Free Trial of the Team Edition and see for yourself how our Team Edition can help your Team succeed!

Focus on the "Custom" in CustomScoop

Over the years people have made some jokes about our name and how they expected us to be selling Ice Cream instead of cutting edge media monitoring service and analysis.  It especially happens when we buy some logo merchandise with our name on it.

Well this year it made me think more about the history of the name and how appropriate it really is, specifically given our increased customization options within our ClipIQ product line.  Let's face it, the Scoop part comes from getting a "Scoop" on the news.  The Custom part comes from every customer having their own unique needs and the importance for them to get a "Custom" solution. 

For instance, we have always allowed our Customers to download their clips to a spreadsheet.  However, they had to download all the fields into the spreadsheet and then they could delete out the columns they didn't need.  After a few customers asked if we could let them choose which fields to download, our Development Team went to work and our Customers can now choose one field or all the fields to download.  They now can create their own "Custom" spreadsheet.

We also listened to our Customers when they asked if they can customize the email that they send out through our service to include their logo.  We thought it was a great idea and we implemented it right away.  Our team even took it a step further and created the ability for our Customers to use their own HTML template if they want to.  That's right, they can have a "Custom" email template to use to send out their clips.

In today's world where companies are making up names that has absolutely nothing to do with what they do, I'm actually pretty darn proud of the CustomScoop name and would like to take the interpretation a little farther.  The "Custom" is also short for the Customer, for our company really does revolve around the Customer.  We listen to our Customers and develop features for them based on their requests, not just create technology for technology's sake.  We will always focus on the "Custom" in CustomScoop.

Tags are "Awesome"!

It was a long, snowy winter here in New Hampshire, which means our Developers were basically snowbound and were able to create some great new enhancements to our ClipIQ product.  One of my favorite new features is the ability to "Tag" a clip.  By adding a Tag or Tags to the news and blog clips that our system aggregates, customers have a simple, yet powerful way to work with thier clips. 

Some of our clients are using it as a rating system.  They are tagging clips as Positive, Slightly Positive, Neutral, Slightly Negative and Negative.  They can then easily retrieve their clips and generate reports off the Tagged clips.  Other clients are using it as a simple way to group similar clips by product or company, or by competition or partner. As with most successful features in a product, the customers are finding new and different ways to use the feature every day.

The exciting thing for our Development team is to see that the users are really using their features, which means their hard work has paid off and is appreciated.  In fact, you could see them beaming with excitement when one of our customers was quoted as saying, "That's Awesome" after using the Tags.

You know, I might be biased, but I agree with them.  Tags are pretty awesome!

*Note:  This post replaces the original post that had the incorrect author.  I'm the real author.   

It was a long, snowy winter here in New Hampshire, which means our Developers were basically snowbound and were able to create some great new enhancements to our ClipIQ product.  One of my favorite new features is the ability to "Tag" a clip.  By adding a Tag or Tags to the news and blog clips that our system aggregates, customers have a simple, yet powerful way to work with thier clips. 

Some of our clients are using it as a rating system.  They are tagging clips as Positive, Slightly Positive, Neutral, Slightly Negative and Negative.  They can then easily retrieve their clips and generate reports off the Tagged clips.  Other clients are using it as a simple way to group similar clips by product or company, or by competition or partner. As with most successful features in a product, the customers are finding new and different ways to use the feature every day.

The exciting thing for our Development team is to see that the users are really using their features, which means their hard work has paid off and is appreciated.  In fact, you could see them beaming with excitement when one of our customers was quoted as saying, "That's Awesome" after using the Tags.

You know, I might be biased, but I agree with them.  Tags are pretty awesome!

*Note:  This post replaces the original post that had the incorrect author.  I'm the real author.   

CustomScoop launches Media Bullseye

Media Bullseye, a multimedia magazine providing news and commentary about the intersection of traditional and new media launched today. Media Bullseye offers content relevant to communications, marketing, public relations, and media professionals interested in the modern communications landscape. We hope to provide timely, engaging content that explains what has changed from a variety of viewpoints.

We're always looking for great content, so please write to us and let us know what you want to learn more about, or who you'd like us to interview. We'll also pay for content if you'd like to write or produce a video for us.

A special thanks to Chris Brogan, Chris Thilk, and Scott Monty for providing great content for the launch!

 

Technorati tags: Media Bullseye

Arriving Late to the Meme Party!

Nothing like being fashionably late! I was tagged in this meme almost a week ago, but I couldn’t just let it slide without adding my contribution.

Ike Pigott tagged me to participate in a meme started by Kami Huyse that begged the question, who has had the greatest influence on your career, and why?

Perhaps a good excuse for my tardiness is that I really had to think on this one for a while. After all, I’m still young (if I do say so myself), and having only been out of college a few years, my career path has been rather varied. I’ve had three major employers, all quite different, and even took a “year off” at one point in which I worked a series of temp jobs in an effort to figure out where I wanted to end up.  

The only constant in my career has been writing. Regardless of what kind of job I was working, I’ve relied on my writing and editing skills to set myself apart. Even during my in-between year, I always blogged or wrote privately to keep those skills sharp—I knew that no matter what I ended up doing, keeping my writing game intact would be essential. So who had the biggest influence on my writing?

That’s easy: Jeanne Provencher, my 11^th grade AP English Composition teacher. Up until I arrived in her class, teachers had gone out of their way to inform me that I was a “gifted” writer. My essays were always read aloud in class, I always won the Young Author awards, I always got A’s (I am aware how fully obnoxious this sounds, but just wait). AP English Composition? “Hmph,” I thought, “that’ll be an easy A for my college applications!”

The first thing Mrs. Provencher taught me was that I knew nothing about good writing. Nothing. My grammar was pathetic, my sentence structure weak, my paragraphs nonsensical and my transitions nonexistent. Don’t even get me started on comma splices, passive voice and dangling modifiers. I got a C- on my first paper, and almost stayed after class to tell her she’d made a horrible mistake. I couldn’t believe I had failed at the one thing at which I’d always excelled.

Seeing that paper covered in red was a wake-up call that perhaps I still had quite a bit to learn about the written word. I ended up working harder for her than I would for any teacher before or since, snagging an A on the biggest research paper of the year and never forgetting that no matter how much I write, there’s always room for improvement.

We sing the virtues of better writing in public relations quite a bit on this blog, so it’s only appropriate that I single out my favorite writing teacher as the person with the greatest influence on my work thus far.

As for the meme, let’s keep it going! I tag Nathan Burke, Kait Swanson, and Christi Eubanks to join in—I want to hear what other young voices have to say.

Apple Ad: The PR Lady

While perpetuating a stereotype, this is funny.

H/T to Valley PR Blog

 

Technorati tags: Apple, Public Relations

The Kindle vs. Books (is this really a contest?)

Amazon launched the Kindle this week, a nifty little device that is heralded as "the iPod for books," in that you can purchase entire books from Amazon.com and download them to the Kindle for reading on the go.

My initial reaction to all devices like this (the Sony Reader being the previous incarnation) is nothing short of pure horror. I may have a zest for technology, but I'm also a bibliophile.

Nothing could ever replace the experience of books for me--the way they look, the way they smell, the soft rustle of turning pages, hushed libraries, arty bookmarks, the fluttery feeling of excitement as you wind down towards the last page, the "ah" sigh of satisfaction as you close the book upon finishing...the reading experience is so much more important to me than the relative convenience of a portable device. And I don't think I'm alone.

That being said, I'm more than willing to give the Kindle a fair initial analysis based on the product reviews I've read.

I'll start with what's bad:

1) The price. $399? I'd rather spend it on an iPhone. Or a new Coach bag big enough to carry my books in (oops, I said I'd be fair, didn't I...)

2) Most of us, particularly tech nerds and bloggers, already spend a great portion of our days doing immeasurable damage to our peepers squinting at a computer screen. While Jeff Bezos claims in interviews that reading on a Kindle is highly comparable to reading on paper, with little "eye strain," I can't help but find this claim rather dubious. It's not paper.

3) Half the fun of books is sharing them with others--with the Kindle, unless you hand over the device itself (and your account password, and who is going to trust anyone with either?), there is no sharing of books among friends.

What's Good Interesting (can't bring myself to call anything good out of my loyalty to Dead Tree Books!):

1) I get the appeal of the portability, as someone who packed four books to take on a recent cruise (I drastically overestimated the amount of time I'd spend reading, and only got through one), books are heavy and take up space.

2) At $9.99 per book, Kindle books are cheap. Even cheap paperback beach reads can run you $12.99 at times, and with first-run hardcovers clocking in at $29.99 and up, $9.99 is a bargain (unless you factor in that you've paid $399 for the device itself..but there I go being all negative again).

3) Now this part I really do like: You can subscribe to newspapers, magazines and blogs for a monthly fee. As someone who (on top of those four books) also frequently boards planes with several cumbersome magazines (what? I like to read!), I can see where storing all the latest from the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek on a small, portable device would come in great handy. (Although since the screen is text only, you would be hard pressed to view any of the accompanying photos...darn, there I go again!)

Final call: I'd hold off on the Kindle for now. I'm just waiting for the price to go down by a couple hundred dollars right after the holidays, causing an uproar among the forty or so people who will actually buy this thing (oh drat, okay, I'll stop now, I promise).  While the device holds some promise, and I particularly am interested in having access to blogs and newspapers on the go, right now I am unmoved.

Technorati Tags: Kindle,Amazon,Jeff Bezos,books,bibliophiles