A major network engaged Networked Insights to help it use social media to grow an audience before a television series premiere. The network quickly discovered that its measurement tools and perception of community management in social media extended only to its owned web properties. This self-focused point of view is not uncommon because it’s shaped by the technology an organization can access and control. However, this limitation has to be overcome to truly understand an audience across the social web.

As the show premiered and entered its first few weeks, our project to maximize the network’s social media audience quickly became a real-time feedback loop that informed many decisions. Two significant examples – one related to content creation and the other to marketing – demonstrate the power of a network in sync with its audience. First, the insights gathered from social data allowed show producers to instantly understand the reactions of viewers and alter postproduction techniques to eliminate dissonant moments that were impeding the audience’s suspension of disbelief. Second, social data took the guesswork out of show marketing by revealing the characters and plotlines that were resonating with viewers.

Staying in sync with your audience has never been more vital for entertainment marketers, who frequently operate in condensed marketing cycles. Using analytics and technology to tap into audience trends can enhance the preproduction process and improve critical marketing decisions concerning a TV show’s launch.

Real-time data changes the mission for companies that embrace agile marketing techniques. Companies no longer need to ask how they can gather quality audience data. Instead, they can channel the voice of the consumer across social media and integrate that data into their TV marketing decision-making process.

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Many companies are increasing their focus on content creation and marketing, often funding such programs by shifting advertising dollars. But are they really getting maximum bang for their bucks? Is what they are creating going to get the attention and deliver what customers want?

A 2011 emarketer.com survey found that the use of dynamic content to increase the relevancy of a company’s products or services has become a top priority for U.S. marketers. Improving segmentation and targeting and better integrating social channels and data are other key objectives. In fact, consumers in the same emarketer.com survey noted that they are going to social channels expecting exclusive content.

The content development process typically starts by determining the audiences the company wants to reach and setting an editorial calendar for content creation. Content, both internally generated and from other sources, is then aggregated, curated and deployed. Next, the company listens to what’s being said about the content, and perhaps engages with its audience (although many companies are missing engagement opportunities, too, as we discussed in a recent blog). This feedback is then evaluated, and the lessons learned are applied to the next round of content creation. This seems simple, right?

Where this process can fall short is in failing to truly know what your audience cares about. What celebrities do they like? What entertainers have their ear? What TV shows do they like? If market research has determined your audiences, social media analysis can provide the foundation for discovering who really makes up those audiences and synchronizing content to their interests and tastes. Social intelligence guides investments in various forms of content. It can tell you the style of the content, whether it’s video or written words to use in videos. It can reveal whether an audience likes games. Social data can also tell you how the consumer wants to engage you on product releases, promotions and contests.

Social intelligence can help you decide on the optimal “canvases” or distribution channels for reaching your audience. It can tell you whether to paint your message as a blog, as a video or in another branded content form. If you listen to your audiences and know where they’re engaging on topics you want to have influence on, you can distribute content properly and cost-effectively instead of building it and hoping they will come. Think of it as an ongoing series of content masterpieces.

Your customers and prospects are talking about you more than you know. To understand what these audiences truly want, it’s important to continually evaluate what they’re saying – weekly, daily or even in near real time. This evaluation helps you identify trends, go deeper into the psychographic profile of your audiences and ensure your content dollars are going to the right investments.

This blog post is the second in a three part series. Click here to read the first post.

With a son about to go to college next year the answer is – I do! But as my close friends know I like to call myself “sports dyslexic” especially when it comes to classic American sports like basketball or even baseball (sailing is another story).

But lets face it – Sports is a form of entertainment that many brands look to connect themselves with. And the audiences that follow each sport or even each team could be looked at as a prime target for some marketers. But it’s often hard to know if that audience is right for your brand.

So how do you know if a certain sports audience is right for your brand? Often its gut feeling – I remember at BearingPoint the CEO telling me we needed to sponsor a golfer named Phil Mickelson. Did we ask around, did we do research, did we poll our clients – no. We saw an opportunity and let our gut drive the decision.

So I did a little experiment with my analyst team here at Networked Insights to determine what College Football team are the most popular by audience type and the results may surprise you! The results were so good we also produced a report called – The Most Social College Football Fans, I hope you enjoy it!

For most people, Black Friday kicks off the holiday shopping season. It’s a time of year to relish terrific savings and wonderful retail experiences. Others find all the activity too frenzied to participate, saving their dollars and time for Cyber Monday. No matter where you stand on the spectrum of holiday consumerism, it’s undeniably the most important time of year for most brands and retailers.

Download the Retail Brands Report and see how consumers speak about the five largest retail brands in social media and discover how and why brands relate to their customers. Networked Insights’s analysts examined real-time consumer data to reveal trending topics and brand conversations, as well as insights on consumer behavior/preference, all segmented by five different consumer types.

Chief Marketing Officers take pride in being the trendsetters around the corporate corral – the arbiters of hip, the sharpest dressers, the consummate gadgeteers. But when it comes to using data to support decision making, the CMO is likely not to be the smoothest operator.

Each year the Marketing team works hard to distill consumer insights into planning documents that will guide its programs in the months ahead. Meanwhile, there are already other departments within corporations that are continually refining their budgets and plans using the latest business intelligence data from enterprise resource systems.

Good creative will always be important in marketing. But when customers can abandon you for a competitor in a mouse click, it’s simply not enough. You have to be ready to act in a heartbeat. And to make the right moves, you need the ability to acquire consumer data, interpret it and apply it to your marketing programs – all in near real-time.

Winning companies are defined today not by their product and service offerings but by the manner in which they respond to the needs of their consumer. Social media data analysis opens windows into consumer conversations, producing real- or near-real-time data that can guide key decisions in marketing and across the value chain including product development, production, sales and customer support.

Better data can lead to better decisions and, ultimately, better outcomes. Now that’s cool.

A 2011 MarketingSherpa study confirmed this with 62% of CMO’s believing that social media will pay off for them … eventually. Well that day was yesterday for many of the folks at Pivotcon where I debuted a presentation on the 12 Ways to Monitize Social Media which documents many approaches to ROI in social media more importantly half of them are ways to use social data to get a great return.

A different study by IBM announced that, “than 1,700 CMOs, 82% still rely on traditional market research to shape marketing strategy, while only 40% of chief marketing officers track any online communications.” Yet, there is an answer. And the answer is harnessing unstructured consumer data and finding insights into audiences is more valuable than waiting for the market research of tomorrow!

The fear in many marketers’ minds is based on breaking out of traditional modes of analysis as well as perhaps uncovering insights that a brand isn’t prepared to manage. But there is urgency in getting this data is that the consumer mindset is constantly changing, and to be competitive you need to move with them and not against them.

In other words, social media isn’t something you simply measure it is something you harness consumer insights from to be better at everything else in the business including product development, message/positioning, content development and being more efficient with overall media and marketing spends.  This is how the feedback loop becomes more in-sync with consumers and brands versus constantly guessing at what they need, what they are reading and watching and how they are living. You can amplify your message, because it is closer to the mindset of the consumer. You can improve awareness, because you aren’t just anywhere but aligned to your consumer.

You shouldn’t be “coping” with social media you should be diving into all of the vast consumer data in social media for discoveries about who your customers are today and not relying on survey data from six months ago.

Apple

Apple has had a busy 30 days of discussions and conversation volume increased 51% in response. Topics had included the passing of Steve Jobs, the launch of the iPhone 4S and the patent disputes happening worldwide.  Apple has experienced a small dip in positive sentiment from 24% down to 22% due in large part to screen issues with the newly launched iPhone 4S and the ongoing patent issues with Samsung and its Galaxy devices.  With a wide variety of topics being discussed Apple noticed a 4% increase in share of major electronic brand conversation giving it a nearly 48% share.

iPhone

The iPhone may have had the largest increase in consumer electronics conversation, growing a whopping 132% with conversations surrounding the newly released iPhone 4S and the price reductions associated to older models.  iPhone had also shown a massive increase in share of mobile phone conversation swelling from a 38% share up to 49%over the past 30 days. While there is much positive conversation surrounding the device, many consumers had been expecting a newly redesigned iPhone 5 and were disappointed with the limited changes to the 4S.  On top of having their expectations left unmet, there is a small amount of conversation surrounding a screen issue facing the newly released device.  Despite those issues positive sentiment still increased 1% in the wake of record activation numbers of the new iPhone 4S.

Kindle

The sheer volume of Kindle conversations has shown incredible growth over the past 30 days, increasing 97%.  The attributed increase is largely in part to the introduction of the Kindle Fire.  This tablet style e-reader seems to satisfy the needs of many consumers and with its lower price point can potentially compete with the likes of the Apple iPad.  Positive sentiment increased to 29% from 25% in the past 30 days as comparisons to tablets and e-readers alike seem favorable.  Set to release on November 15th, the impact on 2011 holiday sales will be a good representation of whether one can consider this device a success.

Nikon

Nikon conversations ballooned 115% over the last 30 days due to conversations of recent awards and news of a technology movement within their digital cameras. Although only showing a 1% increase in positive sentiment, the new Nikon N1 mirrorless technology is a movement supported by many who want a combination of a SLR and point and shoot style digital camera.  Currently Nikon holds the second largest share of conversation amongst digital cameras behind only Canon.

This data was collected using our SocialSense Audiences product. SocialSense Audiences is an analytical platform designed to deliver fast, high-quality insights around specific vertical markets and audiences.

“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” – General Eric Shinseki, former U.S. Army Chief of Staff

The media landscape has evolved tremendously over the last quarter century. Consumers have evolved even faster with the advent of high-speed Internet-enabled mobile devices and social media. Have your marketing efforts evolved with them?

Marketing at the peak of the television era was relatively simple. There were broadcast shows that could give brands tremendous reach. There were also a growing number of cable channels that allowed smaller brands to afford broadcast advertising that could be delivered to more precise audience segments. It was easy for media agencies to find your target, and almost as simple to measure the response.

Now we’re in an era of continuous messaging that ultimately is tremendously fragmenting. Everyone is clamoring for consumers’ attention, from TV and Web content they’re genuinely interested in, to an onslaught of thoughts and activities of friends and relatives, posted via every social media channel. Additionally, consumers are smarter and savvier in their use of the extensive toolset that the Internet provides to make more informed decisions.

As a marketer, how do you possibly compete for attention within this constant stream of information? The answer: You don’t.

How do you speak to consumers who don’t want to hear traditional marketing messages? The answer: Give them what they want to hear, not what you want to tell them.

Competing for attention is simply no longer sustainable. It worked when you were basically interrupting what your target audience was doing—watching TV. Marketers can no longer program consumers with advertising; instead, now your imperative is to attract people through unique content and authentic brand experiences.

As a marketer, you need to identify the various vehicles for conveying messages to consumers, and then constantly measure engagement, as defined by each brand, at multiple touch points. Are you delivering value at this point of contact? Are you establishing a connection with the customer? Are consumers entering conversion pathways that lead to sales opportunities?

To succeed, you’ll need to understand where your brand fits into your customers’ lifestyles, become a member of those conversations and/or communities, and continually evolve your advertising efforts into opportunities to engage and connect.

There’s certainly no silver bullet approach. Content will be different for every brand. But this can be quite liberating, as you’ll have to become more comfortable with who you are as a brand and how you define success for your business—standing for what you believe in and developing content that’s consistent with the product and values that will attract others.

Everything is pointing to digital technologies and social media, even in offline experiences. The next generation of retail is a blended in-store experience enhanced by digital technologies. Is your business making the necessary steps to advance to the next stage of this marketing evolution? Are you working to get in sync with your consumers?

Sound daunting? It shouldn’t. Remember: There was a time when no one was email-marketing. And it’s hard to remember when selling products online used to be a foreign idea.

Consumers led the way then, as they’re leading into mobility and Internet-enabled devices now. Wherever they’re taking these devices, that’s where you’ll need to be—learning more about your customers preferences, and using that data to inform marketing decisions. It will be survival of the fittest—you just need to get in shape a different way.

Honda

The Honda brand is an Insight on the Move, as post volume has increased 33% since mid-September.  Positive sentiment for Honda has decreased to 40%, and words such as love, great, good, awesome and fine were common.  While discussing Honda, Moms are talking about the seats, the drive, and Toyota.  Honda conversations contributed to 24.6% of all automotive posts.  Toyota and Ford mentions were also common in this place, accounting for 16.7% and 14.3% respectively.

Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding is the second most talked about theme amongst Baby & Parenting Topics, contributing to 31.8% of the online chatter since mid-September.  While positive sentiment for breastfeeding has hovered above 25% for the past two-months, overall chatter about this theme has decreased by 23%.  Conversations are split almost evenly between formula discussions and the time necessary to breastfeed.

Olive Garden

Based on social media, Olive Garden continues to be popular casual dining restaurant, commanding 24.2% of the conversation since mid-September.  While overall post volume has dropped 6% in the past 30 days, positive sentiment remains high at 25%.  Moms frequently use words such as love, good, happy, enjoy and nice to describe the Olive Garden. Together, Olive Garden, Applebee’s (12.9%) and Chuck E. Cheese’s (12.1%) made up just under half of the casual dining chatter.

Whole Foods

Whole Foods has controlled grocery store conversations with 38.1% of the chatter since mid-September.  Positive sentiment for the brand has remained constant at 27% while negative sentiment has dropped from 15% to 8%.  Overall post volume has increased 3% in the past 30 days, and words such as love and good were common.  Trader Joe’s held 19.6% of the conversation, followed by Kroger with 13.5%.

Aveeno

Since mid-September, Aveeno conversations have increased 26%, making it an Insight on the Move.  Currently, Aveeno makes up 46.5% of the online chatter regarding Skin & Hair Care products.  Positive sentiment for Aveeno is currently 26% and words such as good and great were common in recent conversations.

This data was collected using our SocialSense Audiences product. SocialSense Audiences is an analytical platform designed to deliver fast, high-quality insights around specific vertical markets and audiences.

Royal Purple

Although Royal Purple doesn’t have one of the largest shares of conversation among motor oil brands within the Automotive audience, it did see a 30% increase in conversation volume over the past 30 days.  Conversations surrounding Royal Purple deal mainly with consumers looking for oil recommendations and requesting feedback from other consumers about the brand.

Jaguar

Jaguar saw a 31% increase in post volume over the past 30 days.  Part of this increase can be attributed to conversations surrounding the C-X16 concept car that was unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show.  Jaguar conversation sentiment has remained fairly positive, and is currently at 29% positive sentiment for the past 30 days.

Nissan GT-R

The Nissan GT-R has seen a 40% increase in post volume over the last 30 days and positive sentiment gained one percentage point and is now up to 36%.  Conversations focus around modifications to the car for performance enhancement as well as comparing this model to other sports cars.

Heated/Cooled Seats

As colder weather approaches, conversations regarding temperature controlled seats are on the rise.  Over the last 30 days post volume has increased by 19%.  This car feature is being listed by many consumers as a huge plus when looking for a car and some owners are saying it is a “must have.”

This data was collected using our SocialSense Audiences product. SocialSense Audiences is an analytical platform designed to deliver fast, high-quality insights around specific vertical markets and audiences.

High Ratings Aren’t the True Audience in Social Media

A true social media ranking of TV shows would be a representation of the programs that have the most conversations in all social media as well as an understanding of the conversation content. If an engaged audience is worthy of a marketer’s attention, why not let them rank independent of an antiquated TV ratings system? The Nielsen metric is how media purchases are decided today, but why such reverence in just one number? The overlay compromises the value of each media channel and unduly favors television – a place where media buyers are over spending, creating media waste, and not reaping the expected rewards. With billons of people online, and hundreds of millions using social media globally, it’s time to measure the media source independent of the TV ratings when your aim is to uncover audience intelligence from conversations in Social TV.

Global Audiences vs. Niche Users

For brands, the appropriate application of GetGlue data is unclear. The data simply illuminates the audience logged into GetGlue while a show happens to be on TV. It tells us more about the people willing to use their check-in service than an audience for a particular program. GetGlue data is only a reflection of their users and the audience of the show is unclear. How many do they have? Where do they live? What’s their age? Gender? Are they even watching the show or are they driven by the promise of exclusive stickers? Of your target consumers, what representations are present in GetGlue’s active users? What’s the difference in value between a check-in, an explicit TV show mention, or broader social conversations?

Their users are not a sample of the full TV viewing audience nor do they represent the majority of the conversations of TV shows in social media. When publishers embrace limited data, it reflects a devotion to simplicity over relevance and context while asserting authority to information that isn’t necessarily accurate. By making the data a novelty, they’re missing is the most valuable part – the insights that are buried and the consumer conversations.

 “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein

Social Networks Place in Social TV

Social media is more than social networks. TV conversations occur everywhere across the social web, not just inside Facebook, Twitter, or GetGlue. These channels alone are not a strong enough metric for understanding the audience watching the program. If you’re looking at Trendrr data, you have to recognize that it does not include blogs and forums and redundantly reproduces data from GetGlue. Trendrr is limited to the volume of social network noise, without knowing what is being said. Marketers need to be sensitive to the audience profiles inherent to each data source in social media. Networked Insights looks at all social media channels to collect data on TV shows and then calibrates the weighting of each source based on the audience we’re analyzing and the conversations within.

CBS’s Criminal Minds is a great example of how focusing on volume of conversations alone can be misleading. CBS heavily promotes their shows with live tweeting during a show’s original broadcast. As a result, Trendrr is capturing this data and relaying it through its rankings. Advertisers have to ask about the sustainability and loyalty of fan conversations when CBS stops live tweeting. Trendrr can’t tell you that. They focus on monitoring volumes of conversation over very specific periods of time. Understanding loyalty and engagement requires deeper analytics and context of social media conversations.

Marketers Are Adapting

Top 10 lists and rankings are viable hooks to attract readers, but they do not provide understanding. Consumers are ever shifting their wants and evolving at an incredible pace and marketers need insights to support their ability to adapt. As social TV grows and people’s need to comprehend consumer behaviors in real-time increases, deeper analysis will be required to keep pace.

Networked Insights’s Top New Shows (Based on Social Conversations)

* The Rating number included is for a 18-49 Rating/TRP that were published publicly by Zap2it.com

I presented at Advertising Week and that is the exact topic I wanted to drill into – How to be relevant by using real-time data about your audience!

So to illustrate this, I decided to run a research experiment to show at IAB MIXX. This was research that was exclusive to IAB MIXX, but you can now see below. The idea focused on how I could show the IAB MIXX audience how to target marketers like themselves with real-time data.

To do this, I asked our research analysts at Networked Insights to study what marketers talk about. We created a custom audience based on social data from blogs, microblogs, social networks, and forums. We then added to that with web information from Google, comScore, and Quantcast. Together, this information tracked what topics were important to marketers over the last 4 weeks.

As a seasoned marketer, I came to the table with my own ideas of what topics marketers discuss, what media they consume, and what popular culture they talk about. The results were different than I thought (see below).

It proved to me that even though you think you know your audience, you can never know them well enough! Real-time data can give you incredible Intelligence and can make marketing decisions like sponsorships, product placements, advertising, and content development much easier!

Sprite

Sprite has tailored much of their media spend to marketing tied to the sports and entertainment industries. This has allowed the brand to become one of the top beverages in online conversations among sports fans, second only to Coca-Cola, while surpassing such popular sodas as; Pepsi, 7Up, and Mountain Dew.

Major League Baseball 

As Major League Baseball enters its postseason, conversations have increased 31% over the past 30 days. While many continue to support their favorite teams, some share their predictions for the eventual champion. However, much of the engagement online is not about the teams that did make it, but those who didn’t. Specifically, the Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves, who both suffered through historic collapses over the final month of the season.

Rugby

Rugby has become increasingly popular in North America and around the world. As conversation jumped 81% over the past month, many are highly engaged with World Cup 2011. But, many in the US are comparing the “barbaric game” to more widely accepted sports – football, hockey, and basketball. Many feel it is much too dangerous, not well regulated, and an “exercise in organized confusion.” Interestingly enough, much of this conversation is originating on sites focused on the least physical of the aforementioned sports – basketball.

Apple

Apple continues to be among the most popular brands among sports fans, second only to Nike. Fans want to watch highlights and live sporting events on their mobile devices and frequently recommend the iPad and iPhone as best options to do so. Many are also intrigued about rumors surrounding the upcoming release around the iPhone 5 and how it may revolutionize the mobile technology game.

This data was collected using our SocialSense Audiences product. SocialSense Audiences is an analytical platform designed to deliver fast, high-quality insights around specific vertical markets and audiences.

“Adapt or Die” – Billy Beane

Moneyball, a book by Michael Lewis and now a movie starring Brad Pitt, is an amazing story of how Billy Beane, the then Oakland Athletics General Manager, chose to abandon baseball’s collective wisdom and applied what many considered to be “outsider” thinking to develop a winning team. Hindered by a small market budget, Beane embraced alternative statistics, or what marketers might call “KPIs”, to find undervalued players.

The parallels between the almost ten year old book and the experience of marketing in today’s digital world didn’t escape me. Now more than ever marketers are asked to achieve increased performance (usually this quarter), prove ROI, and demonstrate how a throng of marketing activities generate sales. Linear thinking applied to what is often emotional human behavior seems to unnecessarily complicate things to me, but I digress. As brands adapt to keep pace with the changes brought on by today’s demand economy, the budgets and line items need to demonstrate the same agility in order to stay in sync with consumer trends in our growing social and mobile world.

When everyone’s way isn’t working for you, find your own path

Social media technologies, along with rich internet enabled mobile devices, have catalyzed a decade long trend of evolving digital behaviors by consumers. But when you look at the methods brands use to understand consumer behavior, develop marketing strategies, plan fully integrated campaigns, evaluate activation tactics, and measure performance, they are sometimes processes that are 50 years old. The technology and techniques marketers frequently use are outdated, broken, or unscalable. When making marketing decisions, how many of them gather information from the mountains of data that surround us about the consumer and our performance?

When you are choosing the same activity and seeing diminishing returns, it is time to embrace change. As brands shift from advertising to engagement marketing, the models to measure performance will change. Rather than looking for new standards to develop around engagement, or methodologies to build digital word of mouth, brands must develop models that work for them and their customers. You need to tailor this evolving media world to work for you and employ social and targeting technologies to deliver marketing messages that inspire action and loyalty.

“We’re card counters. We’re going to turn the odds against the casino.” – Billy Beane

The effectiveness of mass marketing methods is fading in proportion to the shrinking signal strength of media in these “social” times of the internet age. The story of Billy Beane and his Oakland Athletics inspires me to follow my heart instead of my head as I track my target consumer across digital platforms to deliver timely and relevant marketing messages. I encourage you to find your brand’s optimal marketing mix from the voice of the consumer in explicit and implicit digital data that is all around us.

iPhone

The iPhone was the only major smartphone to have increased conversation over the last 30 days, growing by 11%. Rumors about the upcoming iPhone 5 and an altered model of the iPhone 4, referred to as the “iPhone 4 Plus”, drove much of the increased post volume. Due to a drop in smartphone chatter overall, iPhone gained 4% share of mobile phone conversation over the past 30 days.

AMOLED

AMOLED conversations grew by 15% over the past 30 days as more and more smartphone developers utilize this screen technology. Rumors about AMOLED integration into iPhone 5/”iPhone 4 Plus” development had fueled much of that increase in post volume. Negative sentiment around AMOLED ballooned to 19% from only 6% previously in relation to high costs and technology limitations in AMOLED associated to smartphone technology.

Bose

The Bose brand enjoyed a 10% increase in post volume over the past 30 days, driven by international speaker releases and an increasing conversation focus on headphones. While the number of conversations grew recently, the amount of sentimental conversation increased as well, and mostly in a negative capacity. Positive sentiment grew by only 1% to 29% overall while negative sentiment increased by 8% to 18%, driven by the expensive nature of the audio equipment.

TiVo

The TiVo brand showed one of the largest increases in conversation over the past 30 days, with an increase of 30%. Conversation was fueled by the TiVo Premiere Elite device being unveiled at the CEDIA Expo in early September. While conversation increased over the last 30 days positive sentiment has dropped by 3% to 20% in the face of a growing and often free DVR marketplace.

This data was collected using our SocialSense Audiences product. SocialSense Audiences is an analytical platform designed to deliver fast, high-quality insights around specific vertical markets and audiences.

Old Navy

According to social media, Old Navy was the most talked about Clothing or Fashion Brand within the Moms space. Since mid-August, positive sentiment remained constant at 35%, with words such as good, cute, love and nice used frequently. Overall, the number of Old Navy posts increased 18%, and the two most common themes were jeans and maternity wear.

Daycare

Since mid-August, Daycare was the most talked about Baby & Parenting Topic, accounting for 41.4% of chatter within this subject area, or 2.1K posts from over 1,000 contributors. Positive sentiment for Daycare increased slightly to 29%, and the use of good, great and love were common. Daycare conversations covered many themes, such as affordability, paying, preschool, and working.

Nike

Nike was an Insight on the Move, as conversations have increased 70% since mid-August. Positive sentiment for Nike decreased recently, dropping from 40% to 19%; yet good, happy and cute were still used to define the product. Within the Nike space, football cleats and soccer shoes were common chatter. Mercurialvapor – Nike’s soccer cleats also appeared in various posts.

Target

Since mid-August, Target was the number one department store, holding 28.3% of the Moms audience. Positive sentiment for Target increased slightly to 33%. Target Baby and Target Grocery were two of the most talked about themes for this retailer. Kohl’s was a close second place, with 23.1% of the chatter. Kmart held 13.7% of the department store conversation, to round out the top three.

This data was collected using our SocialSense Audiences product. SocialSense Audiences is an analytical platform designed to deliver fast, high-quality insights around specific vertical markets and audiences.

Community Managers for TV shows struggling to find ways to measure fan engagement commonly rely on Facebook “Likes” as a campaign metric to reflect fan engagement. Due to the aggressive marketing required to launch a new TV show, the program’s Facebook “Likes” could increase by as much as 200% in the weeks approaching a its premiere. But a “Like” does not equate viewers or ratings, nor is it a good measure of engagement beyond the initial click. Moreover, only .2% of Fans ever return to a fan page and in some cases it is a little as .02%. This means that people on Facebook who “like” your fan page hardly ever return to it after the act of “liking”. Marketers and Media Buyers looking to social media to provide an edge when making business decisions must ask if they are getting an accurate view of their audience when focusing their estimations on owned media properties.

While the ABC drama Once Upon a Time has a late premiere on Oct. 23, it has generated a great number of “Likes” along with NBC’s The Playboy Club which has turned controversy with women’s groups into clicks on Facebook. The oversimplification of equating fan sentiment to a “Like” doesn’t allow for real-time measurement or capture variations of opinion. These details can be critical to marketers and media buyers who are using social data to inform their decisions. In our Fall TV Update – Most Anticipated Shows in Social Media, we have identified the Top 10 new TV shows this fall based on insights uncovered from conversations across the social web, not just Facebook.

Whitney is an example of how misleading measuring sentiment on owned media can be. The show is generating negative attention across the internet for the aggressive rate that NBC is marketing the show, allowing promotions with adult themes to run during traditional family time programming. If one were to gauge the show’s success from “Likes” on Facebook or based on the tone of the comments on Whitney’s Facebook wall, it could appear to be a winner. But when you analyze social media from across the web you see a very different picture.

Social data and its ability to provide near real-time audience feedback will dramatically affect decisions around marketing, programing, and production techniques as the feedback loop between creators and consumers strengthens. The risk for marketers and media buyers is managing the temptation to place a higher value on the data they can easily access, namely owned media properties, versus doing a more thorough audience analysis. In order to stay in sync with an audience, one must be able to track conversation themes and sentiment from across the web not just tracking one channel with one static measurement.

Download the full report: Fall TV Update – Most Anticipated Shows in Social Media

Social data is becoming increasingly important in the new product development processes of many companies. In particular, manufacturers are tapping into social conversations as they explore new product ideas in order to learn what consumers are interested in and talking about. Later, when launch is imminent, social channels are becoming a key factor in setting media and advertising strategies.

These applications of social media analytics only scratch the surface though. Social data can be a unifying thread of information that supports decision-making at every stage of product development – discovering a new product idea, building a business case for it, developing the product, testing and validation, launch, and post-launch review.

For example, during discovery, social media data can help uncover ideas for new products or product line extentions to existing product lines. Then, as you’re building the business case and developing the product, social analytics can be used to monitor the pulse of consumers, alerting you to changes in their attitudes and interests.

During testing and validation, social data could play a crucial role in deciding to stop a project. Information gathered as part of market analysis might signal that customers are showing strong preference for the features of another company’s competing product. Pulling the plug on your development efforts could potentially save millions of dollars.

Social data can also be invaluable in the media planning and buying process. By assessing the potential “social lift” that social media can provide to your paid media initiatives, social analytics can help you commit the minimum effective spend needed to achieve the maximum effective return on media expenditures.

In our most recent white paper entitled Stage-Gate success: How the social web drives product development, we examine the role of social media analysis and data in the product development process, using the example of the highly regarded Stage-Gate^® Product Innovation Process.