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Social Media Marketing
Viralheat: Affordable Real-Time Social Media Monitoring and Analysis
The rise of blogs, social networks and other social media tools have created a personal opinion bull market with reviews, ratings, recommendations, comments and other forms of online expression. As a result of the increasing impact that online opinion can have on brands, products or services in the marketplace, a range of startups have emerged that help marketers and businesses monitor the buzz and conversations that are taking place online on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other social media sites. As social media marketing becomes more and more an integral part of online marketing campaigns, conversations need to be monitored at all times.
We recently looked at Sysomos MAP and Radian6, two high-end services in the social media monitoring and analytics space. In this issue, we’ll take a look at Viralheat, a more recent, low cost offering.
Viralheat
Viralheat is an affordable social media monitoring and measuring service for online marketers, small businesses and digital agencies that offers a range of social media analytics features, covering YouTube, Hulu, Vimeo, Twitter and blogs, to deliver real-time data analysis of consumer generated content on these sites for a price far below what other services are charging. Current clients include Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Tivo, Hilton Hotels, HP and Nokia.
Functionally, Viralheat goes far beyond what free social media monitoring tools offer. The service assists brands, online marketers, small business owners and corporations with monitoring and data analysis of the buzz and conversations that are taking place across 30 video sites, Twitter and tracks keyword and brand mentions on web sites and blogs.
To start using the service users create a profile and enter the keyword mentions, names, expressions and phrases they want to monitor. At profile set-up users can also add negative keywords to filter the results and set-up daily, or even hourly email alerts that may include multiple email addresses in case several people need to be notified when an alert occurs. Any data from the Twitter, video site, web site and blog dashboards can be exported directly into an Excel spreadsheet, making it easy for users to share this data with others. Users can also opt to receive a daily email summary of activity for any of their profiles.
Web and Blog Monitoring
Viralheat includes a web site and blog monitoring tool that returns data based on topics, names and keywords that were mentioned in web site content or blog posts over a specified period of time. Viralheat’s web site and blog tracking is still very basic. The data typically includes web site or blog URL, topic mentions, and the place and frequency of the mentions seem to have the reach that other high-end tools have. There is no tracking for blog comments or forum posts. Viralheat is working on expanding their web monitoring platform and hopes to include information from LinkedIn, Facebook, and Flickr in the near future. For now at least, web and blog monitoring is not their strength.
Twitter Feeds
Viralheat keeps a real-time feed of Twitter updates that users can check at any time. The service provides a dashboard that graphs out the number of Tweet updates with a specific timeframe so users can keep track of the Tweet frequency over a period of time. The tool also reports the daily average number of Tweets, ReTweet, and links.
The most active Tweeter will be posted as well; but this seems to be as far as Viralheat goes right now in giving users information on who the major Influencers are. An overview of negative or positive sentiment for monitored Tweets is presented as well, although there is no in-depth information on the sentiment of individual Tweets. The most common language of the Tweets, the most active day of the week, and the percentage of Tweets that have been Retweeted are included as well. Users are given the option to click on any post in the feed to link back to the original Tweet.
Video Monitoring
Viralheat's strength is in tracking video. Being able to track video postings across many different platforms at once is very useful. Viralheat tracks mentions in videos across 30 different video sites, including YouTube, Google Video, Hulu, and many other video sites. Using the keywords in the profile, Viralheat will compile data on videos as they are posted to these sites. Like with Tweets, the dashboard graphs out the frequency of new video postings, the number of new videos, total number of views for the week, the most popular videos, the average number of video downloads per day, how many total views the videos received in a week and how many videos were found with a certain brand name or keyword phrase in a given week will all appear in the dashboard. By clicking on a particular video site, Viralheat will also pull up a list of active videos going back several months, even before the profile was active. Viralheat's ability to track video across so many platforms may make it one of the best tools for tracking video. Viralheat also offers a branded edition of their product for agencies that wish to place their own brand identity on the reports generated through the service.
Competition
The Viralheat service is very reasonably priced when compared to the competition, and provides useful data on any search term, brand name or mention. The primary competition for Viralheat comes from sites such as Sysomos, Radian6 and Visible Measures, and a handful of other smaller players offered at a much higher price. Radian6, for instance, offers a similar service to Viralheat, but with a more extended feature set and integration with SalesForce.com's CRM software and Webtrends' analytics software.
Viralheat's reach is currently limited, but the company plans to add support for Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Flickr in the near future, which would make its service even more compelling at its current price point. Being able to track video postings across many different video sites at once is one of Viralheat's strengths. For those users who are planning to run a limited social media campaign around Twitter and online videi sites, Viralheat definitely provides a very lucrative low cost option for monitoring online buzz. If you're just testing the waters on running and tracking a social media campaign, then the cost effective options that Viralheat provides (as low as 10 profiles for $10 a month) offer you a great chance to get started with social media monitoring and analytics.
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Past Presentations
Middlesex Savings Bank Business Success Seminars
Thursday, June 18, 2009 - 7:30AM
Crowne Plaza Hotel,
1360 Worcester Street, (Rt 9), Natick, MA
"Using Internet Marketing to Build Your Business"
Presenter: Louise Rijk
Click here to play the video
Clark University
Thursday, May 14, 2009 - 8:45-12 noon
Grace Conference Room
Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts
“Search and Digital Asset Optimization”
Presenter: Louise Rijk
Click here to play the video.
WebmasterWorld PubCon 2008
Las Vegas
“Integrating Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) into the Advertising Mix”
Presenter: Louise Rijk, Vice President of Marketing and Sales
Click here to play the presentation
128 Business Expo 2008
The Westin Waltham-Boston Hotel
“Using Social Media to Connect with Prospects and Customers”
Presenter: Louise Rijk, Vice-President of Marketing and Sales
Click here to play the video.
495/MetroWest Business Expo
Sheraton Framingham Hotel
Pre-Expo Keynote Presentation
“A Strategic Approach to Integrated Marketing”
Presenter: Louise Rijk, Vice-President of Marketing and Sales
Click here to play the video.
Bentley College, 2008 - Waltham, MA
“Planning and Integrating a Targeted Internet Marketing Campaign”
Click here to play the video.
WebmasterWorld Pubcon 2007 - Las Vegas, NV
“Planning and Integrating a Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) Campaign”
Click here to play the video.
BizAction 2007 - Washington DC
"Email, Social Media and Search in the Overall Marketing Mix"
Click here to play the audio.
128 Business Expo 2007
"Blogging and Podcasting For Business"
Click here to play the video.
495/Metrowest Business Expo
Pre-Expo Keynote
"The Rise of the Internet as a Mass Advertising Medium"
Click here to play the video.
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If you would like more information on Internet Marketing, Consulting, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing and Email Marketing, please
click here.
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Copyright © 1996-2009. Advanced Media Productions, Inc.
Advanced Media Productions, Inc.
251 West Central St., Suite 28, Natick, Massachusetts 01760, USA
Tel: 508-647-5151 Fax: 508-647-5150
E-mail: info@advmediaproductions.com
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