Ye, completely hear you. We working it out according to AVE (Ad Value Equivalent) i.e. how much it would have cost to gain the same level of exposure. I completely agree - this approach as a methodology is flawed but it is unfortunately the only mechanism we have which has any market acceptance.

I wrote a post about this a little while back [http://www.brandseye.com/blog/post/2504/social-media-measurement-an-honest-view], would love to hear your thoughts.

Cheers Andy,

Tim
Ps: as is the case with the normal AVE systems "all PR is good PR" so sentiment isn't included - we do however often segment this coverage based on sentiment for client reports (agreed, much more useful).

Do you only count positive mentions in the rand value? What about neutral mentions?

I realise estimating rand value is a flawed art - but suppose we have to be very careful with this kind of stuff so as not to over/under inflate opinion.

@Andy Hadfield, i agree with you, in SA we are dealing with a very young internet audience.

I think the invisible line that @Conrad Owens pointed out is important. It seems that at the moment people in SA are using twitter as soap box to stand on and shout when all other means of redress has failed.

Will this eventually (d)evolve into a hellopeter style of interaction, lets hope not. However if it did, is it really that bad?

Firstly you don't have to pay twitter to respond, secondly it is cheaper to deal with electronic complaints than it is to seat an additional agent in a call centre (the more people using online means to complain/give feedback the less amount of call centre agents there will be). thirdly if executed correctly it serves companies well by offering consumers a "true reflection" of their brand - more meaningful and valuable than any advert or campaign.

We all know that social media and CGM has changed the way consumers can interact with brands and is in the process of changing the way consumers perceive brands. Given this, brands simply cannot ignore it, i think we have stop trying to control it but rather embrace it.

The trick is predicting the trends, preparing for your predictions and of course executing correctly

It also depends on your product/service complexity. Comcast can probably tweet quickfix solutions to many technical issues on their services which can provide value to other followers. Not so easy in banking and financial services for instance.

Maybe big corporates are better off with a few separate Twitter feeds for communications, sponsorship, campaigns etc where they can engage more positively and specifically with smaller groups.

Service is an expensive game and most companies are trying to reduce costs in this area. I'm not sure a Twitter feed would. But hey it is nice to see the face of a real person at least.

To avoid falling into the service channel trap you mentioned, you can develop a Twitter policy. Perhaps limit your service responses, as Tim mentioned, and add variation to your posts. The CEO of Zappos has a simple set of Twitter rules; Each post must either inspire, connect, entertain or educate. If you do in fact use Twitter as a (partial) service channel, then add that in there, but mix it up.

I suppose I'm a little frustrated that, because the ORM industry is so new, people actually don't know. We sit on the cusp here... Social media for brands could degrade into a mindless Hello Peter style service channel, or it could offer insight, participation and value into a brand.

But with a fairly young internet audience, there's no good bets yet which way it'll go.

Does anyone know (or want to comment) on @ComCastCares - essentially the first big service channel attempt on Twitter, and whether they've managed to make the leap into engagement, or are locked into an ever increasing team to manage needs?

(I realised the other day, a HUGE problem with increasing size of a, say, Twitter service channel. Because 99% of your communication is service response, no one will follow you anymore. Who wants to follow "please email me at" x 1000 every month!)

Ah wel... if it was easy, it wouldn't be fun :)

A very handy little reputation management tracking tool indeed.