It’s no secret that I’m a fan of PitchEngine, a “new kind of social PR platform.” I’ve used it to share my customized stories and to be found.  Because PitchEngine has launched its new platform with enhanced SEO capabilities, I thought it would be a good time to update you on the progress.

Jason Kintzler, who is the founder and CEO of PitchEngine, was kind enough to answer a few of my questions regarding how PitchEngine and Pitch^TM are helping communications professionals.  Here’s my interview with Jason:

Q. Tell me about the new PitchEngine platform and how it helps businesses and PR professionals to tell their stories?

At a basic level, it enables anyone to package their story content – text, multimedia and more – into a nice little package we call a “Pitch.” From there, your pitch starts connecting with your contacts, followers and fans. It plants its feet in major search engines so that people looking for you can find out what your story is, not just your address and phone number. It’s like the old Yellow Pages ad, but interactive and mobile.

Q. Why is search engine optimization so important today for companies as they share content?

As Brian Solis puts it, “Everything starts with search.” He’s right. SEO has been important for several years and many of the bigger brands have been able to leverage it. Our platform has really opened that process up to businesses and PR firms of all sizes. Think of it this way – everyone who comes to PitchEngine and creates a pitch has the same goal – to get the word out. Because of this, our authority in search has risen which can be leveraged by the crowd. We call this, “co-op seo.”

We were fortunate enough to partner with Jeff Herzog, one of the pioneers of the SEO industry for our new platform. I’ve learned more than I could’ve imagined in the last 18 months. It’s not just about having your story found, it’s about providing backlinks from an authoritative site like PitchEngine to your own corporate site. That’s why you can’t just do this stuff on a blog, for example. The real story here is that SEO used to be limited to big businesses and computer ninjas. Now, we’re providing it in a unique way to the weekend garage band or coffee shop.

Q. What are some of the greatest features and functions for professionals on the new platform?

Understanding the need is a big deal. This is a new kind of publishing mechanism. Unlike a blog or your website, which is on an island, a pitch is mobile – interacting with your site, social networks and search engines. We’ve had a year to hear what our users were looking for. We’ve spent months thinking through all of it on many levels. For the PR Pros, we’ve cooked-in new distribution methods like our media database partnership with MyMediaInfo and Technorati blogger outreach. We’ve also put a focus on more analytics for each pitch as well as the Supercharged SEO offering, which is really amazing. We’ve also tried to accommodate the PR agency by making it possible for agencies to have multiple users, all logged-in at the same time, working on various accounts. Agencies will even be able to resell or pass through the costs to their clients directly. We’ve tried to live by a few rules. Most importantly – simplicity is key.

Q. How has PitchEngine and the Pitch changed traditional PR, in terms of news release distribution and pitching story angles to journalists?

The best thing I ever did was create PitchEngine from scratch to serve the needs of PR pros and media – of all levels of experience and understanding. We didn’t build a “me too” kind of product, which has resulted in competitors trying to insert “social” into their traditional PR methods to keep pace. As you well know, it doesn’t quite work that way. You cannot make a press release “social” by adding a few share buttons. It’s a new ball game, and it doesn’t start with a traditional press release. As brands and businesses, we have to stop trying to get published and start publishing ourselves. If you wanted to see a great article about your client’s product or event, then write it, because it’s never going to be published the way you want it if you’re relying on a third-party to do it. If a journalist and/or news outlet finds your news compelling (which may be a result of 1,000+ people already finding it compelling on Facebook or Twitter), then they will cover it. Journalists and bloggers are news consumers, just like the rest of us. If they find something interesting, they’ll tell they’re readers. (Ex. David Pogue Tweets Release to 1.3 Million.)

Q. How often is too often to tell a story to bloggers, the media, customers, and other stakeholders?  Should there ever be a limit to your Pitch?

I think it varies by the subject matter. Most companies don’t share frequently enough. We’ve been able to help large public companies share their feel-good stories with their customers and investors. Before, they’d never take the time to draft a press release and pay for it to be distributed through a newswire. Plus, no media cared to write about the “fluff” that might actually be important to your brand. In this new media age, we have to build a bond with our customers or readers and sharing is a great way to do this. Be concise. Write well. But, write often.

Q. What’s next for PitchEngine with respect to social media tools and technology?

I get a little choked up thinking about it. Our vision for where to take things is grand and I believe in my toes that we can accomplish massive change. Instead of trying to push content at people, we’re going to make it findable. We can’t predict all of the technologies that will arise, but I guarantee we’ll be a driving force. We’ve been open to new partnerships with other emerging technologies that share our vision, and you’ll see the results throughout the next few months. If the old traditional services out there can keep pace, we’ll all be better served. That’s what makes it fun.

I had the honor and the pleasure of participating on a panel at the Inbound Marketing Summit (#IMS09) in Boston on October 7, 2009.  I joined several colleagues including Jason Kintzler of PitchEngine (@jasonkintzler), Melanie Stachowiak of MarketWire (@melaniestack), Paul Roetzer, PR 20/20 (@paulroetzer), and David Weiner, PR Newswire (@davidweiner) to discuss the state of the PR industry and PR 2.0, with a strong focus on the value of the news release vs. the Social Media Release in a changing Web 2.0 world.  Well suited for this discussion were panelists from two PR agencies, two wire services and the founder of a Social Media Release platform and social network that enable PR to effectively package stories with social content.

The panel was moderated by author David Meerman Scott (@dmscott) who recently wrote World Wide Rave and who is also the author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR.  David did an excellent job guiding the discussion and really kept the conversation interesting and interactive between all panelists as well as the audience through a good Q&A session at the end.

I was more than fired up for this discussion when I heard the presenter two sessions prior to mine discuss a slide with the headline:  PR is dead.  His comments inspired me to discuss how PR is quite alive and how social media is helping to reinvent our industry and improve our reputation as professionals.  Some thoughts from the panelists and a few key takeaways are paraphrased to the best of my ability below:

PR 2.0 is a new approach.  PR over the years has been equated to media relations, which is only a small part of the function of public relations.  Typically in PR, we are accustomed to working through a credible third party endorser (the media).  Today, PR 2.0 allows brands to connect with new influencers and their customers directly through the use of social media.

The news release is a tool in the PR kit and it is written in the AP style format. A Social Media Release (SMR) is a communications tool that allows a brand to tell its story through multimedia, links, and social media sharing tools.  It was also added that a true Social Media Release is housed on a blog platform and does not cross the wire like a traditional news release or a multimedia news release.

A news release will never be a social media release.  No one likes to write a news release and no one likes to read them either!

Although we were taught in PR to write a release to resemble the story that we wanted to read, somehow brands got used to crafting their messages with spin and hype.  These messages come from the top down and are not meaningful to the market.

Stories should be customized and a bottom up, listening strategy helps the brand to identify what kind of information needs to be shared with its customers and other stakeholders.  There is no more mass communication or broadcast messaging in the social media landscape.

You can listen through the Conversation Prism, which is the universe of social networks.  Every social network has a key word search where you can listen, observe and identify what information is related to your brand so that you can formulate a strategy for social media communications.  If you’re listening you do not have to pitch.

With respect to the question about the best kind of content to use to tell a brand’s stories, video unanimously was mentioned as a powerful resource.  VNRs tell a more visual and compelling story.  However, it has to be the type of video content that is engaging and valuable to the audience (long drawn out speeches from the CEO may not be considered engaging).

Just like any industry, you will find the PR professionals who uphold the good principles of communications and those who are the dreaded PR spammers frequently called out by bloggers and journalists. Social Media allows us to change that reputation and to move the needle forward the right way.  We have the opportunity to become influencers and champions and not just handlers and facilitators.  Through social media we can listen, educate and provide valuable information that people want and will ultimately request from us.

With respect the new FTC blogger guidelines you’re always going to have agencies that just naturally do the right thing and show full disclosure.  On the other hand there are those that will never abide by the rules.

I’m sure there are many other valuable thoughts and key takeaways that I may have missed in my recap.  So, if you were at #IMS09 or you have a few thoughts on your own to add to this topic, please feel free to share!

The panel was moderated by author David Meerman Scott (@dmscott) who recently wrote World Wide Rave and who is also the author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR.  David did an excellent job guiding the discussion and really kept the conversation interesting and interactive between all panelists as well as the audience through a good Q&A session at the end.

I was more than fired up for this discussion when I heard the presenter two sessions prior to mine discuss a slide with the headline:  PR is dead.  His comments inspired me to discuss how PR is quite alive and how social media is helping to reinvent our industry and improve our reputation as professionals.  Some thoughts from the panelists and a few key takeaways are paraphrased to the best of my ability below:

PR 2.0 is a new approach.  PR over the years has been equated to media relations, which is only a small part of the function of public relations.  Typically in PR, we are accustomed to working through a credible third party endorser (the media).  Today, PR 2.0 allows brands to connect with new influencers and their customers directly through the use of social media.

The news release is a tool in the PR kit and it is written in the AP style format. A Social Media Release (SMR) is a communications tool that allows a brand to tell its story through multimedia, links, and social media sharing tools.  It was also added that a true Social Media Release is housed on a blog platform and does not cross the wire like a traditional news release or a multimedia news release.

A news release will never be a social media release.  No one likes to write a news release and no one likes to read them either!

Although we were taught in PR to write a release to resemble the story that we wanted to read, somehow brands got used to crafting their messages with spin and hype.  These messages come from the top down and are not meaningful to the market.

Stories should be customized and a bottom up, listening strategy helps the brand to identify what kind of information needs to be shared with its customers and other stakeholders.  There is no more mass communication or broadcast messaging in the social media landscape.

You can listen through the Conversation Prism, which is the universe of social networks.  Every social network has a key word search where you can listen, observe and identify what information is related to your brand so that you can formulate a strategy for social media communications.  If you’re listening you do not have to pitch.

With respect to the question about the best kind of content to use to tell a brand’s stories, video unanimously was mentioned as a powerful resource.  VNRs tell a more visual and compelling story.  However, it has to be the type of video content that is engaging and valuable to the audience (long drawn out speeches from the CEO may not be considered engaging).

Just like any industry, you will find the PR professionals who uphold the good principles of communications and those who are the dreaded PR spammers frequently called out by bloggers and journalists. Social Media allows us to change that reputation and to move the needle forward the right way.  We have the opportunity to become influencers and champions and not just handlers and facilitators.  Through social media we can listen, educate and provide valuable information that people want and will ultimately request from us.

With respect the new FTC blogger guidelines you’re always going to have agencies that just naturally do the right thing and show full disclosure.  On the other hand there are those that will never abide by the rules.

I’m sure there are many other valuable thoughts and key takeaways that I may have missed in my recap.  So, if you were at #IMS09 or you have a few thoughts on your own to add to this topic, please feel free to share!

There’s always a tremendous amount of discussion around the Social Media Release (SMR).  I still have executives asking me about its value, whether is it necessary to use, if it the SMR should replace a traditional release and the list goes on.  I remember in 2007 when I first interviewed Phil Gomes, SVP of Edelman Digital, in my book PR 2.0: New Media, New Tools, New Audiences , he knew that the SMR was a useful tool for all companies, not just technology firms.  I agree with Phil and have been using the SMR with great results.

Of course, you have to know when to use an SMR or whether or not another form of news release best suits your story.  Brian and I talked a lot about the various types of releases in our book Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR.  Chapter 8 in the book was devoted to the SMR and other types of releases leading up to this new shiny object.  We touched on traditional releases, customer focused releases, SEO releases and of course SMRs.

I believe that the SMR is one of the greatest breakthroughs in PR because it really helps professionals to craft a better and more customized story for the people they we want to reach.  The SMR complements the traditional or SEO release by combining many the newsworthy facts with digital assets that are interactive and viral in a social community.  Of course, SMRs are not going to fix a poorly written story and they are definitely not about presenting hype, spin or BS in a new, cleverly developed template.

One personal example of SMR success was the launch of mine and Brian’s book.  By using this powerful communications tool, we could see the results instantaneously.  We were very pleased with how the SMR facilitated direct conversations through the many sharing tools offered in the template.

For the book launch, we developed the SMR through PitchEngine.  We also had a traditional announcement that was released by Pearson Education announcing that Putting the Public Back in Public Relations had hit the major bookstore shelves.  The SMR complemented that release and within minutes of posting it to PitchEngine’s PitchFeed, we could see the results; heavy traffic to the PFS Marketwyse website, a huge spike and direct book sales through my PR 2.0 Strategies blog.

Here are a few of the results.  Based on the average site traffic 30 days prior to posting the SMR our site, traffic increased dramatically on the PFS Marketwyse site, with a 433% spike in traffic on the day of the announcement and 1100% the day after.  You can click here to see the full case study results on PitchEngine.

With respect to sharing, we tracked the day we shared the announcement up to a week afterward on our book’s Facebook fan site and on Twitter.  We had 86% of our traffic coming from those social networks.  Only about 10% of the site traffic was from the traditional PR distribution methods.

The SMR is a great sharing tool to ignite conversations and to build one-on-one relationships.  Many of our initial conversations that stemmed from the launch release led to great opportunities including blog interviews, book reviews, radio interviews and numerous webinars, teleseminars and speaking engagements booked in 2009.

Of course this is only one example of the success of an SMR.  What are your experiences with the SMR and has the use of this communications tool been successful in your PR efforts?

I’ve been diligently testing new products and services to get my communications department up to speed for PR 2.0 and social media campaigns.  I know that in several of my posts I’ve discussed how important it is to make sure that the PR team is equipped with great resources to build relationships with influencers, manage campaign efforts, and track program progress and measure results.

There are some fantastic tools out there and I’ve named and commented on many from HARO and PitchEngine to Vocus and Radian6.  But, the other day I had a huge ‘AHAAAA’ moment when I saw a demonstration of Blog Outreach Pro.  Now, I had already been to the company’s website to learn about the platform and I read the one pager on all of the benefits the product provides. But, when you see the platform in action (I saw how it dealt with numerous campaigns simultaneously), watch how you can manage bloggers and digital influencers, get them involved in the platform and how they can connect with your clients, it becomes a must have product.

Blog Outreach Pro is exactly as it sounds, it’s a “Blog Outreach and Social Media Marketing toolkit for public relations firms and social media agencies – allowing them to consolidate resources, manage campaigns and provide real-time client reporting.  Blog Outreach Pro has been specifically designed to address the challenges and streamline the process of your social media marketing efforts.”

I especially liked how the platform provided three different views: The agency, client and blogger views.  Focusing on the agency view, some strong features and benefits include how you can:

• Customize the platform for any product, service or industry (I saw a demo on PR for musicians)
• Provides the outreach to your existing blogger contacts and tracks the communication
• Organizes your contacts which allows you to search and match them to client efforts
• Create a central location (a newsroom) with media assets, product information, and links to sharable social media
• Observe the behavior, likes and dislikes of bloggers as they interact on the platform with your client
• Allow your clients to view the activity: they can log into the platform and see which bloggers and digital media are being contacted and pinpoint who has shown interest, requested an interview or who has left an endorsement.
• See the PR team’s daily activities and see how progress is made each and every day on a campaign

These are only a few of the highlights.  There is also the ability to track and view over time the number of bloggers contacted, how many viewed assets in the newsroom or downloaded media and/or client information, watch the blogger’s behavior within the platform and the result of the interactions (in the form of an interview, comments, rating or an endorsement).

I will be beta testing Blog Outreach Pro over the next 60 days and I will continue to keep you posted on the features and capabilities of this platform.

Here are a few screen shots to help you visualize the product.  But remember, it’s the demo and the ability to see the platform in action that brings the product to life.

Newsroom can be customized with media assets:

Upload and search contacts:

Ratings and comments left by bloggers and digital media

Product profiles that are easy for bloggers to find:

The “Going Forward” section of Entrepreneur magazine recently highlighted 10 must-click websites.  I have to admit there were some very good sites mentioned on the list.  From BizStats and Entrepreneurship.com to LadiesWhoLaunch and Nielsen, these sites were all jam-packed with great information, statistics and ideas.

I thought it would be a good idea to put together my top five must-click websites (this does not include my favorite blogs, which I’ll save for another post) for Public Relations professionals.  These are the sites that I rely on almost daily. Now, this is not as easy as you may think; on the contrary it’s a challenge because I know that there are many valuable sites, rich with information and resources for PR professionals.

A note to PR service providers: If you don’t make the list the first time around, feel free to contact me.  I’m sure I’ll be doing follow up posts in the future so that I can continue to share the “Best of the Best” with communications professionals.

Here’s my list (in no particular order):

1.       www.myragan.com

2.       www.pitchengine.com

3.       www.technorati.com

4.       http://search.twitter.com

5.       www.google.com

MyRagan.com is an excellent social networking community for PR professionals to share information, resources, tools and general knowledge about the Public Relations agency.  Mark Ragan, CEO has done a fantastic job building a community that is not only engaging with helpful blogs and useful articles, but he’s also built myragan.tv, which is a video sharing community.  MyRagan is a must click site because it educates me and draws me closer to my industry every day.

PitchEngine is not only a great community for PR professionals and journalists, but it allows you to develop and share Social Media Releases (SMRs) for free.  Another great feature on PitchEngine includes its PitchFeed, which is a user-generated searchable news stream.  You are also able to share your SMRs through Google News and apps like Facebook and Twitter. My agency uses PitchEngine for our SMRs.  The result for us has been a huge increase in traffic to the PFS Marketwyse website (as much as 600%).

Technorati is a blog search engine and PR professionals should be using Technorati to evaluate the authority and ranking of blogs and bloggers for their brands. The search engine collects and highlights global conversations. By searching in Technorati, you can find the blogs and bloggers who are related to your target world and those that also may have conversations related to your brand.   When you’re using Technorati correctly, then as a marketer you are using a tool that helps you to listen first and then join the conversation.

I don’t think I go a day without using search.twitter.com.  Aside from Google, it’s my second favorite way to search and find relevant conversations for industry trends, client related information, and threads of conversations based on key words.  Twitter search allows you to search, filter and interact with volumes of news and information being transmitted in real-time. One of the first things that I learned as a PR professional was to be up on the news in a variety of industries.  When I was first beginning my career, there was no Twitter Search so I read The New York Times every morning.  Now, I get my favorite media delivered to my inbox and I use Twitter Search to give me real time news as it occurs around the world.

I was introduced to Mike Lewis (@bostonmike) of Awareness Inc., through Justin Levy (@justinlevy) of New Marketing Labs.  What a great connection!  I participated in a Webinar with Mike on May 27^th and it was not only on an interesting topic (Building Community Through PR:  From Virtual to Physical) but the Q&A with Mike was dynamic and even at one point stumped us both for an answer.

I have to admit that the presentation started off a little rocky on my end because it was the first time I was doing a webinar outside of my office.  So, despite jumping onto the call about 2 minutes before the program began, it was one of my best programs yet.  Here’s why I liked it so much.

The topic was extremely relevant. Everyone in business is trying to figure out that magic question:  How do you build community through PR.  I focused on some high level information, i.e. the challenges and opportunities, which include:

Service factor.  What is your offering to the community?

• What value will you provide and to whom?
• How will you be prepared and ready to respond?

External factor. Factors for consideration:

• Easy access to other communities because resources are no  longer limited to close proximity

Commitment factor.  Silence is not always “golden:”

• Manage and direct continuous conversations and  relationships

Participation factor. The homestretch of Social Media:

• Ideas are not useful until people get together to produce something meaningful

PR/Marketing factor. Align with business goals:

• Align community building goals with  business goals (include all areas of the company)
• Develop actionable enterprise within the community (increase participation, research, recruiting, endorsements, leads & sales)

I tried to drill down into the false assumptions, including how building community is simply hosting negative commentary and providing a destination for poor content, grammar and shallow messages.  I also discussed how the role of the PR person expands to include technology and programming, content review, comment strategy, customer service, web analytics and identifying trends for engagement.  All of our added responsibilities make us that more valuable to our organizations.

I presented a strong focus on the sociology of community building first and then the importance of technology:

• Social Media marketing starts with the observations of human behavior and interaction within online communities
• Technology then provides the tools to facilitate conversations online
  • Monitoring and tracking conversations

• Humanize your story by aligning it with the culture and the people driving the communities you’re trying to reach
  • What matters to them?
  • How do they talk to each other?

It’s the listening that matters the most! As my co-author, Brian Solis (@briansolis) stated in one of our interviews, “It’s the listening that separates the social media experts from the social media theorists.”

Of course, I couldn’t resist discussing the anti-community building approach with:

• Broadcast messages (top down strategy)
• Selling
• One way messages
• Spin, hype and jargon in our traditional press releases

As always, I thought the Q&A was the best part and I didn’t have the answer to the question:  Is there a website that rates all of the social networks?  I’m on a quest to find out the answer to this question, so if anyone knows, please comment : )

Other good questions included:

• Has the traditional press release gone away? I said no that it still exists because there are industries that continue to find it to be a valuable tool for fair and timely disclosure released over the wire (but, it should be void of all of the spin, hype and jargon).
• What is the biggest mistake companies make? It’s moving out too quickly with their social media programs and setting up FB and twitter profiles, and not really knowing why or how to measure their efforts.
• How should you start with community building? I believe that blogging/commenting is the easiest way. In some cases, brands are experimenting internally with their employees on intranet sites.
• The $10 million question: How do you measure ROI and how do you measure ROI from PR. Two tough but good questions. ROI depends on what objectives are set and could be measured in the form of authority, ranking, participation and engagement, registration and leads/sales. As for PR ROI, it depends on the relationships that are built as a result of the SM outreach and how these relationships develop into opportunities including, but not limited to endorsements from key influencers.

I’m sure that we will see a lot more great presentations and case studies in the area of community building.  I mentioned Starbucks as a good community and brand experience and a few of my favorite communities including PitchEngine and MyRagan.  However, I forgot to mention how non-profits are building community, for example, the Red Cross is setting up Flickr groups because they searched and found over 40,000 pictures from Red Cross enthusiasts.

I would love to hear from you about your PR and community building experiences.  What do you think are the best ways to build community through PR?  Please share your insight with me.

Yesterday was the official launch of my 4th book published by Pearson, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations, co-authored by Brian Solis.  This is the first time that I worked on a year-long writing project with Brian, who is not only a pleasure to work with but he enriched the process and made this a wonderful and thought-provoking experience for me (Thank you, Brian).  Every page of this book illustrates our passion for public relations, social media and technology, and how PR 2.0 is reshaping a well established, century-old industry.

In the past, keeping in mind my first book was published in 2001, it was much more time consuming to track the coverage of prior book launches and measure the benefits of the relationships I developed with audiences, even in terms of sales.  Even then, we were able to see the Web analytics, for instance, web visits, page views and time spent on the site, but still relied on the IT department to deliver those stats to us.  However, today, we are directly involved in the conversations and also can manage the measurement portion, as there are so many more tools and resources that allow us to review the results of our efforts within seconds.  There is nothing more gratifying than hearing the direct feedback from your network and seeing how social media communications create excitement and dynamic conversations in Web communities. Through social media, you can ignite passion in others; passion that leads to action.

For the official launch of Putting the Public Back in Public Relations, we posted our SMR on PitchEngine, distributed a traditional news release, created blog posts, sent out social network updates, participated in a blogtalkradio interview, shot video clips, etc. As a result, we saw the conversation grow and increase between yesterday and today.  In 24 hours, here are a few ways that we measured our efforts.  The views on the SMR were close to 200 at the time this article was published.  There were comments on the SMR, numerous comments on Brian’s blog as a result of his Putting the Public Back in Public Relations post and we also noted many of tweets and retweets about the book (via tweet replies and search.twitter.com). On the PFS website, there was a notable increase of 800% website traffic as compared to the average number of page visits in the month of March.  And, best of all our ranking in terms of PR books went from #5 to #3 in our category (also increasing the book sales cycle) on Amazon.com.

I want to thank everyone for their good wishes, feedback and participation.  We hope you enjoy the book and keep the conversation going!

My first post on New PR 2.0 Measurement was well received.  Measurement is one of the hottest topics right now.  I’m noticing that most of my professional associations and well known publications are having monthly seminars/webinars on this topic.  There are so many tools and techniques that it can almost be overwhelming for the PR professional.  How do you measure the conversations that take the form of tweets, comments and blog posts? What about negative comments in social networks? Are free measurement tools such as Google Analytics and TweetBeep enough?

So, here’s my take on approaching the complex yet critical function of measurement.  The easiest way to provide you with info is to take an excerpt from Chapter 18: A New Guide to Metrics from mine and Brian Solis’ book, “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations“  Hope this excerpt helps you to keep track of the conversations:

You can use these tools to automatically track conversations in addition to searching individual social networks:

Google Alerts-A free service that monitors Google, Google News, Google Blogsearch, and Google Images for your predefined keywords and sends an alert when they appear online.

Radian6-A commercial suite of Social Media tools to track, analyze, and engage in conversations, and to measure and report trends based on keywords and topics. Radian6 monitors all forms of Social Media, including blogs, top video-sharing and social-networking sites, forums, opinion and review sites, image-sharing sites, microblogging sites, and online mainstream media.

BuzzLogic-A commercial service that identifies influential online discussions on any topic, enabling marketers to better target their stories and insight to both opinion leaders and the engaged readers who follow them.

Nielsen BuzzMetrics-A commercial service that measures consumer-generated media (CGM, a.k.a. user-generated content or UGC) and online word-of-mouth to help companies understand and track conversations.

Social networks and microcommunities-Every social network includes a search box that enables you to search for conversations and activity related to keywords. For example, conversations taking place in Facebook, Plurk, MySpace, BackType, DIGG, YouTube, and public customer forums will most likely go unnoticed in any of these automated listening tools. It’s important that you search these services manually, especially if they’ve been identified as hotspots for discussions about your brand in the original listening audit. See the next chapter for a full list of services.

Blogpulse Conversation by Nielsen BuzzMetrics-A free tool for assembling, tracking, and messaging threaded conversations and memes. When a blogger publishes a post and other bloggers link to it, the original post (seed) creates a thread or meme, which extends with every new post that links back to the original.

Remember, because Social Media is rooted in conversations, participation, and engagement, measurement also includes the other areas I mentioned in the last post including:

• Traffic
• Leads or sales
• Calls to action
• Engagement
• Relationships
• Authority
• Education and participation
• Perception
• Registrations, membership, and community activity

How are you measuring these areas and what’s working for you?