Le Blog de Synthesio

• I just backed up my tweets because Twitter only shows the most recent ones. You should backup yours here http://backupmytweets.com #

• 1 milliard de tweets par mois… et une belle courbe de croissance exponentielle ! http://bit.ly/bgXSb9 #

Our clients are likely to notice a few new changes on their dashboards (& integrated into all future dashboards) that we wanted to give you a heads up about. Though nothing earth-shattering, we are continuously working overtime and then some to provide you with the best analytics and monitoring assistance.

Please watch Michelle’s (our Community Manager’s) video below for an overview of these new features !

Verbatim tab

The upper part of the screen now has 3 different viewing modes:

1. The usual timeline

2. A dynamic tag cloud that you can navigate with by clicking on a tag (which will bring forward the corresponding verbatim). Each cloud corresponds to other filters you have chosen below to provide you with a real-time conversation digest !

3. Simplified source profile that display when you click on a source name

These 3 modes of navigation are interchangeable at any moment via the “Actions” box which also allows you to export the data in Excel format and to display a more detailed profile of the site (which will improve considerably in the coming months; we’ll be in touch )

Topics timeline metric

We’ve added the capability for you to:

- Choose the topics to compare at topic and sub-topic level

- Look at the cumulative data by week, month, or trimester

- Display (or not) the totals on the graph

All of the parameters have now been grouped into a “Settings” icon to allow for more readable menu selections, something we aim to integrate into other future metrics.

We’ve also added some other upgrades to allow you to do more, faster:  drill down on the verbatim page by topic or sub-topic and fly through the data with a higher display speed.

As always, we look forward to your comments, questions, and concerns.

by Thibault

The story

In case you missed the latest news, Kevin Smith, an actor and director of the film “Clerks” was recently kicked off a Southwest Flight for apparently being well… too fat. He posted a Twitpic, tweeting “Hey @SouthwestAir! Look how fat I am on your plane! Quick! Throw me off!” to which Southwest replied within 15 minutes, offering him a voucher and an apology. Southwest’s new “Customer of Size” policy, “requires passengers that can not fit safely and comfortably in one seat to purchase an additional seat while traveling” which had not been the case of Mr. Smith who later claimed he had been seated comfortably and did not understand.

Clearly, Southwest has gotten a lot of attention.While the debates fly over whether Southwest was justified in its move, bloggers, Facebookers, Twitterers, even  YouTubers and more have deluged the Internet with articles about whether they should have such a policy at all, whether celebrities should be kicked off planes (Smith writes “clearly the notion of me going on Larry King scared the shit out of somebody over there”),  ad infinitum.

Southwest has ultimately reached out to the director by having a representative call him personally to discuss the matter and clear up the situation. According to Kevin Smith,

“So, Linda: I appreciate the effort you made, the time you spent with me on the phone, and the work you put into this. You, too, were a reasonable cat during our conversation. .. Thank you for that, Linda - and for being human.”

The aftermath

Although the director encouraged people to talk about “other stuff” on Twitter tomorrow, he has no idea of the monsoon of case studies, brand reputational analyses, white books, and slide shares that he has unleashed.Clearly, Southwest was monitoring social media for mentions of its name and had a crisis plan in action, even if it was the person that happened to be assigned to the Twitter account that night.

The question

So what?! He just got special treatment because he’s a celebrity. Southwest’s rapid response is certainly a nod to the current upswing in social media monitoring for online reputation management purposes, and we commend them for responding so quickly. The fact is, though: every online comment is important to a brand, just as every offline comment is. Although it is impossible for brands to cull all conversations that take place about them all over the world, the Internet is one sphere where you can closely observe how people are interacting with your brand.

Regular buzz monitoring is what can help you detect early warning signals like people retweeting Kevin Smith’s tweet (copying it along to people that are following their message feeds), republications of blog posts, increased numbers of inbound links, the growing influence of certain articles, and the influence of who’s talking. One person all by themself may not be as influential as Kevin Smith, but the fact that they are connected to people that ARE changes the playing field a bit. All it takes is for that influential person to care enough to pass the message along, and the propogation continues. Influencers online are not just celebrities. Monitoring is a crucial daily activity (if not hourly, every minute… ) that can help brands identify risks and opportunities and manage their online presences and reputations.

The turnaround

How would you advise Southwest for their online reputation strategy? Do you think Southwest was effective in managing their online reputation? Did they do the right thing by reaching out so publicly?

Looking forward to your comments and questions, below and @Synthesio.

by Michelle

After having the pleasure to attend Our Social Time’s Monitoring Social Media ‘09, we are proud to announce our co-Lead Sponsorship (shared with Meltwater Buzz) of this March’s

SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING MASTER-CLASS

Wednesday 31st March 8.30am - 5.30pm

hosted by  (venue tba)

The bootcamp will cover :

• Getting Started with Social Media Monitoring
• How to Choose The Right Social Media Monitoring Tool
• How to Build Your Own Social Media Monitoring Service
• How to Monitor Sentiment and Benefit from The Insight this Provides
• How to Identify influencers and Build Valuable Relationships with them
• How to Monitor and Engage with Customers in Real-time
• How to Measure the Success of your Social Media Marketing Campaigns

With featured speakers :

• Nathan Gilliatt, the principal of Social Target. He also blogs at The Net-Savvy Executive and runs Social Media Analysis, the industry portal for social media intelligence and analytics.
• Marshall Sponder, Analyst & PR/SEO Consultant, the founder of Webmetricsguru.com, writes a monthly column for Entrepreneur.com, and has his own analytics consultancy, Now-Seo.
• Philip Sheldrake, Founder & Partner, Influence Crowd, and the author of “The Social Web Analytics eBook 2008“.
• Katy Howell, Managing Director, Immediate Future.

There is a limited number of early-bird tickets so get yours soon and subscribe for e-mail updates.

See you there!

by Michelle