Webinar Replay

I just finished re-watching the Webinar Replay – Monitoring Social Media for Investor Relations (found here). Richard Brewer-Hay from eBay and Serena Ehrlich from Startup Army addressed many popular questions facing companies' usage of social media.

This is an important area of interest because as the slideshow says 67% of the worldwide online population use social networks & blogs.

Some key points were to monitor social media websites to see what is being said about your company.

• If financial analysts begin to follow you on Twitter, follow them back.
• http://www.socialmention.com/ allows you to search for your company name.
• Use http://www.search.twitter.com/ to read about what Twitter users are saying about your company.
• search your company name followed negative words like hate, sucks or bad.
• http://www.peoplebrowsr.com/ is a web-based application that can be used to browse your company's mentionings.
• do not forget to read about conversations involving competitors. Examine websites with negative mentions of your company to see if they receive a lot of site traffic to determine if it is worth spending time on. It will take time to determine if a source is credible, but over time relationships and connections with your company's community will form over time, as well as credibility.
• It is important for you to invest time and personal input into social media because it will payback
• Although, discretion is advised because not everyone wants a response from the company, some are merely complaining.
• Social Mention breaks down if what was said is positive or negative.
• People Browsr provides plug ins that allow you to download charts of the data found to present right to your managament.
• Tweet Deck allows you to schedule when tweets will be posted.
• Both professionals recommend to use two computer monitors.

Richard used the quote "fish where you're fishing" to help narrow down where to look for your company's name mentioned on the endless amount of social media sites. Richard engages with anyone and everyone on these sites because that is what social media is for.

Companies have different reasons for engaging in social media, Richard at eBay uses them to promote brand advocacy; other reasons could be to increase site traffic, increase media interest, to get your company's message out there, and to reduce advertising expenses.