Tony LIVES on Twitter To elaborate: Tony uses web + txt - so I'm assuming he monitors Zappos with the web search. He also mandates all his employees to Tweet, so they probably have interns keyword searching. Whole Foods, another prolific Tweeter, uses TweetDeck. JetBlue utilizes: web + TweetDeck + Twitterberry. - Mona Nomura

They might use tools like we do for our client partners - apps like Radian6, TruCast, CIC, Cymfony. Art meets science across the new frontier of digital brand engagement engineering!... - Thom Kennon

Hm I would be interested in your client list, Thom. I don't see how consolidated charts and analytical tools can help one actually... well.. engage. - Mona Nomura

Twitter is the one we spend the MOST time trying to get results in real-time from - and Tweetdeck loaded with search terms and groups helps. Lots of other tools to send results as RSS for much of the rest of the social spaces (Mashable has a good run-down of many: http://mashable.com/2008... ) Though I still don't have a good search for Facebook brand mentions. Any suggestions? - Morgan @JetBlue (and Mona N, - we use Tweetle too) - Morgan Johnston

Bingo Mona!! Most of those tools (which are GREAT) were designed for agencies. The justSignal Tracker (shameless plug) I've built is a much better solution for engagement. see: http://ustream.tv/sxsw - Brian Roy

Talking to some of them at the Omniture summit, Thom's right, but for the most part a lot of them are just using things like RSS, TweetDeck, etc. I think Dell has created some internal tools, as have others. - Jesse Stay

Great question, Robert - anna sauce

Here is a case study about how Dell used social media monitoring for their mini9 launch - http://bit.ly/zEl0k - Marcel LeBrun

I use a free (but limited) account from http://www.techrigy.com/ - David Silvernail

Brian: I can't wait for the Ustream/SXSW thing. That's going to make lots of people say "whoa." - Robert Scoble

Robert: Thanks... I'm really looking forward to it. It should be pretty impressive watching them fly by in the midst of SXSW Interactive. - Brian Roy

I never used Zappos until I ran into Tony on Twitter. So yes, Twitter can increase sales. - Dave Gambrill

Dave: I agree. Same here. - Robert Scoble

It's not Twitter, it's Tony. Zappos' mantra has always been customers first. That's why they are the biggest online shoe retailer. Twitter is supplementary. - Mona Nomura

Love Zappos! - ursi

Oh, and at this time, Facebook is close to useless when it comes to brand promotion. Pages (that just got an overhaul) doesn't do anything. Only useful thing is status updates linked with Twitter - which at times can overwhelm (annoy) the average consumer. - Mona Nomura

I would actually suggest that it isn't JUST business to customer, it is also customer to customer, customer to prospect, etc. Imagine having your customers sell to your prospects because you gave them a clean way to talk to one another. You better be good at what you do... cause if you aren't the opposite will (and does) happen. - Brian Roy

Zappos is going mainstream fast though. I work a very non-tech job and people there love them. Yes, people who work at Elementary schools love Zappos. :D - MarkCarras

Uh, I've been using Zappos since 2003ish. They go the extra mile ie: next day air free of charge, hassle free price matching, returns, and exchanges - w/ free shipping and every single one of my experiences have been nothing but excellent. Their marketing is due to word of mouth and major publications advertising for them by raving. - Mona Nomura

I tweeted about drinking a Cameron Hughes wine last night and got a quick reply from the winery. Obviously there are tools to monitor tweets and flag keywords. - Robert Fisher

Robert: most startups I visit now have at least one computer running TweetDeck. - Robert Scoble

TweetDeck rules. But I think it has to do with finding your groove, per se. Then it becomes routine. Right now, I don't know of any tools in the market that efficiently enables monitoring offline. - Mona Nomura

oh and as far as Zappos and responsiveness? - the one story from 2007 http://www.zazlamarr.com/blog... was enough for me. I look for chances to buy from them. - Morgan Johnston

Mona - tell me more about "efficiently"... What is missing? - Brian Roy

Quick and timely alerts via multiple methods. ie: IM + SMS + web and or app - with the option to enable and disable. - Mona Nomura

So you want monitoring + semantic analysis + alerts on "stuff I need to know now" and user by user configuration. Did I get that right? - Brian Roy

Engagement tools. User configuration + monitoring and options to monitor are first priority. Semantic analysis are close to irrelevant when it comes to people actually walking the walk. They're just tangibles to satisfy whoever you're reporting to when it comes to Twitter, imho. - Mona Nomura

So what is justSignal missing? You see everything, you can tweet/reply, it does IM (but the tracker doesn't today), the Tracker has a Web based iPhone app. - And thanks for your insight on this... I'm not trying to defend what I've done... but learn what is needed next. - Brian Roy

I totally agree with Mona. My computer chirping at me through Tweetdeck is great - but there aren't any mobile apps with as instantaneous a notification. I'm left with constantly manually pulling up search.twitter.com pages when I have a spare moment. - Morgan Johnston

Alerts - the ability to know and respond right away when on the go. And these are just my opinions - glad they're useful. - Mona Nomura

So if you have an iPhone app that updates in real time does that solve the problem? SMS isn't viable - there is no way anyone is going to pay what it costs to have EVERY tweet that mentions the brand sent to (potentially) dozens of phones. Try the ustream.tv iPhone one: http://justsignal.com/ustvsxsw - Brian Roy

The problem with iPhones is there is no push + background. Which means the web interface has to be up at all times. SMS alerts are great - granted, your phone would be going off every two seconds, but it's a good option to have when services or new features are close to roll-out or just rolled out. Perhaps an email notification with consolidated Tweets in increments of 15 minutes? IM notifications? The possibilities are endless. It's all about options. - Mona Nomura

Mona - completely agree. Thanks for the input. If you have any other thoughts let me know. - Brian Roy

My pleasure Brian, anytime. :) Sorry Robert for hijacking your thread! But when Brian's justSignal blows up, you can say: "Hey, it all started on my FriendFeed!" ;) - Mona Nomura

probably radian 6 or similar tool - Adam Singer

there are plenty of alert services - though most will at best send you a digest of results every hour. - I agree yet again. It's about the flexibility; sometimes a digest of results once a day is fine, other times if I don't see a mention come in within a minute or two, I've lost that chance to help a customer. - Morgan Johnston

Mona: conversation offshoots are why I love friendfeed. I learned something and I appreciate it. - Robert Scoble

Mona - I'm hoping that "blow up" is in a good way - Don't want to be Cuil :) - Brian Roy

The tools - in our hands anyway - reveal the insights that drive the engagement strategies. - Thom Kennon

Brian - I am rooting for you! Thom - like I said, I would be interested in seeing your client list that practices said "engagement strategies". Oh, and FYI your Facebook profile links to a Montclair high-school female, class of '11. :( - Mona Nomura

Mona, that's my daughter, Tori's FB profile. And would love to share with you our Listening Platform (Forrester stole our handle for heir recent Wave Report!...) - Thom Kennon

Thom - why is your daughter's profile linked to your FriendFeed?! :O Did you know FriendFeed is indexed by Google? And how come you don't have your own Facebook? :( - Mona Nomura

Mona - the kids (I've got 5) use my laptop, esp on w/e's. I must've linked FF to FB while she was still logged into her FB. Btw you can find me on FB at Thom Kennon. - Thom Kennon

Dell uses Radian 6. - Dominic Jones

I apologize for singling you out but this is something charts, graphs, and analytical data could never teach you. Regardless of the explanation, as a Social Media expert linking an incorrect profile to your own social profile reflects... well... poorly. - Mona Nomura

Mona - - Thom Kennon

? - Mona Nomura

Mona - yes, social media experts with 5 kids should be forewarned to log all those darn kids off when he reclaims his laptop on weekends. Your vigilant watch keeps the social space safe! - Thom Kennon

You need lessons from Robert and Louis - they blog, Tweet AND FriendFeed while changing diapers and playing with the kids. Robert even records videos unrelated to Patrick and Milan! - Mona Nomura

Mona: we can all make mistakes. I don't let other people touch my laptop now. Including my kids. They have their own laptops. I don't touch theirs. They don't touch mine. Now that netbooks are $400 and decent that's how things should roll. - Robert Scoble

Back to thread topic --- Radian6 just updated to new rev today. Some very cool enhancements. We've been deep into VT's TruCast for some time as well. Quite robust, esp. ecosystem mapping. And Cymfony's Maestro is their newest enhanced app/platform. Love their data set! Our colleagues in APAC use CIC, eager to put that thru paces soon. - Thom Kennon

Of course we make mistakes, we're all human. But if I were a potential client, I wouldn't even think of contacting them. - just saying. :) - Mona Nomura

Someone give Mona another Rockstar Energy Drink :-p - Hutch Carpenter

I'm thinking of trying out ScoutLabs' 30-Day Free Trial SM brand-conversation tracking tool, though I agree with Mona (of course ;) that it takes more diligence than simply using a Radian6-like service: http://www.scoutlabs.com/ - Marko Bon

Loving this conversation as this is something I've been looking at recently. Right now I'm using twitter search brought in as an RSS feed for the company's name but wondering if there is a better way as I'd like to be able to search for products too without creating 11ty billion search queries. It works but I know there are much better tools that I should be using - Tamara

Yes, Marko, we're in middle of a trial of ScoutLabs as well. Doesn't feel as robust and tool-rich as the rest, but that's first blush, we'll continue to bang on it and report back. - Thom Kennon

CoTweet's designed specifically for brands http://cotweet.com. It provides a layer of control and coordination that makes communicating through Twitter much more effective and efficient for companies. It allows multiple people to communicate through the same Twitter account, combining tools for outbound marketing and PR as well as response-oriented customer service. You can share the responsibility of being "on duty" for the account and assign followups to other team members. - jesse

They are using listening platforms like TNS cymfony, Buzzmetrics and Radian6. I've got details. - Jeremiah Owyang

Too long of a topic for here, but this will all evolve into "just another Contact Center Channel" for big companies. It will be just like phone, chat, email, etc. When that happens it won't be a game changer - it will be the same companies providing the same (barely acceptable) level of service/engagement. I've seen this too many times since 1992 - and this is no different. It is also why I'm not trying to solve that (I could, but don't want to) with justSignal. I know where it goes... - Brian Roy

BTW - Whoever does "solve" the contact center channel for Social Media will make serious $$$ - probably far more than by catering to PR/Marketing. So here is my free advice - study what Kana did with email and Genesys does with multi-channel - plug SM into something like that and sell to 500+ seat contact centers. - Brian Roy

Piping RSS feeds from search.twitter.com would certainly help. Put a number of these in a GReader folder and turn on an RSS feed for that folder so that others can see too. - Mike Reynolds

I track Twitter keywords from search.twitter.com via a FriendFeed Room. You can track the flow, and they become searchable as well. - Hutch Carpenter

Great dialogue. I'm curious how Mona and Robert feel about the need for quick response versus monitoring when it comes to large scale national brands? Take something like Kleenex where brand is used as a noun, do they need to respond to every mention in SM? Isn't there value to them listening and understanding how their brand is used? - JMaultasch

That is where common sense needs to be exercised in order to pick and choose the signal vs noise and respond when appropriate. What a lot of marketers are missing is the purpose of SM sites -- specifically, Twitter. - Mona Nomura

Have to say when I interviewd the guys at http://cotweet.com I really was impressed with their offering, and how they understood why it's not just some shit you drop into a call-center. See http://thenextweb.com/2009... - David Petherick from twhirl

Oops, totally forgot to mention cotweet. Sorry @jesse. We just started testing it out on our team and have been really happy with it so far. - Tamara

Great discussion everyone. What I would like to hear is: Twitter and other social media platforms are great with consumer goods and already-established-brands. But what about the huge industries of companies making capital goods???? Their customers have probably never hear of social media. What do they do? just ignore it? Is Social Media only our world , while tons of companies have no business being here? - Peter Efland

Again, what a lot of marketers are missing is the purpose of SM sites -- specifically, Twitter. Identify, acknowledge, and understand the why to recognize the how. - Mona Nomura

Peter: I'm not sure your assumption holds... for example - here is a twitter search for Kenmore (lame, appliances sold a Sears): http://search.twitter.com/search... - SM is just visible word of mouth. People talk about all kinds of things. Granted that the demographics are still a bit skewed... but that is changing quickly. - Brian Roy

@CoTweet will be a great app for monitoring business accounts in twitter while maintaining a human aspect behind the account - better than just a broadcast mechanism. - Courtney Engle

to Mona's point directly above, Brian Morrisey of AdWeek said something at Social Media Week here in NYC that I jotted down: "People use Social Media not to connect with *brands,* but to connect with *each other.*" That's the WHY we're on Twitter -- and for Brands that will require a little re-alignment for how they decide to operate in this space. - Marko Bon

tracking the live chatter - Tweetdeck, google alerts, friendfeed room, all helpful. - Courtney Engle

to Marko's point Is it necessary to distinguish brand from community? Tony @zappos represents his brand sure - but he's solidly an individual on Twitter as well. Frank @comcastcares is clearly his own person even as he works to help Comcast's customers, and my own work @JetBlue - while I work hard to keep our public feed strictly on the topics I believe our customers want to see, it doesn't make my interaction any less authentic and human. The advantage of SM is that companies no longer need to be faceless - Morgan Johnston