Social Media Monitoring

For this week’s blog we were tasked with using social media monitoring tools and essentially see what they are about. I chose QueenslandHealth as it is the case study for assignment two and wanted to see how Queensland Health is currently using social media. There are many tools out there for monitoring but I chose to focus on two, Socialmention and Howsociable. While both essentially do the same thing, monitor how many times the phrase “Queensland Health” appears through social media posts. The analytical display takes two different directions.

Social mention (Social Mention, n.d.) is a free tool that collates, displays and analyses information from 100+ social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc. You type in a search phrase and it returns some analytical data and also a listing of posts attached to that search phrase. The aspect that makes it stand out from the rest is that it measures the search phrase’s influence in four categories:

Queensland Health

• Strength –Indication of the likelihood that there is discussion on social media about the search phrase. The calculation used by social mention is; mentions divided by potential mentions in a 24 hour period. Pretty basic.

• Sentiment – It displays generally positive to generally negative mentions through social media in ratio form.

• Passion – Indication of the likelihood that the search phrases are being talked about repeatedly by the same individuals. Example given by social mention is that a higher score would be achieved if a small group talks consistently about the search phrase a higher score will be achieved.

• Reach – Indication of the range of influence. Calculation used by social mention is; Number of unique authors referencing the search phrase divided by the total number of mentions. So the more unique authors are posting about the search phrase the higher the reach score.

You may have noticed that I state “search phrase” rather than the term “brand” that social monitoring tools use. This is because when I searched for Queensland Health on social mention it displayed information for both Queensland and Health, sometimes giving me postings about Health in the USA. Fortunately it does have an advance search function where I could make it search for the exact wording or phrase. This type of problem is not unusual for basic search engines but leads me to question the accuracy of social media monitoring.

Miami

Miami Dolphins

 I further tested social mention and searched for Miami and then Miami Dolphins (Go Fins!!) and there was a definitive divide between posts about the city of Miami and the NFL team Miami Dolphins, which leads me to think that if there is an established brand it does not matter if there are spaces for this type of monitoring. This further makes me think that the “brand” Queensland Health has not established itself in the social media sphere and that is why you can’t just type in Queensland Health. Also in the FAQ section of Social mention when asked how does it work? The answer is it works. Obviously they won’t tell the exact calculations that it uses so it can get stolen by competitors but it feels like a bit of snake oil.

A few other concerns I have are:

• Strength – as I said earlier the formula used while simple does not state how they derive the possible mentions, possibly to thwart competition on their calculations but if there is a key aspect of Web 2.0 and more importantly Enterprise 2.0 it’s transparency.
• Sentiment – The ratio given is only a positive to negative ratio, when doing a search on Queensland Health, Miami and Miami Dolphins there was a multitude of posts that were deemed neutral.
• Passion and Reach – These categories are intertwined because of the way that it is calculated you can not have high passion and high reach.
• The most interesting trait that I found about Queensland Health was its lack of strength, it only rated 2%. I think that the strength score is calculated against all possible posts, so Queensland Health which has a limited audience to start with competes with some big names who are dedicated a massive amount of posts worldwide.  Potentially also the lack of “brand” name for Queensland Health hinders the analytical analysis that these tools derive.

I also looked at Howsociable. This is similar to social mention however the data analysed is displayed as a magnitude score from 0-10 (with 0 being no activity and 10 being lots) it also breaks it down by social sites, youtube, facebook, twitter etc. The non registered version provides information for four social sites, the free registered version is for 12 social sites, and the pro version looks at 36 social sites and costs $9 USD for 3 months. The pro version gives access to the social media heavyweights, Facebook, Twitter and Pininterest. On the free non registered version it gave scores for youtube, linkedin, google plus and foursquare.

Queensland Health had all very low scores I might add. While I didn’t want to pay for the 3 month subscription, $9 gets me 2 pots or a pint at the uni bar! The way that it breaks down a score for 36 social sites makes it a very interesting proposition as it would allow an organisation to see what type of social sites they could improve their reach into e.g. their Facebook score might be an 8, while their Twitter might be a 3 and might encourage a shift towards Twittering more etc.

As I stated earlier there are a multitude of social monitoring tools, however I think that care must be taken as to how much to actually believe these tools and also to not just follow them blindly. Or maybe companies should just keep following blindly as the world would be a worse place off without social media fails.

References:

socialmention - about

recool

For this week’s blog I chose an architecture endeavour as my organization from the professional services sector. The major reason that I chose a blog instead of wiki or twitter use is that blogging in the enterprise 2.0 realm seems to be a perfect marriage with the architecture field. You design an amazing building and you can see what that building looks like etc.

you save someone a lot of money on their tax return and well, you will see black writing (hopefully black!) on a white page.

Enterprise 2.0 technologies allow these companies to showcase their talents, in much the same way one would a portfolio, especially blogging. In our very first lecture we talked about enhancing our digital identity, putting our talent online for the world to see. Architecture just by its visual nature has an inbuilt advantage over other fields. This is not to say that other fields should ignore the enterprise 2.0 movement as other aspects such as wiki or twitter may benefit these other fields more than the architect field. If given a choice: an architect firm blogging about their new sustainable roof design

Or an IT firm blogging which fiber optics technology is better

I know which one to me is more engaging... Ok the fiber optics do look sweet...

The organization that I chose is Westlake Reed Leskosky an architect firm out of the U.S.A. that runs the blog recool. According to Westlake Reed Leskosky (2013, para. 2) their aim is to explore different technology solutions for sustainable architecture that will allow them to create advancements to the architectural/engineering/construction (AEC) marketplace.

The value levers from the McKinsey Global Institute (2012) that I have associated with this blog are; value lever 4 (derive customer insights), 5 (use social technologies for marketing communication/interaction), 6 (generate and foster leads) which all form part of the marketing and sales organisational function. But with many of these enterprise 2.0 technologies you can argue for other value levers and function associations depending on the context of the argument.

Value lever 4 - Derive Customer Insights

recool uses comments sections for its blog postings for this value lever to get customer feedback. Most companies that have any type of feedback option should be reaping the benefits from this feedback. This is a cornerstone of web 2.0 anything that is posted online, a blog, a tweet, a facebook posting, you want someone to reply, you want to create a connection, you want that customer feedback as that is how you derive their insights. The value that I think gives the company is that it educates prospective customers and potentially a comment could be used to enhance aspects of their designs. In much the same way that crowdsourcing is used by foldit. Another way that Westlake Reed Leskosky (2013, para. 1) taps into this value lever and value lever 5 is that it promotes “open and candid discussion of design and product applications” on its blog, I think that by promoting an atmosphere of debate it is inviting people to think how can it be improved and how to get involved in sustainable AEC.

Value Lever 5 - Use Social Technologies for Marketing Communication/Interaction

Westlake Reed Leskosky (2013) state that one function of the blog is to emphasize their approach to sustainable AEC by showing what worked and what difficulties were encountered. As I said earlier blogging in enterprise 2.0 is a type portfolio, it is easy to show off your company, so it is easy to market the company by enhancing their digital identity to the world. The value comes with the engagement that is possible through social technologies, if I want to see green technology in architecture I don’t have to go to some conference in Scandinavia. This value lever I think is a by product of the internet as technically having a website, blog, facebook page, etc. is marketing yourself and interacting with the community. The value that is derived for recool.com is how it uses blogging as opposed to wiki (too technical perhaps) or twitter (not enough words) to promote its digital identity and the engagement and debate it tries to manifest not only with people that are for sustainable AEC but also those who are on the fence or against it.

Value Lever 6 - Generate and Foster Sales Leads

There has been a continued focus on sustainable everything, how to decrease the impact that everything has on the environment, so it is easy to argue that sustainable AEC is also a hot topic. By tying in value lever 5 as a portfolio recool.com is at worse passively generating sales leads, if there is anyone looking at sustainable architecture the blog can be construed as an extension of the firm and while it may not form the only reason for choosing the firm it is another way to enhance sales leads.

I think that using blogs, wikis, twitter etc. for this sector depends more on what value lever you are trying to achieve than in other sectors we have explored so far. The two previous sectors we looked at, depending on the enterprise 2.0 technology that was used could encompass several value levers and organisational functions. This I think its due to the niche nature of the services and who the services are primarily aimed at.

References

McKinsey Global Institute - The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies.
recool - about

foldit - Solve Puzzles for Science

A couple of weeks ago I looked at what value levers were associated with implementing Enterprise 2.0 with the Xbox One and Sony PS4 examples. This week I am looking at benefits and value levers within the Social sector as outlined by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) report, The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies.

There are many examples in this field but the one I chose was foldit. The value lever that I have identified is crowdsource resources and solutions value which is part of the, collect information and insights, function area.

Crowdsource resources and solutions is to an extent like harnessing collective intelligence, it promotes participation by the general populace rather than select or niche groups. For the foldit example it uses the "crowd" to find solutions.

Foldit is a game where you solve protein puzzles. It encourages the gamer to predict how the primary structure of a protein “folds” into a three dimensional structure. According to the foldit website, the two primary functions of the game are to: predict protein structure and protein design. These functions are needed to understand diseases such as HIV, Cancer and Alzheimer’s and to design better treatment. The champagne moment for foldit was when a protein structure of a simian retroviral protein used in animal HIV models but  it's three-dimensional model  had evaded the science community for 15 years was solved by foldit players (Hersher, 2012, para. 1).

Basically there are two types of puzzles, the champagne ones like the example above where the community is encouraged to participate in solving unknown protein structures and protein puzzles that are generally well known. The approach that is used by humans to solve the second type of  puzzles is analysed to improve the algorithms of existing protein-folding software, as there is an argument that the human brain has a natural three-dimensional pattern matching ability which correlates to humans having better spatial reasoning skills than computers (Moore, 2011, para. 7). Using crowdsourcing to solve puzzles is not new and it could be argued that the WW2 Enigma code was broken via crowdsourcing. What is new is the scale that can be achieved via the internet. Instead of having 15, 20 or 50 people working on a problem, there can be thousands or tens of thousands.

While the focus so far has been on enhancing protein-folding software, foldit will soon incorporate ways to design new proteins that will ultimately allow users to design and improve drugs to treat different diseases. In much the same way that the malaria example on the MGI report uses crowdsourcing for that disease.

With any crowdsourcing example, the more people that are involved the better the information and insights that are derived.

References:

Cnet - Foldit game leads to AIDS research breakthrough.
foldit - The Science Behind foldit
McKinsey Global Institute - The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies.
Spoonful of Medicine - Foldit game's next play: crowdsourcing better drug design.