In the growing realm of social media, there are not only a plethora of social platforms to choose from, but a number of tools to monitor these platforms as well. In order for businesses to utilize social media to their fullest advantage, it is important they know what the best tools are to create a social ecosystem around their brand.

So, what do these social media tools do? Most social media monitoring tools seek to do one or more of the following three things:

• Listen or monitor the social sphere.
  These tools aggregate posts based on keywords/feeds you select. They aggregate mentions, giving you a sense of what people are saying about you and where, while providing you with the opportunity to respond. These are extremely helpful for brand management and can help identify both positive and negative trends.
  
  
• Manage publishing and response workflow.
  These tools help companies publish to their social media feeds and respond to posts from the community. Many listening tools also contain a work flow management aspect or have said they plan to build one. These tools (or usually a function of a larger platform/tool) can take identified posts from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media communities and assign them to people. Many also allow you to schedule future posts on your feeds.
  
  
• Provide reporting and analytics.
  Most of the tools that provide listening and work flow management also support some analytics and reporting. There are also smaller, usually platform-specific or proprietary reporting tools at low or no cost. For examples, see: Twitter Counter, Facebook Insights, and YouTube Analytics.

Here are three third-party tools worth a peek:   

Radian 6

If your company can afford it, this a great tool for social media listening and reporting that aggregrates data from all over the web based on your keywords. There are two main features of the tool:  

1. the listening tool, which allows you to monitor and respond to comments made about your brand
2. the reporting dashboard, which you can use to gather and export metrics

While Radian 6 does allow you to respond to posts within its interface, it currently does not schedule content for publishing. As a result, it does not provide the same workflow management as some competing products like HootSuite. (They have said, however, that they plan to release that functionality “very soon.”)

Radian 6 also supports robust reporting on social media, including sentiment analysis. Machines are very literal, so the tool isn’t great at recognizing sarcasm and slang usage, but it works pretty well as a temperature gauge. You can also manually change ratings from negative to positive and vice-versa on specific posts.

Overall, Radian 6 provides some of the most robust analytics and reporting you’ll find. They also have convenient training options, they hold regular webinars, and their customer service team is very responsive.

HootSuite

HootSuite provides great, lower cost options that compete with Radian 6. I’ve found it works great as a workflow management tool as well as a way to aggregate the most common social media platforms — Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook — under one roof. Unlike Radian 6, it currently supports both the ability to respond within the tool’s interface to community comments, as well as the ability to schedule posts across multiple platforms to publish at a later date.

A couple cons: it does not offer the social media listening functionality that Radian 6 provides, and I’ve (personally) found their reporting to be spotty, especially in regards to Facebook. It glitches out sometimes for long lengths of time, and getting the issue resolved via their online customer service forums is not always easy. That said, I’ve found HootSuite does report very reliably on Twitter. I have only worked with their lower-tiered options, and admittedly, their more expensive, enterprise-level solution may provide more reliable reporting and more responsive customer service, though at that higher price point, it’s no doubt worth looking into Radian 6.

If you’re not using a reporting or workflow management tool today, then I would toss this up for sure — even just the free option! It’ll help you manage your brands across your feeds under one view and password while you get started on a strategy for workflow management and platform-based content optimization.

FlipTop

Valuation and ROI on advertising in general, especially on social media, is a tricky thing. (See this great Copyblogger article which argues that measuring ROI on advertising, including social media, is the wrong mindset when it comes to measurement and valuation.) In the meantime, when it comes to third-party valuation and reporting tools, I’m super curious about FlipTop — a new company out of San Francisco.

FlipTop is a social media reporting and profile mapping tool. They have pricing tiers and pay-per-match solutions that will match emails with social media identities. Basically, you can take your email databases and then map them to people’s Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, and other profiles, helping you understand where your purchasing community is, how much on average those different parties purchase, and where you should be focusing your social media and paid advertising time and dollars. Neat! (And totally creepy...) 

Massive project, many obstacles

When we first kicked off a massive, technical project for a client, I’ll admit, I was nervous. With a fast and fixed deadline, lots of moving parts, in-depth collaboration with many external vendors, and lots of unknowns, this was a project that seemed doomed from the start. So in order to help keep track of the dizzying amount of work ahead of us, we created a Kanban board.

Visualizing the big picture

The Kanban board is a tool to help visualize the work for any project.  It provides a level of transparency that allows anyone, even someone unfamiliar with the project, to understand the status of a project at a single glance. 

It starts with story cards.  A story card (a sticky note on the board) is essentially a description of a task that needs to be completed.  Each developer picks a card from the “Open Work” bucket, writes their initials on it, and moves it to “In-progress” column.  When the task is complete, they move the sticky to the “Ready for QA” bucket, grab a new task, and repeat the process.  QA then tests each task in the “Ready for QA” bucket, and either moves the card to “Complete” if there are no issues, or sends it back to “In-progress” if bugs are found.

Our approach

When we first started the project, we were waiting on quite a bit of work from external vendors, and there simply wasn’t time to wait for this work to be delivered if we wanted to meet our deadline.  By placing tasks that were waiting on vendors into the “Blocked” category, we were able to reduce confusion over what work was available and clearly see how much work was “on hold.”  As more vendor work was delivered, those blocked tasks were moved to the “Open Work” bucket, and team members could start working on those tasks without needing to wait for status updates. 

Each morning, the team gathered around the Kanban board for a 15 minute, stand-up meeting that involved each team member answering three key questions about their progress:

1. What did you work on yesterday?
2. What are you working on today?
3. What is blocking your progress?

As team members answered these questions, they moved the stickies from column to column, giving an up-to-date picture of the overall status of the project.

One of the major benefits of this system was that it helped visualize bottlenecks – are a majority of tasks blocked?  Is QA overwhelmed with work?  Does the amount of open work look achievable with the time remaining?  Any outsider could view the board and instantly understand the status and health of the project without having to interrupt a single team member. 

Results

In the end, the board was an overwhelming success.  The team all agreed that the board made collaboration easier by clearly identifying which tasks were available to work on, who was working on each task, and how much of the project remained.  It helped us hit our deadline in spite of the setbacks and challenges we dealt with along the way.  The Kanban board is one tool that we will certainly try to use again in Springbox projects moving forward.

As a content creator and editor, I’ve always relied on Word to communicate ideas to the designers and developers on my team. To “paint a picture” of web content, I’d format, label, and highlight. Word was my go-to tool.

Recently, though, I gave it all up in favor of managing content in WordPress. And I'm loving it.

The Oodles of Source Content Challenge

A client came to us with great information hidden in the depths of a poor site experience. Among other things, they needed the content re-organized so users could find and use it.

Some months earlier, I'd remarked “Wouldn't it be great if we could put all of the client’s existing content into some sort of CMS and start moving it around?” The answer was yes. Let's do it on this project.

This was a classic “be careful what you wish for” moment for me. Without Word, I wouldn’t have a concrete deliverable that I controlled. Instead, we’d all have a living, breathing code base to share.

But, after confirming that we could rollback, compare changes, and even spit out a trusty Word doc if necessary, we decided to dive in.

Mapping It Out

While I went about researching, reading the old site and gaining all the knowledge I could about the client's business problem, development imported all the “source content” into an in-house instance of WordPress.

When debate ran high about the new site map, I used menus within WordPress to quickly create prototypes and test our organizational theories. In no time, it seemed, we had a new site map approved.

Then the Fun Really Began

I created the new site structure in WordPress — a slew of properly named, lovely blank pages. Then I went through more than 200 pages of source content, scanning for bits and pieces to populate those pages.

There was no need for a content audit spreadsheet. Each source content page retained its original URL, so we could document where it came from. Plus, I noted new page destination(s) or whether content was being retired and why, right in the CMS.

Meanwhile, wireframing sped along, informed by an in-depth knowledge of the type, length, and spirit of the source content as well as our strategy for refining it to support new site goals.

As the wireframes were being approved, I was already polishing pages that supported the templates. Once visual concepting began, I was able to point designers to plenty of content available for use in their comps.

No version control worries. No fighting over docs on the server. I just gave them a link and let the collaboration begin.

Oh But There’s More … More Productivity, That Is

Unlike in Word, I wasn’t creating to-do lists for dev to handle later — I noted keywords, added meta descriptions and refined page titles and URLS. I styled headlines and subheads and tables. I uploaded .PDF assets and added inline links. I made anchor, internal and external links, always making sure they were tagged with a good link title.

When I had pages ready, I added them to a queue for QA, who made changes on the fly. I could compare versions to see what had changed, then pass it along to the client.

We gave our client access to the content on WordPress, advising them when to make changes, when to comment, and when to call us. And they reviewed at lightning speed. As I watched their comments roll in real-time, I got better at making choices they would approve in the next round.

Bye Bye Word

I thought I would miss Word. After all, a CMS is an ever-changing code base, not a document I can lock up. But, the empowerment and efficiency it affords across disciplines is so worth letting go.

One complaint: I can compare changes between versions in WordPress, but sadly, am forced to accept or reject all of them as a package. In Word, I could jump from change to change accepting, rejecting or modifying as needed. The latter is better for a control freak, for sure.

Still, I’m not going back. We've already modified WordPress to suit our needs, and I know we can go further. Next time we have a project with tons of existing content, we will.

As we kick off 2012 and make our New Year’s resolutions, one resolution on everyone’s business agenda should be to develop an ongoing social strategy. As social media platforms become mainstream and your industry competitors settle in for the long haul, there’s no better time to get organized.

Here are few tips for structuring your ongoing social program:

Start with a business plan.
Think of social media like you would a business plan. What are your objectives, KPIs and measures of success? Based on your answers, you can determine a level of investment that makes sense for your marketing mix.

Turn on the right channels.
Find your audience first. With a bevy of social outlets to choose from, you can dilute your brand and overwhelm your resources if you dive into too many too fast. Make the most of your budget and staff by selecting the channels with greatest reach to your target audience.

Think big (and small).
At all times you’ve got to keep your eye on the big picture, as well as the fine details. Determine how you’d like to see the yearlong conversation evolve, and then develop a monthly cadence to serve as a blueprint to further dialogue. But don't get too caught up in the plan—you'll need to be quick to adapt to events and your audience's needs on a daily basis.

Connect the dots.
Integrating all the pieces of the social puzzle is essential to a healthy ecosystem and your success. Consider traditional media, online display media, digital, special events, mobile, e-mail marketing, coupons, contests, etc. These moving parts should all work together and tease and support each other for greater impact.

Get the right tools.
Engage social media tools that will make your process more efficient and your program smarter. The costs of tools can offset the need for additional resources and provide more intelligent reporting to advise your next steps. Some tools are free and a no-brainer.

Get creative.
Experiment and be resourceful. A shiny, expensive app isn’t always the answer. Employ clever, easy tactics to gain awareness without over extending your budget and resources. And remember, quality over quantity — valuable content + utility is key. 

Be ready for real time.
Once you start it doesn’t stop. Have a plan for monitoring and responding to your audience. How often will you chime in? How will you handle negative comments? Who’s on point to respond? These are questions you should know the answers to. Consumer expectations are high. Not being prepared could ultimately damage your brand image.

Measure and optimize.
Last, but definitely not least, you’ll need a strategy for tracking, reporting and optimizing. ROI in social is debatable, but the benefits can be clear. There are several ways to measure success (and failure) to help guide your efforts, develop best practices and gain significant insights.

Springbox had an exciting year building new client relationships, launching tools for the interactive community, creating interactive experiences and displays, and celebrating award-winning work. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights:   

New Clients
For Microsoft Advertising, Springbox teamed up with several partners to execute a multi-screen, live-streamed concert series campaign featuring artists like Robyn, Ellie Goulding, Cold War Kids and Rye Rye. For Michael J. Fox Foundation, Springbox created a trial finder tool that connects volunteers with clinical trials to help find a cure for Parkinson’s Disease. New Austin-based clients included New Era Portfolio, one of the largest fine art printers in the world, and CSID, leader in the identity protection industry.

Tools for the Community
In July, Springbox launched Mobilizer, a free mobile preview desktop application for the interactive and agency community. The Adobe AIR application lets users preview mobile content on a variety of phone shells. For agency folks, the tool also allows users to export PNGs of device previews – perfect for portfolios or presentations. 

Real-Time Interactive Displays
At SXSW 2011 we hosted a rockin’ party at the W Hotel, right outside of the new Austin City Limits studio, and as part of the party experience, we created a multiplayer mobile game called Capture the Swag. In December, we launched an interactive window display at our headquarters in downtown Austin as part of the Austin Holiday Sing-Along & Downtown Stroll. Visitors could use their mobile phones to dial into a 1-800 number and create their own snowflake using their phone's keypad. Upon hanging up their phone, the snowflake appeared in our windows, and we sent them a text with a link to an image of their snowflake to share with their friends online. 

Award-Winning Work and Culture
At the W3 awards, we took home three awards for our work on Tradewinds' website. At the Davey Awards, we took home Gold for our work on DG's site redesign and Silver for both Central Market's Chocolate QR Campaign and Tradewinds' site redesign. We also received a Bronze Addy award for our Springbox photography website that highlights our L.A. office’s expertise.  

For the second year in a row, The Austin American-Statesman named us a Top Workplace in Austin. The Springbox team takes pride in our culture, and to celebrate our win we decided to unveil a new tradition of bestowing personalized rock star mugs upon Springboxers who have been with us for two years and more. (It is still to be determined whether our Dog Day Friday employees will be honored in the future.)

Thanks to everyone for making the year such a success. Happy Holidays and we'll see you in the New Year!