I recently caught up with Gary for a podcast, and am sharing a condensed version of our discussion with you as part of this post. Additionally, I’ve included my “Top 5 Things to Know” based largely on my experience and discussions with Lauren Maynard, who works with the tool almost daily as Room 214’s Director of Research.

Social-Media-Monitoring-Podcast-With-Crimson-Hexagon

Podcast Show Notes
1. We discuss the original intent of Crimson Hexagon’s technology, and Gary references the “disaster” of attempting to use documented practices for extracting meaning from large volumes of textual content.

2. Gary discusses how Crimson Hexagon overcame the challenges associated with common linguistic analysis by developing something I have come to refer to as their “proportional estimate” methodology.

3. I ask about the accuracy of data and validation methodology. Gary explains in detail.

Note: Gary sometimes refers to posts, tweets, blogs, etc as “documents.” Between his knowledge of the subject matter and natural train of thought, you may find yourself needing to listen to certain sections more than once. The last two minutes of the podcast, when he talks about people/messages basically saying the same thing over and over again, are my favorite.

The Top 5 Things You Need to Know about Crimson Hexagon
I’d like to quickly preface this by saying Room 214 is a tool-agnostic agency. My objective is not financial compensation from Crimson Hexagon for saying nice things about them or even selling their offerings.

It is instead to evaluate, recommend, use and help optimize business intelligence and social media monitoring tools from any number of technology providers my agency deems praiseworthy. This is the best way we know how to continue matching effective solutions to our clients’ requirements (ok, end of my pitch).

1. Crimson Hexagon Accounts for Consumer Variation

Consideration of varied language use is important because it can vary greatly by consumer segment. For example, 12 year olds and 45 year olds might describe something they love very differently, but at the core their statements are both saying, “We love this” or “We are going to watch this.” Identification and categorization of both types of conversation is valuable.

2. Crimson Hexagon Research Enables a Thesis

Using the same set of keywords, and assuming a given volume of subject matter, a question can be asked and subsequently answered. Example: For a TV show, questions ranging from intent to view to sentiment reaction can be answered. Most tools require manual sorting through piles of posts based on keywords and inferred trends. Crimson Hexagon can factually and correctly capture trends pertaining to the question being asked within a given set of posts.

3. Crimson Hexagon Enables the Training of Their Algorithm

We have been at this kind of work (leveraging social media business intelligence and monitoring tools) for about three years, so can appreciate that many of these tools are essentially in their infancy. Still, it wasn’t that long ago we joked about providers needing to activate the “army of midgets” behind the Wizard of Oz curtain in order to get calibrations/adjustments done due to poor data filtering or off-target monitoring.

Today, one of our favorite things about Crimson Hexagon is the ability to make their tools work more effectively without the need to give them a call. This is a huge time saver, allows us to better optimize the tools for relevant results and positions our analysts in the driver’s seat when it comes to delivering value.

4. Crimson Hexagon Helps Narrow the Research

The first steps of keyword refinement are made easier with Crimson Hexagon’s visualizer functionality. The visualizer helps us understand how to better narrow a search, and may even reference items that might be missing. This has made our process more efficient, providing automated assistance towards cleaner, more targeted results.

5. Crimson Hexagon Understands Customer Service

This might sound cliché, but we are all basically in the customer service industry (living in the “thank you economy”). We have somewhat of a unique partnership, but it doesn’t detract from the fact that Crimson Hexagon responds to us very quickly. We’ve had other “partners” that didn’t. This makes a huge difference, because the more we use their tools, the more we need to work through nuances. They have consistently demonstrated a willingness to help refine searches, take feedback and give tips and insights with respect to updates.

1. Old-school measurement for ROI: What is really a “lead?” People want to apply same measures to social media. Traditional measures are being applied to social media marketing when so many other aspects of business simply don’t. Example: What’s the ROI of the receptionist, or even the accounting department for that matter?
2. We can measure how many people are exposed to our ideas, downloaded our YouTube video, etc. but these are very different measurements compared to traditional ROI measurements.
3. David states that ultimately, the ROI argument is used as an excuse based in fear. Many companies are simply afraid of social media.
4. David’s new book, World Wide Rave: How ideas spread and why people talk about you and your company. The first step in the formula for success is very counter-intuitive to marketers: Nobody cares about your products except you. To create something that has potential to spread, you can’t talk about these things. As soon as your product is brought into the equation, nobody cares.
5. Key take-away: Doing lots of activities in online marketing as opposed to one or just a few, should be the expectation when it comes to increasing your chances of success.

Notes: You can check out David’s blog at WebInkNow.com. I really enjoyed this interview, and am looking forward to reading his new book.

In this podcast, we discuss:

1. To follow or not to follow: Acceptable twitter manners – great people in person doesn’t always transfer to great people on Twitter.
2. Advantages of Facebook vs Twitter: Facebook throttles down notifications, meaning you won’t receive constant updates from a person on Facebook, even if they are posting 20 items an hour.
3. A day in the life of Jeremy Tanner: It starts with his iphone (of course)
4. Bridging the gap between online and offline communications: It’s about keeping two-way conversations. Also, don’t forget or be afraid to pick up the phone.

Be sure to check out Jeremy at http://www.jeremytanner.com, and follow him via twitter at http://twitter.com/penguin