Now I have access again, I found it refreshing to work with Radian6 and find things that I asked for last year, were added, and then some (see my last post on Radian6 New Enhancements plus Social CRM, WebTrends and SalesForce Intergration).

First off, you can now add a set of keywords to a “keyword group” and use it with three of the 5 widgets that require keyword data – before you had to add the keywords manually to each widget.   I asked for this feature last September (see screenshot below where I added a set of keywords to a preset set group called “Brands“):

While it may not be a big deal with a small Topic Profile and a few keywords – for a big Profile with many keywords, having a way to group and use keywords (found under “advanced configuration”) is extremely helpful and avoids operational “fatigue”, by eliminating tedious configuration tasks ,that aren’t really necessary, and tend to fog our minds, leaving less room for analysis and insight.

Also, while your setting up a Topic Profile in Radian6, you can purchase Compete.com traffic data connected with the profile -this was a good move (and something I heard about a few months ago from Compete.com in a meeting with Aaron Prebluda, Director of Market Development at Compete.com, who I briefly met with a few weeks earlier at Search Engine Strategies conference in at the New York Hilton).

You can see that data you just purchased in the Influencer Widget (probably the more powerful feature of Radian6 that makes it stands apart – it’s not that SM2/Techrigy can’t show you, more or less the same thing, it’s that doesn’t yet have the integration, but I’m sure Techrigy will try to match this and the CRM capabilities announced yesterday – and the industry could use some healthy competition – (which is what America is all about, anyway, right?).

Influencer Widget – notice the “Compete.com” traffic data on the far right, in the last 4 columns.  What’s being added from Compete is the

1 – Unique Visitors per month for every influencer

2- Visits per month for every influnecer

3 – Average monthly time spent on site (which in may cases, seems kinda low, but hey, this is “Social Media” and visits are often very directed and of short duration – viewing a page from Twitter or Facebook, you might look at what you want and then leave).

4- Monthly Site Views (Pageviews)

The Compete data intergation helps a Radian6 user decide if an “influener” found in a profile is “worth” going after – in other words – if my client is a translation service that wants Social Media Traffic – would an influener have the traffic I needed to make the effort of contacting them and getting a relationship or link, worthwhile (since this all takes effort to do, it’s worth putting on the table anything that can make your decision of who you want to have a relationship with, as accessable as possible, and the Compete data helps to do that)?

Another feature that is, in my opinion, a “deal breaker“, and that is presently unmatched by Techrigy or anyone else, is the “Social Graph” of a Influener, or any source that comes up as a River of News source (the River of News is one of the 5 Widgets that Radian6 provides and its akin it’s name – a stream of news related to the Topic Profile at a certain point in time).

Social Profile of an “Influencer”

Consider what this means – even though you can isolate influencers – figuring out how to contact them (and which channel to do so – Twitter vs LinkedIn, vs Google Profile, vs Facebook profile, vs email, to name a few, and having that on hand, for any influential – makes Social Media CRM so much easier and more effective).

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that, just because you can isolate an influencer in this way, using Radian6, in this case, that you should automatically go and contact them.

Gary Vaynerchuk mentions, at the 140 Character Conferecne, which I attended last week, and I was sitting right in the front and to the left of Gary, as he gave this talk, 1.4 minutes in, that he owns a company with is younger brother, and he contacts a lot of people, using Social Media, but this come under fire, because, you still have to form a relationship and get permission first, before going off and contacting anyone, and that’s what makes this an Art, not a mass promotion techinique.

I bring it up because, the temptation is – if you can get this data off of Radian6, stick it into a Social CRM via SalesForce, and now see the traffic come in to the site using WebTrends, and estimate Influencer traffic using Compete – your all set, and can go and contact whomever you want.   Except – you still need to find a meaningful and valid way to interact with the influencer, in the first place.  These tools don’t do that for you – you have to figure out a way to do – all the tools can do is identify possible to contact and give you their addresses, you, as the marketer, must decide the right way to connect with that person – and if you can’t do it in a non-invasive way, you many not want to engage with that influencer, at all, because it can backfire, as it did, I’m told, to Gary Vaynerchuk and his brother.

I’m not saying – don’t go out and contact people – I am saying – figure out how you can do it in a way where that contact, identified by Radian6, is going to be welcomed, or don’t bother contacting the influener, at all.     Since the Social CRM tools now make such contacting “easy” we need to figure out the right way to “engage” with that customer, influencer, what ever you want to call them.

Another feature which might be new is the “On Topic Forum Replies” – i don’t think that was in the versions I was using last year – but it is now.   One the reasons why the “On Topic” features of Radian6 is useful is for linking strategy and SEO. Here’s why.

Sopose you wanted to get a lot of links from Social Media to your blog or corporate website – and you were doing SEO on the site, but you knew that Google (still the main Search Engine, but Bing is starting to move up and challange Yahoo!) would rank your site higher if it determined the backlinks your page (either the homepage or a specific page on your site) were more relevent – but how do you find the relevent link (where you might want to leave a comment -even if it ends up being a “no follow” link back to yoru page) – well …. here’s where find that specific comment, specific webpage that is relevent to what your own content is – and that’s the page you want to go after – and get the link from.  While there is still debate on the value of “no follow” links (see Duct Tape Marketing Social Media Profiles as Tools for Links and Traffic)

Radian6 could be very useful for SEO, using Social Media for backlinks, even when they are “no follow” links (which isn’t always the case, btw) – by helping the SEO person identify the right pages to the get the links from.

Getting back to another feature of Radian6 that I mentioned above, the you can add keywords to a list, and then use them for Topic Analysis or Topic Trends Widgets, where this process of adding keywords used to manual, for each widget (and painful) – here’s that this looks like.

To end this long, long post of mine – there’s  a lot to like about Radian6 and it seems to be getting better, and justifying the cost for many firms, as long as you use it as part of a strategy, and you know what your doing and want to accomplish.

Which gets me on my last point – the work it takes to reach out to people – to identify those individuals you want to reach out to.

One thing is becoming more and more obvious – and it can’t be ignored – that Radian6, or any tool with similar intentions – to identify information that is meaningful to your business or cause – has to be sifted through – processed, understood (by you) and responded to – and the Social CRM aspects that are being added with SalesForce and being confirmed, by WebTrends, certainly do help with the task of storing and structuring the data – they don’t really address the nagging question of … do I need to hire people to do this kind of work?

The answer is, Yes, and you need to pay them well.   Here’s why (one more “rant” of mine, before I sign off)

We know that all this “Social Media” content is now being created, much of it “worthless” but parts of it valuable – and as more people engage in Social Media – more and more content is created – at an ever increasing rate – we know we need to “engage ” with that data, but only a human mind can truly analyze it and intelligently respond, and even if we end up inventing positronic brains (like Data, in Star Trek, The Next Generation), we will never be able to replace the human element of what makes communication satisfying and neccessary.

Because we can now sift through the data – we need the right people to understand what to with it – how to build relationships from it – the tools are rapidly maturing – but the human element is atrophying in that, in many cases, we forget to make the effort to reach out and listen.

We need to have insight and wisdom in the use of these tools – experimentation, perhaps making some mistakes, breaking a few plates, so to speak – to learn valuable lessons on how to approach and engage people.   But having said that – you need to sift though this data, and it’s massive – and you need people, good people, great people, and the right strategy to do it.

That’s what I plan on focusing – perhaps the next incarnation of  ”me”, of Webmetricsguru, to be one of the people who figures that out, who “gets it”.

Social CRM is useless without Heart, Compassion and Understanding.

I just read Radian6 integrates Webtrends and Salesforce data in the WebTrends blog, and it reminded me that I wanted to write about Radian6 since I now have access, plus some new information directly from Radian6 today (see Slideshare, Press Release in this post and additional Flickr photos).

There was also a Webinar that took place today – The Rockstars of Social CRM, Hosted by Chris Brogan and Radian6

First,  it’s  kinda interesting this  idea of integration with Site Analytics data may well have come from me, a year ago, or so – when I first got to use Radian6 after meeting Marcel LeBrun in Toronto at the Social Media Roundtable.  After using Radian6 I told LeBrun and a few others at Radian6 that I wanted to use it in ways other than what it was designed for - and that I was frustrated with the interface -Radian6 looked like a product that should be able to do thing it could not do (yet).

I was told Radian6 was designed for PR and Communications people mainly; I replied that Web Analysts need it too – and why wasn’t he trying to sell it to us as well …….   Well, that was a year ago …. and looked what happened – the obvious.  What good is “Buzz” that Radian6 and similar products tracked about your Brand, site or product, if you can’t tie it back to the traffic that actually came to you site and did something?

Today, you can get that data out of Radian6, according to a press release just sent to me this evening by Warren Sukernek at Radian6 (who is also based in New York and whom I’ve met a few times, as recently as last week at a CRM Meetup (see Social CRM – Bantam @ NYC CRM Meetup)

Radian6 has now extended its platform to equip team members with deep social media listening and measurement capabilities within the tools they already use. With features developed on their platform API and Social Metrics Framework for integrating third-party data, Radian6 now supports the integration of social customer relationship management (CRM), web analytics, and other enterprise systems.

Social CRM

Customer expectations are shifting, and companies must address the changing needs of the new social customer.  With the proliferation of social networks and other online communities, customers are now more accessible than ever before, and companies are able to connect and provide a remarkable customer experience by listening to their customers and reaching out to them online.

Based on tremendous market demand from its existing and prospective enterprise customers, Radian6 has developed, and is today announcing the availability of the Radian6 and Salesforce.com Social CRM integration.

Notice the Salesforce.com icon in the Workflow view of a sample profile, below

These new Social CRM integrated capabilities empower your teams across the enterprise, with the following:

Sales teams are now equipped with significantly more relevant information about their customers through an integrated view of their customers’ online conversations combined with existing CRM activity history

Marketing teams can now meet prospects at their point of need, connecting much earlier in the buying process with real-time listening of online conversations, and reduce the overall cost of qualified leads

Customer service teams are now empowered to provide remarkable service by proactively responding to customers on their terms, equipped with an integrated view of their entire case and conversation history.

Community and social media teams are provided with context for their outreach and engagement efforts

Radian6 has worked with a variety of its valued enterprise customers, including Comcast, to help define its Social CRM strategy and product capabilities.

“Comcast has always viewed social media as an important communications channel for customers, similar to phone or email,” explains Frank Eliason, Comcast’s Director of Digital Care. “We’re excited to see tools that share this vision of customer service, and are looking forward to tapping Radian6′s integrated social CRM capabilities.”

Web Analytics Integration

Radian6 now brings together web and social media analytics, providing the richest combination of social and online metrics available to determine and articulate social media ROI.

Marketing, community, and social media teams can now map their word-of-mouth or social media initiatives directly to click-throughs and purchases on the website, and view their web activity and performance through the lens of social media. By integrating with WebTrends, Radian6 will enable users to leverage conversational web analytics and:

Calculate the ROI of your content marketing and outreach efforts by connecting the associated social media conversations to results in terms of website traffic, downloads, conversions or sales.

Measure the direct benefits of customer advocacy and quantify the value of engaging customers and influencers online

Compare which types of social media and communities are most effective in generating positive word-of-mouth, resulting in the desired actions on your website

“The Radian6 platform can now help businesses understand, on a global level, what kind of impact and resonance their social media content has online, how it’s driving website traffic and sales, and how their customer and prospect base behaves and grows as a result of social media,” says Lebrun. “Connecting the dots between web analytics, CRM, and social media measurement brings significant clarity and insight to an enterprise’s social media ROI equation.”

For more information about Radian6′s new capabilities and integrations or to request a demo, visit the Radian6 website at http://www.radian6.com.

Note – you still actually have to get the data in your WebTrends, SalesForce and Radian6 “hooked up” – it doesn’t happen by itself (for example, I’m in Radian6 right now, but I don’t see any of those features yet in any of my dashboards)- but, at least if you want those capabilities, Radian6 can tie WebTrends and Salesforce together, opening up some interesting possibilities, which I’ll cover in a minute, in my next post.   After all – if I put everything into one post – you’d not read the whole thing – that’s often what I do when I read some of the longer posts by some of my Web Analytics friends – I don’t want to read the chapter of a book as a blog post – if I want to read a book, I’ll buy one.

Anyway, to finish up this post, Marcel LeBrun, and team at Radian6, heard what I had to say, and what others had asked for, and clearly made a decision – they had to grow past being “Buzz Measurement” to really make a lot of money with the product – and sell it to groups within Corporations they never targeted.   Now, it’s seems obvious – but a year ago, its wasn’t – and I give them credit for forseeing, and listening.