Spotter’s Blog 
Paul Brummitt,
Spotter,
Who influences your reputation?
Image attributes, opinions, criticism, where is my reputation at stake? Are conversations in Social media defining my brands reputation?
Paul is a media and linguistic expert, based in Copenhagen. He used to work for Factiva and has joined Spotter in 2010. As a Business Director Northern, Central & Eastern Europe, Paul develops Spotter’s activities of Media and Social Media Monitoring and Analysis.
“So you can really monitor traditional media as well?”
This was a comment I heard last week at the Technology for Marketing and Advertising show at Earl’s Court in London – from a surprised lady who had just asked me about social media monitoring.
Clearly, social media are at the top of the agenda these days. She wanted to know how we at Spotter could help with understanding her market by analysing what people blog, tweet, “Facebook” or whatever about her company’s products and services. Not to mention her competitors’.
She only wanted social media. No need for the printed press – not even online editions outside paywalls. No need for professional journalism at all, she said.
“Why only social media?” I asked. She thought for a while. If it hadn’t been for the buzz of marketing and advertising people all around us, you might have heard a pin drop. Should I put her out of her misery by asking another question, I wondered. But then it wasn’t a pin that dropped, but the proverbial penny.
“But I do want the comments,” she said. “Like the one on the Guardian’s Comment is Free”.
Aha. “So shall we just analyse the comments for you?” I asked.
Then we both thought for a moment. We’ve been monitoring and analysing the media for 12 years (imagine how old Mr Zuckerberg was back then) during which the phrase “information overload” has been leveraged on an exponentially-growing number of occasions. Have we reached the point where social media is all we want to check? Does a data dump of dumb data really help?
The lady in question decided it doesn’t and said she needed the traditional media too. She had come to the right stand because Spotter can analyse all forms of media – and the professional journalism of traditional media can’t be overlooked – especially as it can often be identified as the original source of all those tweets you’ve found.
Sentiment analysis, reputation management or crisis management – they all have one thing in common. They’re only any good with the right data sets and the right technology to help people to do the best analysis. It’s that human element that counts for us at Spotter.
Of course, the lady I mention is fictional. At any rate she’s not a single individual – she just represents a summary of the many comments we heard at the show. So let’s not forget that the reputations of our brands and products are not only at stake in social media. It’s not just what people say on twitter or forums, it’s what they read in on-line and printed media and what’s on radio and TV too, as the various forms of media all depend on each other.