Establishing a Baseline and Comparing Historical Periods

Success, it is said, cannot truly be measured unless one knows where she or he has started from. This can also be applied to reputation management. If an initial search returns negative results, these results should be monitored alongside your efforts to mitigate these findings. Measuring the polarity of certain postings or search results will identify the sentiments expressed. By utilizing open source software tools like RapidSentilyzer BuzzBoard (www.rapid-i.com), which automatically collects the latest news about your company, your products, and/or your competitors, you can automate sentiment analysis on large collections of texts such as web pages, discussion groups, blogs, and real-time social media chatter on sites like Twitter for a very low cost.

Other sites like SocialMention.com assign a rating system to your query based on four key areas: strength, sentiment, passion, and reach (http://socialmention.com/faq):

Strength Strength is the likelihood that your brand is being discussed in social media. A very simple calculation is used: phrase mentions within the last 24 hours divided by total possible mentions.

Sentiment Sentiment is the ratio of mentions that are generally positive to those that are generally negative.

Passion Passion is a measure of the likelihood that individuals talking about your brand will do so repeatedly.

Reach Reach is a measure of the range of influence. It is the number of unique authors referencing your brand divided by the total number of mentions.

Using a tool like Social Mention on your name or a company name, you can track interesting results. A recent search for Jason Inasi and McGraw-Hill returned the data shown in Figures 16-3 and 16-4, respectively. You will notice that it is not complete or completely accurate. There is a lot of data to be pulled. This is why you need several additional tools, such as HowSociable and IceRocket, to get a complete picture. You will get different types of results on people versus companies versus key search terms. But if you are consistent over time and your Community Manager is actively engaged, you will be able to refine your results.

Figure 16-3 SocialMention.com results for Jason Inasi

Figure 16-4 SocialMention.com results for McGraw-Hill

By measuring your combined Social Mention score over time, you can determine the effects of your social media actions. This real-time litmus test also provides insight into trending negative sentiment and can assist in identifying any potential threats.