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Four Tools to Assess Your Audience’s Online Usage
Last week, after we looked at the tools for online listening, I promised I would follow it up with tools to use in assessing the conversation.
Promise kept!
At the time, we discussed the five steps in social media we always recommend to new clients who are just beginning to branch out online, including listen, assess, engage, measure, and refine/improve.
We’re at the assess phase now, which means we need to look at where our customers and prospects are already participating online.
Remember, this not the Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will not come.
You need to figure out where your audience is participating in order to determine where you’re going to spend your time.
There are four tools you can use to begin to understand your audience’s online preferences. Some are free and some are paid. We’ll explore both.
- Fliptop. Fliptop is a tool that will let you upload email contacts from your computer, an email marketing platform, social media, or Salesforce. It will give you 100 free social profiles; anything beyond that is a paid option. It’s an easy way to test the software to see if it’s something you’d like to consider paying for and using. It returns demographics, title, company, all of the social platforms the person uses, and their Klout score.
- Qwerly. Qwerly is a little more sophisticated and should be used by someone who understands APIs and how to insert a key into your Web properties. This is a paid tool that takes the person’s name and location, and returns their bio, social networking profiles, usernames, and influence score (such as Klout).
- Gist. Gist is a tool you insert into your email server (such as Outlook or Gmail). Every time you email someone, it returns information such as their most recent blog post, what they’re reading, their shared photos, and their social networks
- Xobni. Xobni is the Batman of email. When installed in your email server, it returns so much information it’s almost scary. It gives you the social platforms, just like the other tools, but it also shows you which attachments you’ve exchanged with that person, what time they’re typically on email and responding, how many emails they’ve sent you or haven’t responded to, and more.The only thing we don’t like about Xobni is it takes up a lot of memory — and in Outlook it tends to crash frequently. But their customer service is excellent so, if you decide to use it and have problems, they’re readily available to help, even after hours and on weekends.
The difference between Fliptop and Qwerly vs. Gist and Xobni is the first two give you a snapshot of the people in your customer relationship management database, and the latter two give you access to the people you are emailing at that moment in time.
Both groups are useful in assessing where your audience participates online.
Once you have a good snapshot using one of the first two tools, you can begin to build your community where the majority of your customers and prospects are already participating.
Then you can use Gist or Xobni to enhance your community building as you proceed, which I’ll discuss in more detail next week when we talk about engaging the customers and prospects you find online.
Hi Gini, this is a very interesting blog, I always like to try and keep on top of the best tools to stay up to date with the target and this is very helpful. One line that I love in this blog is "Remember, this not the Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will not come." This is a healthy reminder to us all that we have to do a lot of work on our own to make sure we get the return we're looking for.
Are Flipflops the same as thongs? Just askin'...
ginidietrichKDillabough Would you call them that now? ;)
rustyspeidelginidietrich I still call them thongs. Gets me a better reaction:)
ginidietrichKDillabough Somebody say thongs ? Where ? Not Bill, I hope. Dayum.
ginidietrichAl SmithKDillabough Proudly......for the record, I think I would be more comfortable streaking than wearing a speedo.........just sayin'...........my kids wouldn't even let me wear running shorts because they thought I'd embarrass them..........
bdorman264ginidietrichAl Smith I will buy tickets to the streaking thong-wearing event.
KDillaboughbdorman264ginidietrichAl Smith we call them "japanese" if we are talking about shoes here :P
Brankica And people are being called politically incorrect because they're saying it's Indian Summer. Let's not even start on Japanese (shoes).
ginidietrich Oh I got more of those expressions, I am just waiting for the perfect time to shoot them out :P
Another great cut-&-paste-into-Word post Gini. Bravo.
Great review of some interesting tools and what I like is that you don't try and push a particular solution. In most cases, it takes a variety of different approaches to reach an end goal.
Collectual That's what I've found - using a combination of tools usually gets you the data you need to make an informed decision.
Good stuff, G. Very good.
rustyspeidel Um, you still owe us an answer on what kind of funny I am. jennwhinnem and I are dying to know.
ginidietrichjennwhinnem Um...edgier funny than i expected. More R than PG funny. It's very encouraging. Soon you'll be over in my area!
This info is a long way outside my job spec/knowledge bank/pay grade/all of the above - so should not really be commenting.........
But...
Batman of email!! - incredible concept - and too much for my brain to handle. Going to lie down in a dark, damp cave.
ginidietrich OK - I will work this out.... If Batman is the King of Email, then the Batmobile must be ...... like...... Macbook Pro??
The Joker must surely be played by Twitter.
Cue head explosion.... If you want to make an Online Omelette - you have to break some eggs....
ginidietrich show me someone who doesn't like omelettes and I will show you a chicken!
Nic_Cartwright Watch out for the guano.
Nic_Cartwright I will be joining you
KDillabough does that mean you are Robin>????
KDillabough have I just given away your secret identity????
Nic_CartwrightKDillabough Tim Drake, Jason Todd or Dick Grayson as Robin? Sorry, end of my comic book nerdiness. :)
jasonkonopinskiKDillabough Grayson for me...
Nic_Cartwright Shhh, we were supposed to keep that under our bat capes:)
Nic_Cartwrightjasonkonopinski Dick Grayson for sure.
Nic_Cartwrightjasonkonopinski Forgot to mention Nic ~ I'm a former Olympic level coach (1984 Olympics, gold medal in Rhythmic Gymnastics - I did TV colour commentary at those Games), so interested in checking out your blog
KDillaboughjasonkonopinski Wow (re 1984). I have a friend who competed in Rhythmic G for Austria - just spent 2 months in Australia having her teach me Yoga etc - strength!!!!
Just finding my feet blogging wise - but love the Sport business.... and there is always lots to write about!!!
See you back at the cave.
Nic_Cartwrightjasonkonopinski I've got a photo of a batmobile that someone created here in Ontario. I'll have to post it sometime to show you. It's amazing. See you back at the bat cave:)
KDillaboughjasonkonopinski nice. Bizzarrely I have a picture of my dog Wolverine (with her cousin Dutch) dressed up as Batman and the Joker. Probably best (for my hard won professional image) if I keep those photos off line.....
Nic_Cartwrightjasonkonopinski Oh no, you must post! mwahahahahaha
KDillaboughjasonkonopinski I just posted to your Twitter feed (not certain how I link it all to here!). ON review - it (the photo) was more about the Joker. As ever - Batman is lurking in the background..>!!!!!
Nic_Cartwrightjasonkonopinski :))))) Now, how did you do that? I haven't a clue as to how to post a photo to twitter:(
KDillabough there's a little camera icon under the input box in Twitter. Click that and away you go..!!
Nic_Cartwright Well aren't I as thick as a brick? Thanks Nic! (and a poet too, haha!) Cheers from Kaarina (or in our case, AKA Robin:)
I love when you write posts that apply to exactly what I need at the time! Yayyyy
ginidietrich YES! I think my brain must be an amusing place to live. Haha!
Thanks for more useful info. again this week. but you told me I was going to laugh my ass off at this post. You must have meant the dwarf tossing/Betty White comment blog. Now THAT, was funny. Oh yeah, did you see the game last night ? Who won ? Luv ya.
Al
ginidietrich Ok. Hang in there. Hey, I am a life long Dolphins fan. Its gonna be a LONG year. I need others to share my pain. Sorry.
It's quite impressive the power of these tools. Also a bit scary to know that someone can have so much information on you and can use this information to influence your decision making patterns. The one feature that I like best (Xobni) is the time people generally respond to their emails ... this gives you so much information on when to canvass these users on any given subject.
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