Factiva Insight makes Improvements

Pulling together reports to measure changes in a marketplace is so difficult today, everyone is creating media, and it’s hard to separate the noise from the signal. I also know that the fastest way to get more budget for your programs (and maybe a raise) is to measure and show ROI.

I had a quick chat with Saurabh and Sallie over at Factiva Insight team, they’re making some real improvements with their product based upon my feedback as a customer when I was at my last position. I requested that their reporting allow the user to overlay additonal information and make notes, and they’ve done just that. I also requested they start pulling in more data from the ‘voices of the people’ (social media) and they’re increasing the size of the net to capture data.

It’s really a tool for a ‘power user’, someone with an analytical background and knows how to do queries, likely you love numbers, and they love you back. It’s more of a reporting and trend tool rather than a real-time alerts tool, but hey, that’s what Google Alerts, Technorati, and the feedreader is for.

One area I suggested to continue focus on was the mass videos that are going to be created by ustream, youtube, google video, viddler, blip and god-knows-what else. The problem with tracking video is that metadata is limited to the actual context of what’s happening in any video. People use ‘catchy’ video titles that often don’t reflect the content right in video. This will be a challenge.

The future? I predict that many social media tools will become integrated with mainstream media, (I’m sure you saw our announcement that PodTech and San Jose Mercury are working together) and the tools will cross over. The ‘conversation’ will take place on newspapers as it will on a personal blog.

If you’re the person responsible at a PR firm, or a corporation to measure campaigns (mainstream and social media) I recommend you at least take a look at their tools. There’s a ton of other firms in the space too, so don’t forget to shop around.

Talk Back:
What measurement and reporting tool are you using to track your campaigns, products and brand?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 9:14 am and is filed under Social Media Measurement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.