Wouldn’t it be great to have the time to sit with each customer and just talk about your company and told you exactly how they felt about what they like, don’t like, and what they would spend endless amounts of money on, if only it was offered?  Well… believe it or not, through social media you can virtually hang out in their living rooms, home offices, or with the explosion of mobile devices, wherever they are the moment they decide to talk about you (without being creepy).

Social Media’s virility is alive and kicking, really hard.  The latest social media statistics continue to rise at the pace of our national debt and even the most resistant-to-change humans are being forced into adopting online tools to help stay connected with the rest of the world. 

What does this mean for you and your business?  Your company brand is an ever-changing location in the consumer’s mind that is affected by every touch.  A touch can be any means of interaction such as a billboard, a magazine ad, a phone call from one of your account executives, a nurturing email from your marketing department, comments made by your CEO in a press release, a Twitter post or a blog, etc. (the list goes on!).  

One of the most important and influential “touch” and branding opportunity is when one consumer talks to another. There is free software out there to help gain perspective on what people are saying to each other on a candid stage.  Others may tote the top 5 or 10, however I have yet to see anyone do it better than SocialMention.com.

SocialMention.com allows you to peruse brand mentions throughout the entire web universe or by select media, such as just blogs, or just twitter mentions.  SocialMention.com even estimates the Strength, Sentiment, Passion and Reach of each keyword.   Let’s look at how each of these metrics is determined.

• 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 the total possible mentions.
• Sentiment
  Sentiment is the ratio of mentions that are generally positive to those that are generally negative.
• Passion
  Passion is measure of the likelihood that individuals talking about your brand will do so repeatedly.  For example, if you have a small group of very passionate advocates who talk about your products or brand all the time, you will have a higher Passion score.  Conversely if every mention is written by a different author, you will have a lower score.
• 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.
  

For you PPC pros, Socialmention.com returns a list of top keywords within the mentions.  This is a potential treasure chest of which keywords you might be missing when selecting unbranded keywords.  For example, a search in Socialmention.com for Home Depot, returns “furniture” as one of your top keywords based on a comprehensive search.  This means Home Depot is either running an active campaign for furniture, and if not, maybe they should.

In addition, Socialmention.com is now equipped with a real-time buzz widget for your site or blog and an alert function.  Similar to Google Alerts, socialmention.com alerts delivers a summary email to you on a set, periodic basis. 

As I tested different methods and tools for searching brand mentions I did find a few blogposts and news sources that were not mentioned in socialmedia.com, but all-in-all the relevance and insight, for me, was much better.  Even if you survey your clients (which I highly recommend), there are some things they may not be willing to share with you.  Folding the use of Socialmedia.com into your business will help you keep track of what people are really saying about you and sustain your brand by acting on this insight and information.  Now go get some couch time with your customers and let me know what happens.