the blog

Social media monitoring can help you get creative with your day-to-day work, especially if you have tons of searches at your disposal.

If you’re using a monitoring and analytics platform or just saving Twitter search results, here are five ways social media data can help you become a more creative worker…

Document alternative case studies
Monitoring a brand or topic outside of your field can help identify how others WIN or FAIL with their social media strategies and bring alternative approaches to your own strategies.

Gain super-fresh insights
Digging into your social media search data firsthand can furnish new, outside perspectives and original content in the context of real conversations.

Generate more meaningful content
By listening effectively, you can let qualitative data (consumer interests, trending topics, retweeted news etc.) inform your content strategy.

Attain crazy awesome agility
Whether you’re a project manager, strategist, copy writer or designer, incorporating real-time social media data into your process keeps you on your toes.

Keep from becoming a robot
Social media data can serve as a constant reminder that you’re communicating ideas and messages to real people. Beware the consequences.

Any other bonuses you’ve gleaned from working with social media data or monitoring platforms? Holla in the comments.

Image via thetruthabout

Will the McRib unseat turkey as the entree of choice for America’s special day? Not likely. According to raw mentions on social media, it looks as though America’s favorite flightless holiday bird is still on top.

McRib garnered a hearty 11,530 mentions over the past weekend, while Turkey and Thanksgiving tallied a whopping 19,116 mentions. Tofurkey (316 mentions of “Tofurkey” and “Thanksgiving”) still has some work to do.

We’ve created a some dashboards so you can keep tabs on the chatter around some of your favorite turkey (and non-turkey) related topics this Thanksgiving season:

• Turkey + Thanksgiving
• Fried + Turkey + Thanksgiving
• Tofurkey + Thanksgiving
• Turkey + Brine
• Giblets
• and, of course, McRib

Looxii Reports are a regular feature that investigate Social Media Analytics anomalies, oddities or general points of interest. Suggestions for topics are welcome, just submit them to Adam at Looxii.
In the 1990s America was hungry for many things and quality food made fast was one of them. When that hunger drove to the intersection of country music and succulent, slow-roasted chicken it found one thing: Kenny Rogers Roasters. To many the combination of country music legend and mouthwatering meats and side dishes made perfect sense, to others it was strange and frightening. Unlike the hardened puck of cornbread served with every meal, the chain itself had a short shelf-life (in America).
Due to a series of post-bankruptcy ownership changes and liquidation events, the Gambler has returned to the table with a large stack of chips and a winning hand. Thousands of diners in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines happily consume black pepper chicken meals, delicious baby-back ribs and sides of mashed potatoes under the caring, bearded gaze of Kenny Rogers. Today Social Media tells the tale of Kenny Rogers Roasters’ success in Southeast Asia through Tweeted Foursquare check-ins, Facebook statuses and YouTube videos.

The Month in Social Media for Kenny Rogers Roasters (PDF)
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We’ve been tracking Christopher Walken after catching his interpretation of Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face.” Ooo. Ooo. Ooo. Most Walken mentions were inexorably linked with said performance over the past weekend.

Unfortunately we had to move Looxii corporate HQ over the weekend, so we aren’t able to deliver a lovely, formal report, but we’re making available to you, dear Looxii blog reader, 3,571 Christopher Walken mentions (CSV) to do with as you please.

sweet DIY Walken mask from Flickr user 404 Not Found.

At Looxii the office dogs nearly out number the human employees, but until they learn how to blog or master accounting basics we’re stuck doing it all. It’s the nature of the startup, we have a colorful variety of tasks to attend to everyday.

Flexibility and Inter-Department Communication

While this environment requires each employee to perform multiple duties, it also gives us the advantage of quick, flexible product development that is directly influenced by customer service. While creating the next product update, or pushing out bug fixes we can immediately take into account user issues and needs. Although your business may not have a similar startup environment, good communication enables flexibility and better customer service. This may seem like standard operating procedure for many businesses, but often getting information to the correct department, and getting that department to take action on it, can be costly in both time and resources.
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Semantic searches can get a little tricky. We misspell things (we’re not perfect!), we create nicknames and abbreviations, we have rhetorical devices like metonymy and metaphor… why should we be constrained to just one keyword? What if you want to search for your brand’s mentions and your brand’s twitter handle?

Introducing (the implementation of) OR. Now you can search for multiple terms that relate to your keyword search. Just separate your keywords by or and all of the search results will live in the same place. Simple.

Last week we brought you coverage, of sorts, of David Hasselhoff’s roast. It was a momentous occasion, garnering over 25,000 mentions on August 15th and 16th. Hoff mentions have returned to pre-roast numbers just one week after the event (please see graph below – Hasselhoff/The Hoff mentions, 8/13-8/23).

What’s a Hoff to do? Would mentions be higher if there was a Hoff-brand social media campaign in place? How would you make the most of a major event with social media? Imagine how many t-shirts and DVDs could be sold in the wake of such buzz!

I made this pointed tweet this morning. Well, it wasn’t really pointed, just an observation: I’ve witnessed a lot of construction in my neighborhood with no increase in actual neighbors. It’s weird.

Moments later I was retweeted by @PEretired. One click later I was on PEretired’s blog, which comprehensively documents flaws (some minor, some very serious) in Pulte construction.

I immediately created a Looxii keyword search for “Pulte.” The majority of search results were innocuous real estate listings or bland corporate propaganda. There were some interesting gems though, including my tweet and PEretired’s RT. (more…)

Looxii Reports are a regular feature that investigate Social Media Analytics anomalies, oddities or general points of interest. Suggestions for topics are welcome, just submit them to adam[at]looxii.comThis past Sunday was big for both Bacon and David Hasselhoff, one was fried repeatedly, the other roasted publicly. Is there any real value in pitting my favorite magical food against my favorite magical actor? Yes, well, maybe. Regardless, here is your Social Media Showdown: Bacon v. the Hoff for August 15, 2010.

Methodology
Searching for “Bacon” I excluded the terms “Francis” and “Kevin” to cut down on non-food related mentions. For David Hasselhoff I combined the results for searches on “Hasselhoff” and “the Hoff.”

Conculsion
Bacon wins for sheer volume and total number of mentions. Regardless, it must be said that in a world where both Bacon and the Hoff exist, we’re all winners.

Social Media Showdown, 8/15: Bacon vs. the Hoff (PDF)

Bacon photo taken from Flickr user Yogma, The Hoff photo from Flickr user Hot Rod Homepage