Q5. How are we doing against the other guys?

A thorough media measurement program must include a competitive monitoring and analysis dimension to track how a client's company, products and ideas are faring against the competition. This aspect of measurement requires an ongoing commitment to using actual human beings to scan, scrub and catalog the search results.

While there are a number of useful applications out there to help cull the Web and blogoshpere for relevant mentions of your client (I'm currently testing a very promising application from start-up Andiamo Systems), there is no substitute for trained human judgment to read and categorize coverage, evaluate messages and score content and tone.

Definitely use software to automate data collection for competitive intelligence, but you still have to rely on people to analyze and report, lest you sow the seeds of disappointment through sloppy data.

Comments

[kdpaine]

I think you are dead on. We have recently automated the ability to pull in data from YouTube which is fascinating, but until a human looks at it, and decides what impact it has on reputation or the conversations and what the ramifications are for the business, it's just pretty data. That's why we have all those human analysts on our staff in Berlin, NH.