We often get asked by our clients, “how can you measure the value and success of social media?” There are many tools that can track social conversations, capture data around who’s driving these conversations and measure the conversation’s influence. However, it can be a challenge to understand how this information is impacting an organization (i.e. brand perception, sentiment of customers and prospects, and thought leadership in the market).

I recently had the opportunity to test out two new solutions called MAP and Heartbeat from Sysomos, a provider of social media analytics which was recently acquired by Market Wire, a newswire service. Of all the products I’ve seen, MAP and Heartbeat are much more than social media monitoring tools.  The solutions provide automated sentiment, key influencer tracking, geo-demographic information and access to real-time and historical social media conversations to help communicators and organizations understand and leverage social media in way that provides business value to the organization.

Sysomos is being used by some of the largest PR agencies and companies in the world such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson and HSBC. According to Sysomos’ website, MAP and Heartbeat’s key features and functionality include:

• Access to billions of social media conversations, both real-time and historical, that provide insight into the key social media conversations, why they’re happening and who’s driving them.
• Identification of key influencers by industry or demographic group, and the ability to engage them on-the-fly through access to Twitter, Facebook and blogs.
• Automated sentiment analysis to determine whether the relevant conversations are positive, negative or neutral.
• Detailed geographic and demographic data about social media participants and the conversations they’re having, including their age, gender and profession.
• Tools for in-depth research, historical analysis and the preparation of value-added reports.

In a recent press release from Market Wire, Brian Solis, principal of FutureWorks and social media expert said, “The future of marketing and communications is built upon data and intelligence. For the first time, the ability to not only learn how we can engage with communities of influencers, consumers, and prospects, but also measure the results in real-time will transform everything.”

One of the things I liked best about these solutions is that you can leverage data and analytics to determine whether or not a social media campaign is on track to be successful. Access to this type of data could enable communicators to shift aspects of a campaign if it’s not making traction. Additionally, you can use these solutions to gain insight into your organization’s brand perception or that of its competitors. This type of business intelligence can be highly valuable to an organization, offering the ability to identify and build relationships with key influencers, gain insight into brand perception and engage in conversations around your brand.

We’re currently trialing MAP and Heartbeat and will keep you posted on our thoughts. To see Heartbeat in action, check out this YouTube video.