Giles Palmer from Brandwatch explains what one of the UK's leading social monitoring solutions does for it's clients and how even large volumes of data can be processed by human intervention.

2. What is Brandwatch? Brandwatch is a monitoring system adds structure to the Social Web by GATHERING DATA, PROCESSING it automatically to produce meaningful metrics for ANALYSIS GATHER ANALYZE 3 . 1 PROCESS 2

4. Get machines to do some work

5. Nice data, but no context

6. Fit it into the organisation

7. Categorise and Engage Positive Review Product Comparison Price Negative Review Customer Service Technical “ Which PC shall I buy from Currys and why? ” “ I was told that it is done so that retailers don't have to price match. naughty retailers!! ” “ This goes to show that Currys couldn't care less about customers ” “ Will Currys drop their price on this? ” “ Currys - fridge/freezer broken after 15 months ” “ looking around the Currys and Curry's website and reading reviews left by purchasers I opted to buy the Panasonic NN-A554W from Currys ” “ if you order online and collect in store you can save…” “ You need to contact XXX and then we can send someone round to have a look at it” “ We’re sorry to hear about that, if you let me know more details we will investigate further” “ It depends what you are using it for, the Acer is better for…”

8. Some numbers For one client, in a 6 month period Number of posts tracked ~100,000 Client alerted to 4,500 Actual engagements <2% Number of increased views 1,250k Increase in positive tonality 11% Decrease in negative tonality 25% ROI significant