Blog

It’s been a big year for Scout Labs, and it’s only March. With a big release behind us, we are already working on new features and welcoming new clients. What’s more, we’re heading to Austin, TX for SXSWi. We are practicing what we preach and going where the technology and social media conversations are already taking place, and, in March, that is South by Southwest.

A few of us “Scouts” will be in Austin for SXSWi. You won’t find us manning a booth or hosting any big events, but we want to meet you, so please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Whether you’re interested in a demo or getting your burning questions answered, here’s who you need to meet, tweet and greet:

Erin @erinkoro

Julie @superlativelady

Laura @laurascout

Liza @lizasperling

Margaret @margaretfrancis

And of course, don’t forget about @scoutlabs

We look forward to celebrating the ideas, technology and PEOPLE that make this industry what it is. See you in Austin - Scout’s honor.

Photo courtesy of alicenwondrlnd under the Creative Commons License

Looking to brush up your skills on search creation, metrics reporting or how to use the newest features in Scout Labs? We’ve got a webinar for you!

We’re announcing four new webinars we’re running each week through March. We’re keeping them small and intimate, so you’ll have the opportunity during the webinar to work one on one with the Scout Labs team to learn tips, tricks and get your burning questions answered. Space is extremely limited so sign up now!

Search Creation Fundamentals Webinar
Mondays 3/8, 3/15, 3/22, 3/29
1:00 - 2:00 pm PST

Creating the proper searches is the cornerstone of social media listening. Search is more than just inputing your company name. In this webinar you’ll learn how to set up your workspace to search for industry trends, competitors, campaigns and uncover the desires, wishes and likes of your customers.

Metrics and Reporting Fundamentals Webinar
Tuesdays 3/9, 3/16, 3/23, 3/30
1:00 - 2:00 pm PST

Uncover quick and easy tips for how to get the most out of Scout Labs reporting features. Learn how to create customized graphs, export data and set up weekly email alerts.

Assignments and Saved Items Webinar
Wednesdays 3/3, 3/10, 3/17, 3/24
1:00 - 2:00 pm PST

Two of the most exciting new features in Scout Labs, Assignment and Saved Items, are critical to organizing your team around social media listening and outreach. Learn how to use these features and see real live examples from some of the world’s biggest brands.

Configuration, Customization and Co-branding
Thursdays 3/11, 3/04, 3/18, 3/25
1:00 - 2:00 pm PST

Agencies, this is for you. If you need to brand a Scout Labs workspace for your clients or create multiple workspaces under one account you’ll learn how easy that is.

And as always, every Tuesday and Thursday at 11am PST we will continue to run our Live Demo. Get an overview of Scout Labs and see how to start your own social media listenting campaign. Sign up here.

We do ask that you register for these events, so to ensure your space, please sign up!

For those of you that are simply interested in getting a better idea of what Scout Labs is, and would like to see it live before making the choice to sign up, we are offering a daily demo (roughly 30 minutes), at 11:00am PST Tuesdays and Thursdays.

During each session, you will get the back story of what Scout Labs is all about; What we do and how we do it, and also a demonstration of the application.

We believe that Scout Labs is so easy to use, that anyone can dive in and start using the app, without our help. Usually, that is the case. But we’ve also heard that people really benefit from a product walk through where they can see the big picture. During the demo, we’ll address questions like: How are different businesses using Scout Labs? What are the core functionalities? and How is Scout Labs different from other applications out there?

Anybody can join a session - prospective or existing customers. Please register here for the Scout Labs Live Demo - there are sessions scheduled every Tuesday and Thursday so that you can chose which day works best for you.

More importantly, we THANK YOU for your interest in Scout Labs - and look forward to getting to know you too.

Last Thursday I spoke on a panel at BlogWorldExpo (#bwe09) entitled “Social Secure-ity: Managing Your Brand’s Online Reputation.” Audience questions drove the discussion; I managed to jot down some of the audience questions/ panelist responses and have compiled them below. In my role at Scout Labs, I have seen a wide range of corporate responses to these questions, as I’m sure had the other panel participants- Connie Bensen of Techrigy, Amber Naslund http://altitudebranding.com/ of Radian6, Melyssa Plunkett-Gomez of Crimson Hexagon, and Aubrey Podolsky of Sysomos.

Thinking back on it later in the day, a lot of this advice just isn’t useful with some resources and corporate commitment to social media- and from the tone of many of the questions, resources and commitment are still an issue. There’s no doubt that social media is here to stay whether or not companies want to “formulate a response.” The real question is which companies are going to recognize that better understanding their customers through social media is a source of competitive advantage- whether they decide to turn Twitter into a customer service channel or not.

From a travel industry representative from Las Vegas: How should we deal with negative criticism? How should we respond to it?

• There will always be negative criticism. Develop a framework for what you need to respond to from a business perspective, and try not the take the rest too personally.


• There are trolls and there are people with genuine issues. You can’t please the trolls, so don’t try.


• Your social media presence can and should be about more than damage control to the brand.


• Let the community respond on your behalf.


• Get ahead of the negative criticism- change the business so that consumers aren’t complaining!

David Spinks, a community manager, asked about the importance of responding to content on sidewiki:

• The sources of feedback are multiplying and will continue to do so. Very few brand manager have the time to respond to every single last comment anyone has ever made on any platform. If Sidewiki gets more traction in the market, vendors like the ones on the panel will eventually help marketers figure out how to track and respond to it. Right now it’s a small blip on a crowded radar screen.

• Having a social media presence can help humanize the brand or the industry, and demystify what it is that hedge funds do for the economy


• Whose opinion are you trying to influence, and why? Make sure you know and have the resources to follow through before you set your social media strategy- there are some inconsistent, useless attempts at building a community out there, and they’re not helping the brands they represent


• If you do something for your community that does not directly serve your own interest- for instance publishing free analyst repots- it build brand goodwill


• If they care enough to hate you, they may care enough to love you. There are things the company does that would help them to love you. Make people aware of them.

• Reframe the conversation through competitive analyses- what do people love or hate about your competitors? It’s myopic to only focus on the negative posts about your own brand


• Another way to reframe is to focus on the positive- what is it that customers like about the brand? What strengths can the brand build on? This is the long term strategic response to negative feedback- not just a crisis communications plan

• Have a policy in place helps guide employee behavior- and know that there will still be problems. Be prepared to deal with them as decisively as any other personnel problem


• Employees are trusted to have email addresses and phones- they are already representing the company. Employee behavior is a hiring and training issue, not a social media issue. If an employee can’t be trusted, they can’t be trusted


• Employee trust is an enormous issue for every organization. Social media is forcing massive organizational changes on companies, ones that are really challenging for managers and employees. This is a big change for everyone involved and training is crucial.

• Monitoring customer satisfaction/ ability to meet corporate requirements is already a part of franchising. Extending that to social media will become a corporate function.

I found it encouraging that there were a fair number of B2B marketers at the session- leveraging social media is just as crucial for them as it is for the B2C brands, if not more so, and they rarely get the same level of media love.

Some other memorable sessions at BlogWorldExpo were the ROI smackdown- very smart thinking and good examples from Deb Micek, Rob Kay, Beth Harte, and Stephanie Agresta- and the Real Time Web session from the ever thoughtful Louis Grey. The sessions were all taped and will theoretically available online at the conference site but I don’t see the links up yet. Much thanks to Jason Falls for organizing.

No one within range of a TV, radio or computer could have missed seeing recent news about last week’s vicious paramilitary attacks on civilians throughout Mumbai. There was a great deal of footage from the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, which as one of Mumbai’s flagship luxury hotels was targeted for attack as a symbol of India’s amicable relationship with the modern (and Western) world. I took a look at the most frequent words appearing in a Taj Hotels search today and found:

• Terrorists
• Hostages
• Attacks
• Police
• Armed
• Killed
• Gunmen
• Fire
• Dead

How sad. The top words pre-attack were:

• India
• Indian
• Luxury
• Mumbai
• Hotel
• Business
• Guests
• Palace
• New

Taj Hotels has put up a special site with press releases, contacts, and help for guests- phone numbers to call, a procedure for retrieving bags, priority service for getting back passports. There are also denials of employee involvement, blustery statements about rebuilding, and promises to take care of employees who were injured in the attack or are out of work as a result of it. No one could reasonably have expected to defend a bustling luxury hotel in a peaceful civil society from a full scale military attack. Nevertheless the Taj group is going to have to spend a lot of time and money dealing with the impact to the operations and to their brand.

I wonder if they realize that one of the best ways for them to acknowledge and cope with this tragedy are to let their affected guests, employees, and employee’s families testify as to what went on in the hotel during the attack — and how the Taj Group handled them afterwards. If they can exemplify the values of compassion, service, and dignity, this tragedy need not be the swansong for this landmark hotel.

Photo by rantfoil.

Hello, it’s Mathieu here, from France. I’ve been doing an internship with Scout Labs since January, and it’s exciting to be contributing to this very cool application. I’ve taken advantage of my time here by attending all sorts of hi-tech and entrepreneurship events happening here in sunny California.

I attended Startup School 2008 at Stanford University this past weekend. Startup school is an annual free conference organized by Y Combinator and BASES for hackers interested in creating their own startups. One of the most interesting and entertaining talks of the day was from David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby On Rails and founder of 37signals.

The most interesting advice he gave us was about how to make money online: Have a great product and define the right price for it. It’s interesting because it can be very hard to define the price of your great product, especially when it is sold as a service like a lot of software now (and like Scout Labs). You can fail at pricing your product correctly, and this is what happened to 37signals.

David told us that Backpack, one their applications, has been really successful (they doubled their revenues) in the last 2 months after they re-launched the application. They basically raised the price and changed their marketing message to target the long tail of businesses, what he calls the Fortune 5,000,000. You don’t have to aim at the Fortune 500, you don’t have to aim at the general consumer. There is a large and profitable market in the often-neglected long-tail, and software-as-a-service companies like Scout Labs are poised to capitalize on that opportunity.

You can find David’s talk below. All the videos from Startup School 08 are available on Omnisio.