A Few Questions to Michelle Chmielewski, Community Manager with Synthesio (Social Media Monitoring Solution)

I had the pleasure to catch up with Michelle Chmielewski who's been doing community management with Synthesio for 9 months now. Synthesio provides online real-time monitoring solution in over 30 languages and typically compete with solutions like Radian6, Techrigy SM2,...In case you don't know her yet, Michelle is a very talented social media enthusiast always on the lookout for the next trend in social media monitoring (Follow her @MiChmski and @Synthesio). She has a background in both Marketing and Anthropology which gives her a unique one-to-one approach on Twitter and blogs. She recently started her own blog at The Observing Participant.

Why did Synthesio hire a community Manager, and what is your role within the organization ?

After being in business for almost 3 years, Synthesio’s co-founders, Loic Moisand and Thibault Hanin, were ready to increase the company’s level of communication and involvement in social media. We monitored social and traditional media online for other companies, but had not yet become involved, ourselves, in managing this sector of operations. It was time for us to build and take care of our online reputation.

As community manager, my role is mainly to:
- coordinate external communication via our blog, videos, and Twitter
- find prospective clients internationally via social media and provide US demonstrations for prospective clients in the US
- answer questions, comments, and concerns about Synthesio and/or online reputation management
- report the latest social media news back to the Synthesio team
- and soon we will also be launching our Agency community, which I will be in charge of animating

Can you tell us how SynthesioRank and SRank@PostLevel work in detail ?

SynthesioRank is our way of giving a score of influence to each site in our index. We take into account:
- a site’s audience (via Nielsen data)
- the type of site
- the volume and frequency of publications
- the number of inbound and outbound links
- a site’s Google PageRank

The ranking is set along a bell curve, meaning that the majority of sites will receive a SynthesioRank score between 4 and 6. This allows our clients to immediately see the influence level of a particular site, which may influence their choice of interaction. If it is an influential blog, for example, they may choose to leave a lengthy comment, whereas if it is a forum of little influence, they may or may not choose to comment.

SRank@PostLevel is the level of influence of each individual comment made online that is indexed in real time. This means that the score of influence changes in real time as more people view and share a given article. We calculate it using:
- Type of post: direct communication with the brand (dedicated post) or conversational comment (simple mention)
- Impact of post: number of times an article has been republished (in the case of a press article online) or number of comments (in the case of a blog post) or number of responses (in the case of a forum thread)

Do you have an international client success story using Synthesio to share with us ?
One company we have enjoyed working with very much is Accor hotels, with which we partnered to create our Hospitality tool, especially designed for hotel chains and hospitality professionals. Although I am not at liberty to discuss specific details, we monitor sites like TripAdvisor, Expedia, etc. to provide them with comparisons of all of their hotels, in terms of volume of online buzz and sentiment.
We analyzed and compared individual topics important to this sector, such as pre-arrival conditionals, arrival, the guest rooms, food and beverage services, activities available, and departure conditions, and provided them with detailed analyses for each area of service.

How would you define online reputation ?

Online reputation is like your favorite childhood toy that you have been forced to share with everyone on the playground. Some may choose to kick the toy, others may pick it up and play with it only to leave it behind soon thereafter, others may love it and show it to others, while still others may simply just ignore it. In any case, your online reputation is no longer in the hands of a company or business owner. It belongs to anyone that may comment about it, share information about it, defame it, or praise it.

Freedom of the press ? This is the era of freedom of the Internet.

Why have you decided to start using more video to build brand awareness ?

We felt that video would be a great way to interact with our clients as well as spread the word about social media monitoring. Most of the information about online reputation management and monitoring is textual, but a well-done video can be both informative and entertaining. Our scope is B2B, but business owners are people, too – they enjoy videos, too !

Check out Synthesio's youtube channel.

In France, Internet is now the most informative source for purchase decision (Emarketer, July 09). What does it means for companies in terms of marketing strategy?

It means that companies need to be more present of their online image than ever before. Consumers are trusting opinions of people online more than they are from the “traditional” media sources, and companies need to be aware of what is being said about them.

According to the latest Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey (more than 25,000 Internet consumers in 50 countries surveyed), 70% of consumers surveyed have some degree of trust in other consumers’ opinions, but brand websites are apparently also trusted, giving brands courage for their advertising future.

44% of consumers have abandoned purchasing a product after reading a negative online review (according to IPSOS, 2006)
- 36% rely on social media for buying decisions (according to Newswire.ca).

In terms of marketing strategy:
First, they need to listen. Who is talking about their company? Their products/services? Their brand? Their competitors? Their key people?
Second, they need to analyze the buzz. Is it positive? Negative? Inexistent?
Third, they need to engage with consumers in a way that fits with their integrated marketing communication strategy. Some respond to consumers directly where they find them (on blogs, forums, etc); others create spaces to foster brand discussions (forums, wikis, etc); yet others identify their brand advocates and detractors and focus their attention on them.

How was the first 'Monitoring Social Media 09' conference in London ?

The Monitoring Social Media ’09 conference was a great opportunity for us to meet with other key players in the social media sphere and meet with prospective clients and partners. We are always looking for partners in agencies that can use Synthesio to improve their online reputation management services and have developed a platform specifically for them called Agency!

Would you recommend us 4-5 people to follow on Twitter ?

Limiting it to 4-5 is difficult; here goes:
@MackCollier and @markwschaefer for social media and marketing advice
@gilliatt for all social media monitoring queries
@thebrandbuilder for marketing in English, from a French guy
@CaddEReputation a true online documentalist and investigator

(Bonus 6th person: @opinionwatch!)