The key to monetisation of information is having a relationship with the Social Media community.

Journalists of traditional media are not used to relating to their readers. In fact, the biggest relationship that a traditional media has with its readers is in the Letters to the Editor section, in which a select few receive a reply and see their letters published. But in general, writers don’t even participate in the comments that many electronic editions include with their most relevant news items. That’s right, they don’t even converse with their users. At most they moderate the most inappropriate comments, and on occasion it isn’t even the author of the article who does this. They simply turn their backs to the community, to their readers.

The reasoning is very often that as there are so many, let’s not bother with any. However, the reasoning should be different: Let’s participate with as many as we can. It’s not about arguing a point, but rather highlighting the parts of an article that form part of the conversation, correcting details that may be inexact. And more.

Because the journalists should build a community. If they write about International news in the Middle East, they should actively participate with the community that is normally interested in this kind of news. If they write about Technology, they’d gain a lot more by participating in blogs and Tweeting with users who write about the same subject they’ve just written about, whether or not it’s their news item.

That way, when they write a news item, they would receive links, comments and mentions in Social Media… They’d have much more of a presence in the community. They would have contributed to it and would therefore receive attention from it.

More profitability with each news item. Better sources for future articles.

The benefits to this kind of an attitude are many. The social utilities, blogs and twitter all regard them highly. The shelf life and profitability of news items, increase. And it’s exponential. Because links are gained, positioning is improved both for the media as a whole as for the news item itself, and page visits are increased and with them the income from CPC and CPM adverts.

But you also gain access to new sources, to sources which acquire news items in a parallel way, sometimes unofficially. Sometimes they are reliable, sometimes they aren’t. But that’s the same as life on the street, circles of trust are created. And the informative quality of the media can be improved.

That means adapting to the Internet.

How can you do this?

We have created Noteca. It is a tool designed to Monitor and enable participation in blogs and on Twitter. I think it would be perfect for any communication medium aiming to become profitable on the Internet. It allows a group to organise its conversations, optimise the time and effort dedicated to such conversations and build relationships easily. My advice is that if you think it might be of interest to you, try it out for yourself.

An important difference between blogs and electronic newspapers is the focus on the news item’s shelf life. For traditional media, the web version is an extension of the traditional magazine or newspaper. For that reason, when a certain period of time has passed, the news items are no longer relevant or useful.

Bloggers have a completely different point of view. Information is always information, and you never know when you will need it until the moment you run to Google in search of an answer. That’s why the posts from the most professional blogs are designed around SEO, or search engine optimisation. Every single detail is optimized for search engines, without forgetting about the content for the users. The keywords appear in the title of the page, in the title of the post, sometimes also in the categories in which it is classified and internally linked to the news item, and of course in the content.

Generally traditional media only worry about the readers. They don’t consider that the news item may be useful to users in several months, or even several years time. They don’t even think that the news item may be important for themselves. And they don’t think about the optimisation of their articles for search engines, they don’t consider the internal linking of content, they don’t facilitate crawler access to their news items. They don’t realize that value isn’t only found as in a “Newspaper archive” but rather through “Sky-divers” – users who are looking for something and land on your page. This jewel, as well as increasing the pages visited, a lot of the  income of electronic editions is generated by CPM (the cost of advertising per thousand copies of a banner), also increases the possibilities that users in “Search mode” stumble across the information they are looking for in one of the adverts Google proposes in its Ad Sense. An essential method of monetization in blogs that is hardly used in traditional daily newspapers. The value of a Banner is much higher in a “fresh off the rack” news item than in a two year old one that is for sure. However, the value of a “Sponsored Result” from Ad Sense grows as the news “goes stale” because it means that more users reach it when looking for information, and for that reason they will be more sensitive to information provided by the CPC (cost per click) adverts.

The value of a news item increases in Social Media

Once a news item is created on the Internet, it becomes an asset for the company. Exploiting it well, maximising the income it generates, is part of the key. And to do this it is necessary to increase its shelf life. The way to achieve this, other than applying basic SEO knowledge at the time of writing the article and linking it, is to gain external links. And not just links: Twitter mentions, links in Del.icio.us, YouTube videos etc. These generate more links, more mentions, more visits, more readers, more influence. Did I say influence? I think I need to repeat that: Influence: Exactly what is being lost year after year due to the Internet. Fair enough, but that doesn’t mean it’s irreversible. It just needs another way of looking at what the editor’s job should be. The key is having a relationship with the community which in turn will lead to better news, as will be explained in the next post.

A few days ago we discussed the need (or lack of need) of introducing e-mail notifications. It sounds good at first. The user could, for example, decide if he/she wants to receive a daily or weekly e-mail notification with, for example, a summary of all the New Mentions received, or maybe only the most relevant ones. And then we asked ourselves: are those kinds of e-mail notifications really necessary? In my experience, a considerable amount of e-mails I receive on a daily basis are simply not opened. And that’s not because they are junk mail. They are short e-mails which inform me about small things about applications I rarely use, and on simply seeing the subject of the e-mail I know what they are going to say in almost all cases: “remember to use this application”. At the end of the day they’re as annoying as junk mail. The difference is that it was me who chose to receive them.

The only real function these e-mails have is to remind you that there is a tool you signed up for at one time.

However, Noteca is a tool designed to actively monitor Social Media and develop your brand. If you’re going to use Noteca only occasionally, once a month for example…it’s not going to work, and in reality you could be using any other tool, like Google for example. But if you are really serious about creating a community or listening to your clients on Social Media, accessing your Noteca account will become another part of your routine. You will constantly find new things in Noteca about your company, your rivals’ companies, the sector…opportunities to take part and monitor, achieve sales and pay attention to clients and fans.
For this reason, after discussing the matter a bit and thinking about how it would be used, we made a decision. Noteca will not send e-mail notifications. They only become a nuisance to for users. If you really want to take part in Social Media and you choose Noteca for doing this, it will naturally form part of your daily life.

We recently discovered through Noteca that more than 10 % of the posts and tweets that talk about the iPhone also contain the word… help.

Help is a very common word on the Internet, so a certain degree of coincidence is understandable, but this is a big proportion. Some people offer applications for the iPhone that help do this and that, some ask for help and some offer help. After a quick scan through the posts and tweets we get the impression that a lot of people are asking for help with the iphone.

Any ideas of why?

In other words, how does my company benefit from actively taking part in?

Before discussing benefits or specific actions, it is fundamental to have a strategy rather than diving in head first. It’s essential to have a community strategy and define objectives that we want to achieve. However, every company can focus on the following objectives:

• - Maximising the brand’s relationship with its clients through technology and new media.
• - Showing why we are different; why we are better. What added value we offer compared to our competitors.
• - Sharing our ideas with our users. Identifying what links allow us to connect with our community.
• - Following the evolution of the clients’ way of thinking, adapting to new consumer habits.

But, where should we invest our time and resources? A brand must be conscious of its position and optimise the resources it has at its disposal. Where should I begin?

• - Your web page is your brand. It’s essential to have your own community and a place where your clients can find answers to their questions, complaints or concerns.
• - To position in social networks. Having a Facebook page or a Twitter account just for the sake of it won’t achieve anything. We must be active, giving what we do and say on social networks a value.
• - We must be where the users are. The rules of the game have changed. No brand, no matter how big, can ignore the opinions produced in Social Media. It gets more and more important to recognise the opinion leaders of a community and to connect with them.

So, what are the benefits of participating in Social Media?

• - Having a presence in Social Media will enable us to influence the decisions made by our potential consumers. We will make consumers aware of our existence, or refresh their memories. In other words, we will give our brand value.
• - We will know who our clients are and we will be able to make ourselves known to them. This knowledge will allow us to interact with our community, knowing the opinion and taste of our users. But more importantly, they will feel that the brand is with them, that there is someone there to listen to them..
• - Our success is first of all measured in consumers. Thanks to interacting with them in Social Media we can constantly optimise our products and sales strategies. We will objectively know what services work and which are the ones that don’t. We will be able to take the pulse of community opinion more efficiently and get the ROI of the brand.

Giving value to our brand, connecting with our community, optimising our products and sales strategies, detecting our mistakes and correcting them… is it, or is it not worthwhile investing in Social Media?

Toyota highly values the things people say about its brand in Social Media and it has taken to listening to its consumers. The objective is none other than to face its clients, to actively participate in conversations and have an influence on its consumers’ opinions.

Toyota has fallen from grace into the depths of hell in a matter of months. From being the world leader in car sales, to living its worst image crisis due to a faulty accelerator in some models of its cars. Toyota has learnt a hard lesson about reputation in a very cruel way. It had taken years for the brand to create an excellent brand image and it’s all gone down the drain in a matter of days.

However, Toyota has been able to draw positive conclusions from this lesson and this says a lot about this great brand. Toyota is conscious of the importance that its reputation has and hasn’t stayed arms crossed when faced with this apparently prejudicial situation. The company has got down to work making a big effort to reverse this situation. Social Media.

This fact has had a very positive effect among Toyota clients, because they have been shown that Toyota listens to them. To err is human, to admit the error is divine. The image of the president of Toyota apologising to its clients sets quite an example of launching a brand facelift campaign.

It’s been interesting to see how Toyota has used a Brand Monitoring tool to track opinions about its brand on Twitter. But it’s been even more surprising to see that the company hasn’t merely stuck to monitoring, but has started to dialogue with consumers on twitter.

But what about blogs? Tools such as Noteca are especially suitable for managing online reputation and allowing fast and efficient reactions to this kind of a situation. With Noteca, Toyota would have been able to monitor mentions about its brand on Twitter, in blogs and comments. Furthermore, it would have been able to see who the most influential authors were in order to be able to optimise its efforts.

Noteca is an application specifically designed for conversing and participating in Social Media; in the channels where the reputation of a brand is built. In addition, you can follow all the conversations you have taken part in, as well as measuring the influence of your brand thanks to the statistics generated and thus compare yourself to other brands.

Noteca is a web app specifically designed for the emerging profession of online Community Managers. Many of Noteca’s design features are ideal for carrying out an effective community management strategy. Below are the reasons why:

• - Listen, to Build Brand Visibility: It’s essential to listen to your community and get a feel for your brand’s reputation in the space of Social Media. Noteca helps Community Managers to know at all times what’s being said about their brand, their competitors, and similar companies related to their sector. If we don’t know the image being projected about our brand, we are much less in a position to devise a suitable strategy for community management.
• - Identify key opinion leaders: Markets are becoming increasingly segmented and each sector has its own opinion leaders. It’s vital for Community Managers to spot influential people. Noteca tells you directly whether an author is influential or not. A positive or negative opinion of an opinion leader cannot be ignored by any brand. Silence is the worst response.
• - Listen and learn from your community: It’s vital to listen and take in client comments to build a positive online reputation and a solid brand image. People can pick up on our mistakes but also set us on the right path to correct them. Brands are no longer advertised. They connect, share and collaborate with clients. Noteca helps you keep track of every conversation.
• - Customer service and technical support: The Community Managers must know all about their business and know what department or person is best indicated to resolve each situation. Sometimes complaints arise because clients haven’t been able to find the right person to deal with. With Noteca you can organize your web-based tasks and assign what person should deal with each task.
• - Converse and participate: Good Community Managers should be the voice of the company and explain brand positioning to the community. It’s not enough to attract users. Brands should make use of the channels that potential clients use. Noteca is an application specifically designed for conversing and participating in the space of Social Media, through channels where brand reputation is built. Community Managers should be active and take part. Noteca makes this easy.
• - Engage with your community: Having a good agenda with contact details is important, but it’s much more important to remember who’s who and what we’ve said to them at all times. Noteca allows you to keep track of all conversations arranged by contact. You can also add notes to each contact about experiences you’ve had. This way it’s much easier to connect with your community.
• - Analyze the results of your activities: It’s essential to follow up on your activities as Community Manager and take note of the impact they have on Social Media. The statistics that Noteca provides will enable you to see the influence of your brand on Social Media and calculate your ROI.

Through Noteca we’re discovering some very interesting things about Social Media, especially about Twitter. Our attention has been powerfully drawn to a fact we have obtained about cloned tweets, because almost 36% of tweets relating to Social Media matters are almost identical.

Interestingly, this phenomenon is even more pronounced, if that were possible, in trending topics. Tweets relating to Social Media Marketing, Brand Monitoring or Branding are the preferred targets of the bots and users who fraudulently use the tool.

Consequently the noise level that these kinds of tweets by spammers produce in searches is overwhelming. Such an enormous amount of repetition makes searches lose their effectiveness due to the noise. It’s impossible to follow conversations and the situation becomes unmanageable.

Thanks to Noteca we have detected the problem. In our interface we group identical tweets because they are robotic replicas and provide no value to users, and we only show the tweet from the most influential author. However, there is a small percentage of users who repeat the tweets of others without indicating that it is an RT.

Ferran Adrià is considered the best chef in the world, and El Bulli, is reputed to be the best restaurant. What possible reasons could this genius have for leaving it all for a while? The answer he has given to the world is a complete declaration of intentions “I want to improve; I want to be more creative”.

Ferran Adrià is a reference in the world of cuisine, and his decisions and actions can be applied to many aspects of personal and professional life. Here’s how he explained his reasons:

• - “Being the best now doesn’t guarantee that you will be in the future”. A lesson in humbleness.
• - “Research and innovation”. He isn’t stopping working; he’s simply stepping out of the limelight in order to continue to grow. El Bulli will stay open as a research laboratory.
• - “Creativity, creativity, creativity”. There are millions of chefs in the world. If you continue to do the same thing, eventually someone will do it better than you.
• - “Honesty and professional ethics”. He knew it wasn’t ethical to keep doing the same thing for a few more years, taking advantage of his fame.
• - “We’re not ruling out the possibility of spending three months in China, getting to know Japan better or Peruvian cuisine”. It’s important to discover other cultures.
• - “El Bulli was built on challenges, and this is the latest one”. Overcoming adversity.
• - “Pressure with passion”. Being in the eye of the storm helps you improve, the more so if what you do is your true passion in life.
• - “I made this decision in order to remain happy”. The main reason for being.

Humbleness, innovation, creativity, honesty, culture, self-improvement, passion. Are we talking merely about cooking?

We start up our engines. Few seconds ago we opened up the access to the Noteca beta. Early users who signed up on our homepage are receiving the access details to test our webapp.

You can still apply for trying the Noteca beta a few more days, so if you want to try Noteca you’re still on time. You can do so from the Noteca site.

We are noteca and work with Social Media.