On increasingly popular social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, people like to share details about their lives&mdashfor example, how much they like the product or service they just bought. If a person has a large and active enough online following, his or her opinion can help or hurt a brand overnight.
What if you could easily listen in on this constant social media chatter and quickly learn from it and respond? You might be able to not only shape the online image of your brand, but also generate a rich trove of sales leads.
This is what Radian6 helps its customers do. The SaaS-based service includes a discovery engine—similar to a search engine—that finds content on social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. The engine not only finds content that matches specific criteria, but it also measures the potential impact of social media posts based on their authors’ reach. The platform includes embedded analytics and workflow, allowing pertinent messages or meta-data to be routed to people who can act on it.
When Radian6 Chief Technology Officer Chris Newton launched Radian6 in 2006, the company targeted public relations and marketing functions. “The thought was to focus on people who grew a company’s brand,” says Radian6 CEO Marcel LeBrun. But, as social media has increasingly impacted other parts of the enterprise, Radian6’s focus and, not incidentally, its customer base have grown. The company now targets customer management and support, R&D, and sales functions—“all areas of the company that touch the customer,” LeBrun says.