When Twitter bought Summize, you could tell that the social media world was getting serious about search.Since that acquisition, dozens of social-specific search tools have popped up, some of them also being grabbed up by the networks themselves.Many of these sites provide true social media search, pulling search results from Twitter, MySpace, blogs, forums and tagging sites.Some of these tools are available for free on various Web sites.Other more functional social media search tools are available only through the purchase of a license.These licensed tools usually provide more detailed information that simple search tools, including demographic info as well as location and relative influence.However, as good as these tools are for getting a bead on public sentiment about a certain topic or for calculating the level of buzz that a particular campaign is generating, there are still times when a formal search engine is a better choice.While a social media search tool will provide you will more current info, this is not always the most relevant.Additionally, a search engine typically more information indexed than any of these newer tools.How much more information? We're talking about factors in the billions.What These tools are Great For -.If you're looking to take the "right now" buzz temperature of a brand, site or topic, SM search tools are great.Instead of jumping around searching Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, blogs and newswires, you can drop in one search query and access search results on just about every online space that matters with a simple tabbed navigation.If you're a brand, this is a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of your online buzz.If you're an agency, it's great to monitor your clients' buzz.It also gives snippets of content so you can quickly scan results to deterring which ones are worth reading.These tools beat the heck out of doing dozens of individual searches on different sites, or doing a vanilla Google search and trying to distill results down to consumer generated content.What It's Good For -.Some social media tools allow you to enter any type of query. a URL, a name, a company, you name it.The downside of this is that you get some false positives.For example, a searched on "Generic Marketing Co" returns results that include several posts that are about things both "Generic" and "Marketing" related, but not about the particular company I'm looking for.Any buzz measuring tool out there has to make a big decision--restrict your searches to URLs and make sure you only get posts that are exactly what you want, but know that you will miss a lot of pickups, OR allow queries on any key phrase and weed out the results that are not relevant.What It's Not For -.When looking at buzz, we measure three things. volume, tonality (are people saying good stuff or bad stuff) and velocity (is buzz increasing or decreasing).Some of the licensed tools give not only gives an idea of volume, but allows a user to scan to get tonality and velocity.However, most "free" social search tools do not calculate a "score" on any of these metrics, nor do they weight the value of buzz.Only a few of these free tools offer an "Alerts" feature when new buzz is picked up.The ability to attach an RSS based feed to a specific search query can be invaluable, especially if you monitor a lot of keywords.Traditional search engines offer all of these options and then some.Some more popular search engines are getting on board with the idea of a "social only" search and are incorporating this option into their dashboards.Much like a "news only" search, these searches filter only results from a selected number of social networks.The bottom line is that there are always going to be times where using a search engine is better than a social media search tool, or vice versa.However, depending on the importance of your research and the amount of time you have, is never a bad idea to use both.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
When to Use Social Media Search and When to Use a Search Engine
When Twitter bought Summize, you could tell that the social media world was getting serious about search.Since that acquisition, dozens of social-specific search tools have popped up, some of them also being grabbed up by the networks themselves.Many of these sites provide true social media search, pulling search results from Twitter, MySpace, blogs, forums and tagging sites.Some of these tools are available for free on various Web sites.Other more functional social media search tools are available only through the purchase of a license.These licensed tools usually provide more detailed information that simple search tools, including demographic info as well as location and relative influence.However, as good as these tools are for getting a bead on public sentiment about a certain topic or for calculating the level of buzz that a particular campaign is generating, there are still times when a formal search engine is a better choice.While a social media search tool will provide you will more current info, this is not always the most relevant.Additionally, a search engine typically more information indexed than any of these newer tools.How much more information? We're talking about factors in the billions.What These tools are Great For -.If you're looking to take the "right now" buzz temperature of a brand, site or topic, SM search tools are great.Instead of jumping around searching Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, blogs and newswires, you can drop in one search query and access search results on just about every online space that matters with a simple tabbed navigation.If you're a brand, this is a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of your online buzz.If you're an agency, it's great to monitor your clients' buzz.It also gives snippets of content so you can quickly scan results to deterring which ones are worth reading.These tools beat the heck out of doing dozens of individual searches on different sites, or doing a vanilla Google search and trying to distill results down to consumer generated content.What It's Good For -.Some social media tools allow you to enter any type of query. a URL, a name, a company, you name it.The downside of this is that you get some false positives.For example, a searched on "Generic Marketing Co" returns results that include several posts that are about things both "Generic" and "Marketing" related, but not about the particular company I'm looking for.Any buzz measuring tool out there has to make a big decision--restrict your searches to URLs and make sure you only get posts that are exactly what you want, but know that you will miss a lot of pickups, OR allow queries on any key phrase and weed out the results that are not relevant.What It's Not For -.When looking at buzz, we measure three things. volume, tonality (are people saying good stuff or bad stuff) and velocity (is buzz increasing or decreasing).Some of the licensed tools give not only gives an idea of volume, but allows a user to scan to get tonality and velocity.However, most "free" social search tools do not calculate a "score" on any of these metrics, nor do they weight the value of buzz.Only a few of these free tools offer an "Alerts" feature when new buzz is picked up.The ability to attach an RSS based feed to a specific search query can be invaluable, especially if you monitor a lot of keywords.Traditional search engines offer all of these options and then some.Some more popular search engines are getting on board with the idea of a "social only" search and are incorporating this option into their dashboards.Much like a "news only" search, these searches filter only results from a selected number of social networks.The bottom line is that there are always going to be times where using a search engine is better than a social media search tool, or vice versa.However, depending on the importance of your research and the amount of time you have, is never a bad idea to use both.
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