I heard a bloody brilliant story the other day that really highlighted the power of social media but, more importantly, the beneftits of monitoring it. The story came from fella who was giving me a demo of a new, very powerful, social media monitoring software.
One of the companies using this piece of software is a large online betting shop. During the summer transfer window the company in question were monitoring all manner of conversations taking place in the social mediasphere when they stumbled across a tweet saying something along the lines of ‘Just seen Michael Owen in a restaurant with Sir Alex Ferguson…..LOL (I don’t know if the tweet contained a ‘LOL’ but I’m going to put one in there because i’m down with the kids). Obviously this made ears prick up and the company started searching more specifically around this subject area. Sure enough more sightings were reported throughout the day.
At this point the betting shop dropped their odds on Michael Owen joining Manchester United.
The next day the social media monitoring tool revealed another interesting tweet, along the lines of ‘Michael Owen spotted at a Bupa Hospital in Manchester with United officials’. Again, more sightings and rumblings surfaced throughout the day.
It was clear now that something was definitely happening so the betting shop dropped their odds even further.
Sure enough Michael Owen’s medical was reported just hours later on Skysports as shots of the player leaving hospital were broadcast to the general public.
God knows how much money the betting shop saved from dropping their odds so early but it’ll be significantly more than they paid for the software.
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One Comment
Hi, interesting account of how real-time social media monitoring can bring value to a particular business.
Radian6 was the technology used by the above company. 6Consulting embedded the software providing training and service consultancy.
We are seeing a growing number of Crisis monitoring teams also using the software – significant findings has been first reported by monitoring the social media channel, some have allowed corporations to react quicker to issues that directly affect share price.
@Paul__Taylor
Co-Founder
6Consulting