Market Sentinel

Forget I ever mentioned an international theme week. With three conversations just yesterday, it's not about to end. This post takes the virtual world tour back to London for an informative conversation with Market Sentinel CEO Mark Rogers.

Market Sentinel is a social media monitoring and analysis company serving primarily UK-based, Europe-focused companies (they also do some work in the US market). They maintain a clear focus on research and analysis, leaving the solutions to the clients and PR partners they work with.

As Mark described the history of Market Sentinel, I heard a progression that probably mirrors the lifecycle of client-side attitudes toward social media. Market Sentinel grew out of a service that generated RSS feeds to track updates of web sites that didn't offer feeds. When a major US technology vendor asked to use it, the company entered the monitoring business. Their services matured from monitoring to analysis, and now the company has a real focus on identifying influencers online to support clients' interactions with them.

When we discussed the parallels with how a client may approach social media, Mark suggested some stages of client motivation:

  1. Awareness/fear
  2. Listening/monitoring
  3. Indentifying influencers
  4. Focused engagement
Market Sentinel uses social network analysis and link analysis (citation analysis) to build a database of stakeholders for its clients. Mark says, "any topic can define a social network," so the company generates a table of authorities for topics of interest. The result is a filter that refines the monitoring process, allowing clients to focus their attention on influential speakers.

Mark mentioned that in the last six months, he's noticed clients moving beyond reactive strategies. Now they're becoming interested in identifying problems before they become acute. While many companies are not yet monitoring social media, those that have started monitoring are quickly becoming more sophisticated in their approach to online engagement.

You can hear more from Mark Rogers on the Market Sentinel blog and in interviews with Nicole Simon (November 2005) and Guillaume du Gardier (September 2005).

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About Nathan Gilliatt

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  • Voracious learner and explorer. Analyst tracking technologies and markets in intelligence, analytics and social media. Advisor to buyers, sellers and investors. Writing my next book.
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