Palio Tweets social media-monitoring tool
July 28, 2009 – 12:35 pm by Gina MonariAfter a brief Twitter fly-by, I came across a Palio news Tweet about Susurro, a social media-monitoring tool that provides a comprehensive understanding of online discussions surrounding clients’ brands. Developed by Palio’s Research and Analytics team, Susurro became available to clients about six months ago and focuses on consumer or patient online discussions of brands and competitors. Carl Turner, VP, research and analytics director, Palio, chatted with Med Ad News briefly this morning about Susurro.
According to Mr. Turner, Susurro is the entry way into being in the social media space. Pharmaceutical companies remain hesitant to dip their feet into the social media space and everyone wonders how to become involved. There is starting to be some consensus among clients, however, that monitoring social media is that first step to entering into the social media space without the concerns of taking a complete social media campaign and starting from scratch.
“You can monitor and that keeps you close enough to the ground that you have the sense of at least what’s being said about your product in the marketplace,” Mr. Turner told Med Ad News.
Susurro provides an in-depth understanding of marketing messages and brand positions within the context of the brand. It is a market-research tool that provides a qualitative and quantitative study of online discussion around a brand. Susurro discovers and analyzes online product discussion across social media sources, including blogs, discussion boards and forums, pictures, videos, and other user-generated content. Although anyone can dig up information on the Internet and report on the number of references, it is the interpretation of what is being said within the context of the brand that is important.
A few clients have used Susurro since it became available, such as clients who are launching products and have been planning for social media monitoring to be part of their e-strategy. These clients find that this looks appealing because they already have a digital strategy and know that social media monitoring needs to be part of that.
By using Susurro, Palio is able to provide clients with a qualitative analysis of relevant social media — a deep-content analysis of discovered media with excerpts and examples; natural reactions to events surrounding a product; underlying attitudes about a brand, medication or treatment; insights into the real lives of target patients; and a detailed qualitative breakdown of discussions by topic. With the help of Susurro, clients can predict and follow trends and market events.
“For a lot of our clients, we find that they’re really not doing a good job of monitoring social media,” Mr. Turner told Med Ad News. “By developing this too, it would give them an opportunity to find out more about how you do it and then actually do it if they wanted to engage with us.
Although these types of tools are on the market and more are being developed every day, Palio says its key point of differentiation lies in taking what is learned in monitoring social media and dovetailing that with a strong understanding of clients’ marketing challenges.
“When you take that and you contextualize that with what you can learn from monitoring social media, you can not only comment on strategy, but you have a better sense of how the brand is changing in the dynamic marketplace,” Mr. Turner told Med Ad News.
