The social media wizards at Radian6 put its money where its mouth is to launch a new product designed to help its customers market themselves

Companies invest heavily in their brands, but the Internet has changed the brand equation. Take websites, for example. While corporate marketers try to keep up with the continually morphing world of social media, the blogosphere is brimming with chatter, including conversations about brands. The trouble is, these conversations are taking place increasingly on social media sites that lie beyond the control of brand custodians.

That’s where Radian6 comes in. The software is the brainchild of a Fredericton–based company of the same name. Radian6 uses a powerful web crawler to track, monitor, and analyze social media sites to gauge conversations about any subject the user is interested in—such as your brand, for example. Using a simple dashboard, a user plugs in key words—a brand name, a product, a competitor, a person—and can track chatter about the subject. But the real bonus is the ability to organize the information into usable, measurable data: graphs, charts, orders of importance, developing trends.

According to David Alston, Radian6’s vice-president of marketing, traditional approaches are like a form of carpet bombing, saturating a marketplace with a message and hoping it somehow reaches its target. Radian6 can help narrow the focus and get companies involved with individual brand conversations—a throwback to establishing a one-on-one relationship with every customer.

Along with his colleagues, Alston uses social media to market the company’s software, maintaining a blog and an active Twitter site. The Twebinar is the company’s own recent marketing innovation, a free new online seminar series, or “webinar,” as it’s known in cyber-speak. The multi-dimensional webinars were hosted by Massachusetts–based social media strategist and CrossTech Media vice-president Chris Brogan, and featured a number of social media experts talking about social networking issues. Twebinar attracted 3,000 participants and generated blog and website traffic from 71 countries around the world

Radian6 was launched two and a half years ago by company founder and CTO Chris Newton and a small team of developers. CEO Marcel LeBrun and product development VP Chris Ramsey joined the company soon after. Together they assembled a prototype software and took it to a number of early adopter clients who provided feedback.
The product officially launched at last year’s Public Relations Society of America show in Philadelphia. Since then, company staff has increased to 37, revenues have doubled each quarter, and customers have grown from a handful to more than 150, including leading PR firms, marketing agencies, social media boutiques, and Fortune 500 companies.

Alston says the information gathered represents pure gold. Complaints and compliments can be monitored, opinions of competitors can be tracked, and brand fans and boosters can be located, Users can identify client needs, head off marketing crises, and gauge the success of marketing campaigns.

“There are opportunities out there,” says Alston. “A lot of brands are starting to realize this. They can’t afford not to be listening, because these conversations are happening whether their companies are part of them or not.”