The world's largest focus group sits at your fingertips.

Millions of people are speaking openly and publicly online, while millions more are reading and consuming.

But how do you listen, how do you learn, how do you measure, derive meaning, interact and report? 

Project Smile is committed to bringing the answers to you.  We've already heard from TNS Cymfony and MotiveQuest, and we will be hearing from others in the days and weeks ahead.  With that in mind, I would like to introduce Visible Technologies.

Profile - Visible Technologies

Who is Visible Tech?  What makes them special, unique, and where do they fit in this incredibly diverse landscape? 

Mike Spataro, VP of Strategic Relationships is on the hot seat.

Please feel free to submit your questions and comments via the comments section below.

Elevator Pitch

Mike:

We help companies build stronger relationships with existing customers and acquire new customers. We accomplish this with TruCast, the only social media business intelligence solution in the industry that brings together the ability for brands to monitor and measure consumer perceptions online and participate or take action in one integrated application. 

Background

Jon: What led you to launch your company?  Give us a brief history of who you are.

Mike: We started in 2003 as a search engine marketing company, offering SEO, pay-per-click, and our still very popular TruView, search online reputation management service. That experience led us to the development of our social media platform TruCast, which is an outgrowth of the success we had in helping brands manage, protect and grow their businesses.

Doing That Thing They Do

Jon: How would you describe your core capability?

Mike: Our core competency is in delivering actionable business intelligence to our clients that impact their bottom line. We do this through comprehensive data collection and analysis and how those insights support different functional areas of a company. Our core competences go beyond just providing innovative technology and tools. We combine great people, technology and client support and service to help brands wherever they need it in this new field.

Taking The Road Less Traveled

Jon: What key differentiators does your company offer?

Mike: Our competitors specialize in just one or two areas while we have a complete suite of TruCast products and services that help companies with all of their different needs. We understand that brands are approaching this area from many different points of view, so we have developed different products and services to help the business. That can take more forms, ranging from active listening, to best practices to participate, to comprehensive issue analysis, to emergency monitoring. Our enterprise TruCast platform, for instance, allows multi-disciplinary groups across a global company to analyze and interact with the data and insights in different ways that fit within their individual groups. 

Success Stories

Jon: What would you say has been your most successful engagement to date?  What made it successful?

Mike: With a 95 percent client retention rate I’d like to think most of our engagements have been successful, but we are certainly proud of the work we are doing with Microsoft, GM, Hormel, Campbell’s, AT&T, and Panasonic to name just a few. What’s particularly gratifying is not just the valuable business intelligence we provide our clients every day but seeing more of our clients move from listening to activation and the changes in consumer perceptions experienced around a particular product or issue because they turned insights into action.

Looking Forward

Jon: What are the greatest challenges facing the social intelligence industry?

Mike: The greatest challenge is how to make this intelligence part of the DNA of a company. The data is here and its importance is growing every day. Vendors and brands have more work to do on the ROI model, especially as conversational marketing evolves from text to multi-media and crosses different applications and technologies. An important conversation can start on a blog, continue on Friendfeed and finish on YouTube. Brands need to deal with that information flow reality and how to measure it. 

Jon: How do you see social media/marketing evolving over the next 3 years?

Mike: Thankfully, the term ‘social media’ will disappear from our vocabulary. However, the underlying trends driving consumer collaboration on a global scale will continue to increase. The global aspects of social media are here now and present a new set of challenges for everyone. When you consider that only one-sixth of the world’s population is online yet, you get a sense of the magnitude and growing importance of this industry.

Choosing The Right Solution For You

Jon: What role should experience play in choosing a social media intelligence solutions provider?

Mike: While experience and technology are important, selecting a partner revolves around matching the needs of your organization to the right provider. There are many companies in this industry, but none who do what we do and how we do it. You have to identify exactly what your needs are and where you fall on the spectrum between passive listening and dynamic activation. It then becomes much easier to figure out which provider is right for you.

Additional Info

Website: www.visibletechnologies.com

Blog: www.visinsights.com

Company Presences Across Social Media:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/Visible_Tech

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Visible-Technologies/29281815384

Friendfeed: http://friendfeed.com/visibletechnologies

Additional Info / Fun Stuff:

• Unlocking Social Media’s ROI through Engagement & Participation link

• Interacting with Social Media to Strengthen Communication Strategies link

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