5 Masterminds Redefining SMM

Chris Ramsey, EVP Business Development & Co-founder, Radian6

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No marketing program is complete without analytics that prove it’s a success — that’s why social media has been a hard sell for many traditional companies who couldn’t quite put a finger on its ROI. While the puzzle isn’t quite solved yet, companies like Radian6 are creating solutions that allow marketers to “listen, measure and engage” across social platforms.

CTO and Founder Chris Newton and EVP, Business Development and Co-Founder Chris Ramsey created Radian6 in 2006 with a focus on social media monitoring, realizing that customers had a need to listen to what was being said about their brands online.

Ramsey spoke with Mashable about the company’s roots and future, saying that he and his colleagues have always looked at social media more as the “social phone,” which differs from the traditional “one-to-many” view that some marketers initially took. “It is a two-way communication platform, not a broadcast platform, and it’s all about engagement and relationships,” explained Ramsey. “As a marketer you can learn a lot, very quickly, by analyzing all of these conversations that are taking place in real time.”

Radian6 is helping marketers humanize their brands and “provide a level of proactive customer service that is unprecedented when compared to the pre-social media era,” said Ramsey.

Make no mistake, social media monitoring, analytics and engagement tools have a way to go. Ramsey sees three key trends for these tools: integration into existing enterprise-wide applications (such as CRM and contact center systems, including Salesforce.com, Siebel and Convergys), automated insights (with integrations with advanced text analytics tools, such as Clarabridge, OpenCalais, and NetBase) and globalization (as many tools currently only focus on North America).

Ramsey reflected back to Radian6′s early days, saying that he’s most proud of the team of about 240 strong they’ve built over the past few years. “There was a time when I was the sales guy, the marketing guy, the customer support guy, and the training guy,” he said. “And now we have teams of such talented people that are doing things I truly never imagined we would get to in this company.”