Yesterday afternoon, I saw a post entitled Top 10 Tips for Social Media Monitoring that reiterates one of the most essential elements of any social media tracking study: Know why you are monitoring.

It’s something we stress to our clients all the time and its something that was absolutely top of mind while we were working on Version 2 of the Spiral16 monitoring and visualization platform, which rolls out in less than two weeks.

It is important to know what questions you want answered before you begin monitoring because the way each project is set up will depend on its purpose. For example, if you are gathering competitive intelligence (see above) and comparing online share of voice on four companies, each company would be its own topic.

Here’s how we organize data:

From top to bottom, there are four levels of data within the Spiral16 system. It is important to understand how each of these relates to each other so you can set up your  projects while thinking of the big picture. Often times, the project will be named after the company (or client) and the topics under that project will be set up with different goals and objectives in mind.

One topic could be for brand monitoring, another for lead generation, and another for competitive intelligence. If you’re not thinking about what answers you need, you won’t be able to set up the topics strategically. And if you don’t do that, the data won’t yield the results you need.

Our redesign will allow clients to take full advantage of all the different data measurement and comparison options within the system. Our data analytics team is also here to make sure each project/topic is established with a clear strategy. The foundation of your project should support those goals.

Last month, we rolled out a helpful new workflow management system. The tasks feature allows managers to assign tasks to employees within the Spark platform. A task can be created and assigned that relates to either a specific URL or insight, at which point assigner and assignee will receive email updates.

Spark’s new alert system can be set with user-specified parameters to email you when unusual traffic or spikes occur in your insight that need your attention.

An iterative development cycle is vitally important to our company. Spiral16 considers customer feedback to be essential and are fortunate to have engaged customers who share their time with us. As we move forward with improvements to Spark, our newly created S16 User Team will have our ear as we incorporate the following new features.

Here are some things Spiral16 is currently working on (not final layout–still in development):

Global Date Filtering
With the addition of a global date filter, users can now set a default date range and custom filters that will be automatically applied across all areas of an insight. One-stop filter and sorting options will save time and make it easier to build customized reports.

Insight Explorer
Based on usability best practices and client feedback, Spiral16 is redesigning the detailed list view of insights to include better at-a-glance information. This will help clients understand which URLs matter the most for each specific topic.

In addition, a new bulk-action option has been included to allow clients to quickly update sentiment scores, site-type categories, and date information on multiple URLs at once. A new visual layout will improve readability across the board.

Conversation Sentiment page
Spiral16 is redesigning our Conversation Sentiment page to match the Insight Explorer layout with a focus on readability, quick editing, and a better grasp of important sentiment nuggets at a glance.

Insight Summary page
In addition to ease of use with the global date filter (which will allow users to set a single date range for all reporting gadgets), Spiral16 is improving the Insight Summary page to allow users more control over how their reporting gadgets are displayed.

With a more dynamic feel, users can now control the layout more fully, greatly improving the reporting capabilities.

It’s after Thanksgiving, which means it’s officially OK to discuss the “holiday season.”

Ian made us some cool S16 holiday logos. I am using the black one as my desktop image. Thought I’d share the goodies!

We are in the process of doing a series for demo videos to explain how Spark software works – and how you will benefit from various updates.

Here is a sketch and breakdown of the next changes, and what we will be adding to the eight video segments.

We post these sketches because it shows the process from illustration to finished product.

Many of our best work starts by sketching on anything we can get our hands on – from marketing elements to product enhancements.

Ultimately, we are a creative minded software company that pulls from diverse backgrounds to produce something special.

I posted a blog on Wednesday about our recording session for some marketing videos we’re getting produced with the help of Dan Welter.

Here is the audio from our “universe” video. This is going to be an all-in-one piece that helps people understand Spiral16, Spark and our company goals.

Listen to the track below.

[podcast]http://www.spiral16.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/spiral16_audio_whitney.mp3[/podcast]

We’re creating a set of videos for the Web site that help potential clients learn what Spiral16 and Spark are about.

Tamlyn, our assistant, is from South Africa. Vanessa, Tamlyn’s mom, has a wicked-amazing accent, so we tricked her into voicing the audio for us.

Tuesday was our first audio session at C.R. Sound with Dan Welter, our video producer. The Spark album should drop in late November. (That’s some rock star humor… get it? No? Kbye.)

Check out the video blog for a brief look at our recording session.

This one expresses ideas for repositioning data – and making it more valuable once it’s collected or provided.  Something we are constantly doing at Spiral16.

More wallpapers for you to download for your desk top!

Look at our new wallpapers! Put them on your desktop, because they are cool!

This was an experiment for me to find visuals that already exist that have relevance to S16 and Spark.

[MEDIA=aa2b6ecb]What I didn’t know at the time is that the music is relevant to what we are doing and why we are called Spiral16. I didn’t make the connection until I was digging deeper into the music and Fibonacci numbers.

The music (just 25 seconds of it) is Tool’s song Lateralus. Here is a little more from Wikipedia:

The band puts an emphasis on the sound of their songs and attempts to reduce the effect lyrics can have on the perception of songs by not releasing song lyrics with any album. Lyrical arrangements are often given special attention, such as in “Lateralus”. The number of syllables per line in the lyrics to “Lateralus” correspond to an arrangement of the Fibonacci numbers and in “Jambi” the metrical foot iamb is used.

So, it’s not going to show up on Unexplained Mysteries or Believe It Or Not it’s one of those strange things that helped me find a hidden connection.