The Central Ave. offices of media-relations company Metzger Associates were the scene of a recent seminar whose chief focus was how companies can monitor, and react to, what’s being said about them on social media sites.

In the two-hour event, Linda O’Neill of Kansas City-based CenturyLink was videoconferenced in to explain how companies use advanced social media monitoring tools (with names like Trackur, Chat Catcher, Biz360 and Noteca) to track what’s being said about them in a variety of social media environments.

O’Neill stressed the value of monitoring the chatter, then deploying call-center staff to respond quickly to critics. “Invite them to talk to you offline,” she said, “and resolve their issue.”

Another speaker, Mike Fraietta of Boulder-based Filtrbox (recently acquired by Portland-based Jive Software), spoke of how Filtrbox helps companies monitor the buzz about them, creating “mention maps” of who’s saying things both positive and negative. He stressed the need for companies to carefully select a spokesperson who’ll go out and set things straight amid the chatter. 
 

Boulder-based media guru Dave Taylor discussed how to pitch bloggers. Please, he said, only pitch topics that are relevant to their interests, and don’t browbeat or blackmail them along the lines of “I’ll only send you a sample of my product if you’ll promise to review it.” He stressed the surging trend of geolocation — marketing based on smart devices that know where you are, and make that location known if you want it known.

Dean Rizzuto of Metzger showed how to analyze various potential keywords to see which will draw the most traffic, and stressed the importance of gaining links to your site — not from just anyone, mind you, but from high-quality sites. And Metzger’s Doyle Albee argued that, as old media give way to new, a marketer’s wisest choice is to target them all, old and new.