Brandwatch, the UK social media monitoring startup, has released a free search plugin for Seesmic, the desktop client for companies who want to manage their social media presence.
Aimed at users who want to monitor a particular brand or topic across the whole of the Web, not just the services that Seesmic supports out of the box, the Brandwatch plugin adds additional search/monitoring functionality. This is presented in a new column within the app which updates in real-time to display Brandwatch data alongside the user’s Twitter, Facebook and other social media feeds.
Included in that Brandwarch search is information related to sentiment, volume of mentions of that brand and history for any particular query.
As we’ve noted before, brand management in the age of the real-time web can be a tricky business – it’s a forever moving target where even the most established brands are being caught out. It’s also an area evolving quickly as startups emerge to help brands manage their social media reputation and consumers are increasingly becoming more and more savvy with the likes of Twitter, Facebook and other newer social web tools and are realising their power to damage (and enhance) a company or product’s reputation.