Social media management for SMEs
Given the enormous value of 'goodwill' in the business world, companies have long been interested in monitoring and enhancing their reputations. Since the advent of the internet and social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, this task has become increasingly complex. Public relations (PR) and communication firms normally carry out the monitoring of the media profile of a given company, and create campaigns to bolster it. However, such services are often unaffordable to SMEs. Using EU funding, the PR2.0 project set out to develop a software tool to enable SMEs to visualise and analyse data from social media, and to add intelligent analysis modules related to natural language-processing techniques. The project members created a prototype software tool to analyse social media that adopts and adapts the latest semantic technologies and multi-agent architecture, all encased in a user-friendly interface. Among its numerous innovations, the PR2.0 technology includes an automated opinion extraction module. PR2.0's prototype tool has proven to be useful in the analysis of Twitter and Facebook posts in English. The partners explored various promising commercialisation opportunities, including distribution of the PR2.0 solution, spin-off tools for other sectors and the integration of modules into other applications. PR2.0 will have a profound impact on SMEs, enabling them to manage their own online reputations, as well as to launch, maintain and monitor social media campaigns.
