Serendipity leads sometimes to great discoveries. This week, Social Watchlist is one of them. And, it set the stage for a series of discussions comparing and contrasting Facebook Fan pages within the Middle East & North Africa (MENA). Indeed, Facebook is rocking the Social Media universe, and with as much heat as it has drawn, it only persists to spread like wildfire within the Arab world. All the data provided within Social Watchlist is publicly available to anyone who bothers to check but it is structured and given within a list updated on a weekly basis. Let’s stop briefly to explain the importance of having the data structured. Data is the mountain of raw and unstructured materials that exist in the blogosphere, and being able to get this data presented in a well thought-out manner turn it into information. Social Watchlist can be used to capitalize on the information held within the reams of unstructured data currently available out there from a single point of access. Bottom line: "All the right information at the right time in one place"
Furthermore, the data can be filtered by country or region (e.g. MENA, GCC, North Africa) and also by category (e.g. Airline, Automobile, banking) which enables the user of the Social Watchlist website to benchmark the number of followers and the trend from a single interface, and hence, to see the bigger picture in far greater detail. Up to now, the website is monitoring a total of 1040 Facebook Fan pages with a total of 32,808,376 fans.
Besides the ranking, Social Watchlist offers the movement of a Facebook Fan Page and the growth. It came to my attention that each page, part of the ranking, has tags that permit when you glance over the top 10 pages or more to recognize the category in which the page falls into. That’s the kind of attention to detail that gets my attention.
In an era where Facebook Fan Pages are sometimes more important than corporate websites, this initiative definitely seem to be moving in the right direction. Indeed, it is an epitome of the kind of tool that does not require complex algorithms but that makes the life of digital marketers, Social Media professionals and the likes far easier in a world where time is the most expensive currency.
All they might be lacking is that little extra bit of insight. It is a tool that is most effective when combined with a strategic arsenal of relevant insights about the Facebook Fan page.
The idea is to fuse the list for a specific vertical with what makes the page popular (is it the welcome page, the community manager, the content, the design...). My message to marketers is don’t fool yourself into thinking that you can afford to keep going without this vital piece of the business puzzle. It’s no longer a matter of if, nor when, but now a matter of practice and evolution in order to determine success and failure.
The good news is that it’s still at the beta stage so I am genuinely excited by what will come next. Stay tuned.
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