I recently had a chance to sit down and spend sometime with Todd Friesen and hear his latest thoughts on Social Media. Naturally, the conversation turned to Twitter fairly quickly. Todd is very active on Twitter and offers us some perspective on micro-blogging and its impacts on brands, search and SEO. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts Todd. It’s always great to catch up. Looking forward to seeing you at the next SMC Seattle event.

Cheers,

Blake Cahill
Visible Technologies

An amazing panel today by Kate Niederhoffer of Dachis Corp. and Marc Smith of Telligent about going beyond buzz measurement. To get beyond Buzz Measurement one needs to understand the social and psychographic dimensions, sentiment, influence, engagement and meanings of social conversations. However, many of these are superficial. It’s time to move beyond the buzz machine and “blackboxing”. It all needs more science.

First, understanding the social network theory is important - social structure emerges from the aggregate relationship (ties) among members”. Second, the Context of the Conversation involves relevance (signal), mindset (person), role (persona), and ecosystem (environment). Ways to measure “signal” are to look at term and network maps around topics, time and look for unique patterns but also look at the data from multiple lens. Glad Visible provides those type of maps for our customers to measure signal and relevance.

Second, measuring Mindset through linguistics like: demographics, emotion, cognitive style and personality also provide many clues and insight into a consumer passion on the social web. More pronouns and more verbs equally more passion especially in reviews. Pay attention to use of “we” and “I” in conversations.

Third, Marc from Telligent is now talking about the “meso” layer. What is the role of persona and ecosystem. Using ecosystems or “Egonets” to determine density of conversations to understand the core connections. There are people like Answer people and Reply magnets. Depending on what you are trying to attract then for your marketing initiative this can be a measure of success of failure if you do or don’t attract the right type of folks to your initiative. Some categories of “persona” are spammer, flame thrower, warrior. Use these to understand who is in your graph and do you have the right mix.

Fourth, looking for ties that bind or blind. Using ecosystems and analysis to best use your lens or variety of lens to determine ROI. “Social media spaces vary and roles are present”. Social media is about collective action. Measuring conversations is about measuring the context in which those conversations arise. Value is and intermediate step in calculating ROI. Moot to bypass it. Techniques from social science help capture “the immeasurable” in social media and the enterprise. The future of conversations - the enterprise being one - is about cultivating the conversations.

Excellent presentation and delivery!

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

At Web 2.0 in San Francisco to hear a panel from Peter Kim, Charlene Li, and Jeremiah Owyang.

Failure Point 1: How do you get your culture involved?

Jeremiah says “this is one of biggest issues that enterprise face in terms of embracing social media”. Charlene..”Culture change requires big guns”. Focus on customer satisfaction and existing corporate goals and use social channels to support it. Models of social media embrace at organizations: “The Tire” - outside in, “The Tower” - PR or Comms drive, and “The Hub & Spoke”.

Failure Point 2: How do you make campaigns work?

Failure here is in the fact that we treat it or call it a campaign in the 1st place. This is an ongoing relationship with customers not just a campaign. Long term businesses needs to change - transformation issue again. The bottom line is that customers in the social graph want relationships and value added interaction. If a community is built, interactive, and value-added you can have a campaign but it can’t be turn on or off. Marketing needs to evolve to better include customer experience and on going community management.

Failure Point 3:How do I measure success?

Many marketers continue to use wrong metrics for success. Measure where you are, were you’ve been, where you are going. Like that. Why measure and what are you trying to accomplish, say Charlene. You need also look to the ways that message your existing channel to some extent. Pete measurement in marketing is huge fail irrespective of social media marketing. Marketing needs to have better P&L and measurements. Interesting show hands about number folks that really aren’t measuring it. Amazing. They will fail and lose funding.

Failure Point 4: Does any of this matter?

Motrin example used - many in audience were unaware of the the example. Surprising…and that failure will happen. Realize that and learn from it. It does and will increasingly grow. We are only getting started but many are still unaware of the channel, the content, and its impact. Pete mentioned that we need to remember the early days of e-commerce and where we are now.

Great job and questions from the audience. And Visible Technologies got a nice shout out that we help companies with listening and engagement.

Blake Cahill
Visible Technologies

Some thoughts on Social Media from Jake McKee captured during a recent visit to Seattle where he dropped by Visible Technologies and came to the re-start of Social Media Club Seattle. Jack and Sean O’Driscoll run Ant’s Eye View a growing social media firm focused on communities and voice of the customer. They just announced today that Sean MacDonald formerly of Dell is joining them to head up business in Austin. Nice move both. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts Jake. Congrats on the growing success of the firm. We enjoy working with you guys.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

If you don’t know Chris you should. He’s a one man social media machine based here in Seattle. Recently, I was able to catch up with Chris during a Social Media Club Seattle event and get some of his thoughts on social and the where the space is headed. His Gnomedex conferences are infamous for the people and content he brings together. If you never been to one of them you should. Thanks for stopping by Chris.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies