Cymfony's Influence 2.0

Filtering Spam from Blog Analysis

Today Stephan Baker of Business Week mentioned a major problem that most people don’t realize can corrupt blog analysis. SPAM. Keeping spam out of analytics is one of the most important things we do for our clients. It’s the old maxim of garbage in garbage out. No content provider that we know of using everything from web scraping to RSS feed technologies can delete the majority of spam before they aggregate it and send it to analytics companies like Cymfony.

Instead of relying purely on search and filtering technologies, we rely on our own advanced content analysis technologies to eliminate spam BEFORE it gets into our analytics. I hope someone comes up with a clever way to eliminate the spam at the aggregation point because we’d rather spend our time developing great new analytics. But until that happens, we will continue fighting the battle at the engine level to ensure valid analytics for our clients.

Blogging on the College Campus

I visited my alma mater (Case Western Reserve University) last week to show my wife my old stomping grounds. There were a lot of physical changes to the campus, which were cool to see. But I also found out they recently started up a campus wide blogging system that hosts blogs for any student, faculty, staff and alumni. I think this is a great way for colleges to foster a sense of community and encourage discussion and interaction between students. I'm excited that the university *I* attended is at the forefront of promoting the use of blogs.

When I got back home, I did some basic google searching to see if other universities are doing similar things with blogs. I noticed some schools like Oklahoma Christian University and the University of Waterloo seem to use blogs as a promotional tool for prospective students. They only have links to a handful of student blogs to "give you an inside look" at the lives of "real students". I don't think this use of blogging is helpful because most prospective students will probably be skeptical and think these students are being paid to post and/or are restricted in what they can post, especially if it's criticism of the universtiy.

Schools like Case Western Reserve University, University of Minnesota, Seton Hill University, and the University of South Florida are using blogging in the right way by promoting openness and community. These schools' blog systems allow anyone to create blogs and also aggregate blog entries so that users can see what was recently posted and what the most popular discussions are.

How can this be useful to marketers? Especially for the retailers and service providers local to those campuses, they can use these university blog systems to get a great sense of what the needs of those students are and thus, be more responsive and relevant to them. For example, if students start talking more about how there isn't good Indian food available within walking distance, a local Indian restaurant might respond by offering delivery service to the campus.

Tracking Rumors: Starbucks Can’t Stop the Chatter But They Can Impact the Discussion

The beauty about the Internet is that helpful information can be shared so quickly and easily and the nightmare of the Internet is that bad information is often shared even faster. Last night I was reading blog posts about Hurricane Katrina from people like Ernie the Attorney who were stuck in the middle of the storm and random posts by people all over the country who were sharing tidbits of stories about rescues, lost animals and even computerless orphans going through withdrawal. It’s hard to know what was true and what wasn’t but I wanted to get a sense of what real people thought about the hurricane rather than the news reporters.

I also spent some time seeing if I could dig up some tidbits on Iraq to get some insight on what my nephew, a U.S. Marine, might be experiencing at the moment. This is a daily routine for me when he is deployed. About once per week, I also visit the family support group site for my nephew’s marine helicopter unit to see if there are any new messages or photos from other family members or occasionally from the commander. I was surprised to see that the main post was about the Starbucks hoax that has been spreading around since May 2004. I thought that rumor had been debunked by now but it showed up last week on the group message board and outraged many already stressed marine spouses and family members from across the US.

Fortunately for Starbucks, the webmaster investigated the post that claimed that Starbucks refused to send coffee to the marines in Iraq because they were against the war and found that it was not true.This situation once again underscores the need for companies to constantly monitor discussions about their brands in order to diffuse potentially damaging situations. I applaud the webmaster of the site for investigating the story on her own time (this is a volunteer site) and communicating with Starbucks to find out the truth. But not every company is going to have the good fortune to be contacted by concerned webmasters and bloggers. In most cases, negative comments about brands get spread quickly on hearsay just like the original complaint against Starbucks was.

Word of Mouth vs. Advertising - WOMMA Style

As a member of WOMMA I've been asked to promote it's upcoming event on Word of Mouth vs. Advertising.  Here's the info if interested. WOMMA kindly arranged for "Friends of Cymfony" to receive a $50.00 discount - just enter the code: cymfonyisawesome (and no, I didn't create the code but I think it's another fun and creative tactic by the folks at WOMMA). 

Measuring the Effectiveness of Spokespeople

As a contributor to PRWeek's ToolBox section (subscription required), I'm often asked to answer PR related questions for the publication in 200 words or less.  I submit my answer which is then often edited down even more to fit in the allocated space.  Since the Q&A is not run in the form originally submitted I thought I'd share some of the more recent Q&A here.  Recently, I was asked if there is a way to tell if a company spokesperson is being effective.  (I did address this question in an article and posted on it here few months ago.)

It is important to any organization to continually gauge whether your spokesperson can communicate your key messages effectively for a business or trade reporter, just as the spokesperson is able to communicate with a potential investor, customer or prospect.

Does your spokesperson's message evolve as your audience changes? A critical part of the spokesperson's role is the ability to convey the company's vision with enthusiasm and credibility, in a convincing and dynamic manner to meet the needs of the audience.

For all companies looking to build or enhance their brand, it is important to have an effective spokesperson who can communicate the company message, values and goals. It is also critical to accurately measure your spokespersons effectiveness in delivering the company's messages. Tracking how well your messages are being communicated will help you determine how well your messages are resonating in editorial coverage and in the minds of consumers and corporate decision-makers.

Status, respect and effectiveness of the spokesperson are often tied to exposure to the media. To measure effectiveness, track the number of quotes attributed to key executives or spokespeople at a company. Are they consistently on message with the company's objectives? Do they have something to say that's been picked up by many publications?

Being concise and staying on message is a skill spokesperople need to learn.  As a measurement of this, track the number of quotes and messages and determine if the coverage was positive or negative if possible.  That way spokespeople can benchamark their effectiveness in communicating the company message through direct quotes.  There are additional benchmarks you can set up as well as tools you can use to gain a deeper and broader analysis of effectiveness.

Blog Bits - Week of August 22nd

A new survey, by Jupiter Research, has information on blog, RSS and podcast demographics.  Micro Persuasion's Rubel points out some interesting stats from this survey including the average consumer of blogs, RSS feeds and podcasts is male, earns big buck and, in the case of podcasts, is younger and 30% of companies with $50 million or more in annual revenue have deployed RSS feeds while 28% intend to offer them within the year.   

Thinking of a redesign?  Normally when you hear that word you think of home, office or even web redesign.  With today's booming blog industry, blog redesign is now a new option.  Blog Business World's Wayne Hurlbert addresses this concept by taking a look into his good friend Tony Bloomberg's recent blog redesign of her blog Diva Marketing.  Bloomberg used advice from Peter Flaschner of The Blog Studio, along with her own redesign expertise, to come up with a new look that is "smart, professional, modern and a little playful."  Hurlbert now wonders what effect this redesign will have on the blog.  Will it gain new and larger numbers of readers, will it change the content focus of the blog and you always have to consider will it cause current readers to loose interest?  It will be interesting to see how the concept of blog redesign progresses and how many blogs will follow in Bloomberg's footsteps.

BL Ochman is the panel moderator for "Building Brands through Blogging" at The Power of Blogs seminar.  This seminar, put on by Thirdway, is September 13, 2005.  The discussion will cover topics such as who should blog, how to build a blog audience, how to monitor blogs and more. 

Blog Analytics and Stat Services All in One Place

I stumbled on an informative post today about blog analytics by Brad Feld over at Feld Thougths.  Brad is assembling a list of all the tools you can use to measure a blog.  Now this is much different from measuring a blog for content or intelligence - he is looking purely for stats to measure site visits, click throughs, etc. for trending, which of course is extremely important for marketers.  Since I found these so helpful to have in one place I'm posting them here. Following is the list of the services mentioned:

• FeedBurner: Core RSS feed and page view metrics
• AWStats: Core page view metrics
• Google AdSense: Page views by channel, ad click throughs
• Amazon: Online purchase metrics
• Bloglet: Email subscribers - Correction - Brad recently switched to Feedblitz, check out the comments section of this post for more info from Phil.
• MyBlogLog: Outbound link tracking
• MeasureMap: Inbound / outbound link tracking (in alpha)
• Technorati: More link tracking
• Feedster: Even more link tracking

Other services mentioned to enhance a blog which collect (or generate) other stats:

• Amazon: Reading Now, Read Recently, Toy of the Month
• Jinzora: Listening Now
• Word of Blog: Promoting Now
• MyBlogLog: Outbound link tooltip
• FeedBurner: FeedCount (subscriber count), BuzzBoost (republish Mobius PR feed)
• NewsGator: Subscribe button
• Bloglet: Email subscribers
• Google: Search on blog
• Page Two: My random page where I play with stuff until I put it in production

Blogs Amplify Issues and the Media is Listening

There has been a lot of talk lately about Dell’s very delayed response to Jeff Jarvis’s complaints about quality and service on his blog as well as Google’s dogmatic reaction to CNET to cut them off from executives when a journalist Googled their CEO Eric Schmidt to reveal personal information found by their own search engine. (see David Kirkpatrick's coverage of Google in Fortune) Both topics were discussed in blogs actively as soon as the events happened but the stories gained tremendous traction once the traditional media picked them up. I’m including online news publications in this group as they are usually setting high journalistic standards for research and reporting. Marketing and PR people who don’t already get the importance of keeping a constant eye on digital discussions about their own companies need to understand the impact of citizen journalists and everyday bloggers to story development.

For some reason, many large companies with otherwise savvy marketing communications departments seem to have forgotten three key points about the media:

1. the media plays a major role in communicating key corporate information and issues to consumers, employees and investors
2. the media does research before they publish, seeking to find the balance in each story and
3. the media often relies on coverage from other media professionals to understand the strength of a story and to enhance their knowledge of an issue that may be used to extend their own stories.

Professional journalists are trained to investigate issues and uncover problems. The blogosphere provides extensive data and unique perspectives that journalists can use to enrich their own research. Citizen journalists and professional communicators who happen to be bloggers may not investigate the validity of all blog posts to the extent that a journalist will but they often uncover and reveal sources through their connections. In turn, professional journalists research these sources and report on those that pass their journalistic standards, often crediting citizen journalists as individuals or enmasse for contributing to the development of the story. Dan Gillmor who is both a professional journalist and a long-time active blogger explains the relationship of blogging to journalism in his excellent book We the Media.

The symbiotic nature of the blogosphere is good for journalism and for consumers. It’s good for big business too. Most large, highly visible companies, including Dell and Google, do understand the power of their brands. I believe this is true of their product evangelists as well as their accountants. I'm sure they have carefully calculated the importance of satisfying customers to grow their businesses and retain customers. So I don’t buy the argument that they don’t care at all about quality or negative brand perception even if they’ve been slow to understand the power of the blogosphere. I do think they failed to include the blogosphere in their calculation of the key influences on brand perception and customer satisfaction. I hope other companies can learn from this.

Fortunately, there are companies like Microsoft and Sun that have been vocal cheerleaders for how incredibly valuable the blogosphere can be as a tool to build and improve customer relationships. I encourage all marketers to look seriously at how these companies constantly seek to listen to online discussions and engage with customers and detractors rather than shy away from issues. Listening does not eliminate issues, but it does give the company the opportunity to show their concern to the consumer and potentially keep them as a happy client. We all know that happy clients are the best salespeople.

Blogs: The Pet Rock of the Internet or Real Value?

Steve Strauss, USA Today.com's "Ask the Expert" guy was recently asked by Allisha from Arizona if blogs are just a trendy new thing, the pet rock of the Internet.  Not surprising, Steve replied that blogs do seem to be the flavor of the month....but sometimes trendy is okay.  What I liked about this piece is that Steve went on to give some concrete examples of what businesses can do with a blog. 

Here's what Steve had to say about the value of starting a blog:

•Strengthen relationships: Online it is far harder to get your personality across than it is in the real world. But because a blog allows you to wax poetic about subjects of your choice in your voice, it allows customers and potential customers to get to know you better.

•Build your brand: Your blog is your voice and your words. It allows you to directly convey the image you want people to have of your business without having to go through the cost and diffusion that advertising and marketing require. The values that define your business and brand can, and should, be incorporated into your business blog.

•Improve customer service: You can use your blog to keep customers informed of important events, sales, deadlines, and so forth. You can answer customers' questions or provide valuable links to related products and services.

• Increase employee awareness: An internal blog can be used to post schedules, make announcements, crack a joke, etc.

•Build your reputation: Blogging is an inexpensive marketing tool that permits you to position yourself as an expert in your field. If your blog provides cutting-edge analysis or information for people in your industry, your reputation grows in direct proportion to that.

•Bump your search engine rankings: Blogs that allow reader responses (and many do) create Web pages with valuable key words. This in turn can increase your search engine rankings.

I would also suggest that a blog can serve as a great tool to test new ideas and offer opinions that can help guide future business decisions and strategy. 

At the same time, starting a blog is not for every one or every business.  Blogs can be very time consuming and a huge commitment to keep up. But at the very least being aware of what is going on and what is being said in the blogosphere is important for almost any business. 

Heading to Miami this October? PRSA International Conference Info

With summer coming to an end, the busy conference season is in full force.  The PRSA 2005 International Conference is October 22^nd-25^th, 2005 and is definitely worth looking into.  This year’s conference “Many Beats – One Rhythm: Creating Harmony Through PR” is being held in Miami, FL at the Fontainebleau Resort and is a wonderful way to mix and mingle with fellow PR professionals as well as learn about the latest PR trends, strategies and issues. 

A great line up of keynote speakers includes best-selling author and Newsweek columnist, Anna Quindlen, CNN Founder and Chairman of Turner, Inc, Ted Turner and Chairman & CEO of Loews Hotels, Jonathan M. Tisch.  Some of this year’s workshops include:  Improving Reputation Management Through Measurement, Why Metrics and Measurement are Crucial PR Tools and two workshops which Andrew Bernstein, CEO Cymfony, will be featured as a panelist – The New Realm of Digital Influencers:  The Importance of Analyzing Consumer Generated Media and Your Reputation Isn’t Yours.

September 9^th is the deadline for early-bird registration.  You can register here. 

Blog Bits - Week of August 15

By being a member of WOMMA, John Moore of Brand Autopsy was able to get his hands on a preview copy of THE BIG MOO by Seth Godin. Moore comments that this “breezy” read is a compilation of 72 short stories contributed by 32 business thinkers to encourage us to remarkabalize whatever it is we do. What is THE BIG MOO you ask? Godin says, “A big moo is the extreme purple cow, the remarkable innovation that completely changes the game. Yes, a purple cow is what you need, but the big moo goes a step further. In order to grow at the pace the markets demand, you and your colleagues must find the big moo, the insight that is so astounding that people can’t help but remark on it.” 

Not only can blogging help companies know more about their customers, blogging can do the inverse and let customers get to know a company. Blog Business World’s Wayne Hurlbert stresses the importance of blogging in Relationship Marketing. Hurlbert points out that the first step in relationship marketing is instead of trying to sell a product or service immediately, let the customer get to know and trust you first. “People buy from people they know and trust.” By creating a blog for your company, customers are able to get to know your business on a more personal level. As they continue to read about your company’s daily activities, advice, etc., they will begin to feel like part of the company and become more compelled to do business with you. Hurlbert also recognizes that a blog will not only help with building relationships with new customers but will help keep current customers up to date as well.

 

Having trouble with e-mail marketing? A study of 175 retailers, conducted by Silverpop, reveals that a few simple changes to marketers e-mail practices can help them beat their competitors. MarketingVox gives some details of this study including statistics on how companies are retrieving e-mail and contact information and how giving e-mail registrants a choice of material they’d like to receive helps reduce opt-outs.

 

Mmmmmmmm. Bubblicious……..

There’s a lot of talk about bubbles floating about. There’s the housing bubble (with its new mascot, Mr. Housing Bubble), there’s the blog bubble, and now, with the recent funding of Podshow and Odeo, enter the the podcast bubble.

Please forgive me. I must be missing something. While I do understand the desire to expand into audio blogging, or perhaps more specifically citizen created collaborative radio, I just don’t get the pocast thing. Yes, it’s a audio program delivered via a feed. Um. Okay. I could get mp3 files of a show e-mailed to me too. Hasn’t Audible been around since, um, 1997? It’s not exactly revolutionary, or for that matter, even evolutionary.

iPods, in their current incarnations, are a stop-gap solution. They’re means of addressing the lack of connectivity we experience when we leave our desks. But as the next generation of wireless technology grows up (be it Wi-Max, 4G, etc.), locally stored content will increasingly give way to on-demand streaming. Podcasting isn’t really a step in this direction. If anything, it’s largely a step backwards, removing the interactivity of the network.

That said, since everyone’s doing it, I’ll be launching podiansolutions.com next week, and accepting venture funding soon after.

Data Without Insight Can Be Dangerous

I love data and colorful charts but data without insight can be dangerous, especially to the marketer. Every day we are bombarded with new studies, survey results and benchmark reports intended to shed light on industry trends and consumer opinion. Through the wonders of excel, photoshop and sophisticated reporting tools, our eyes are enticed to glance quickly across charts of rolled up data to look for meaningful indicators of success or failure – or simply for clues to meaning. The goal of the marketer is usually to provide a persuasive argument for or against an idea, requiring the viewer to spend the least amount of time possible reflecting on the data. But fancy charts should not replace the need for really digging into the data to understand the comments and opinions provided by real people about their real desires and issues.

Quick trend charts showing who the hottest movie stars are might be interesting for about two seconds. But are the charts really meaningful? How do you know if the data represents the opinions of moviegoers? How do you know if the data represents micro trends indicating shifting momentum in box-office appeal? Any marketer who relies only on summary data and trend charts to make important decisions about their marketing mix or even about a single promotional campaign could easily get blindsided.  It’s critical to understand the data at a more granular level, segmenting information by geographic, psychographic or demographic views and getting down to real comments to expose what your customers and prospects really care about.

The New York Times does a nice job of presenting data clearly in both static and interactive graphic formats. They don’t always use clever design techniques to illustrate the data but they always present the information organized in an easy-to-consume style for non data gurus with just enough commentary to make the data meaningful.

As an example, on August 14^th, the Times published a series of lists showing the most popular choices for the past week in categories such as DVD rentals, music downloads and broadcast programs. While these lists are interesting they don’t tell us that much, except perhaps to reinforce the impact of advertising blaring 24x7 to promote short-term excitement. What is more informative is the commentary next to the lists highlighting Google’s significant share increase in the local search market over Yahoo! If the reader simply looked at data showing overall market share, they would have missed this important data point that may be influential to marketers trying to increase their own visibility in local markets.

Digging into the data and understanding what is meaningful and interesting is critical to determining what to focus on and what effect marketing strategies may have on customer retention, consumer perception or revenue generation within target demographic and geographic segments. Marketers can also be more effective in communicating their strategies and effectiveness to the CEO, CFO and the top executives of their clients by showing data represented in the form of benchmarks, performance trends and expected ROI that support company objectives and are correlated to revenue and growth goals. By applying key insights to the most important charts, the marketer can reinforce their point very effectively in a presentation that retains its meaning when left behind on the CEO's desk or at a client site.

For data enthusiasts who want to learn how to create information rich, yet easy to understand charts and graphics, I recommend spending some time on Edward R. Tufte’s website. Tufte has been called "The Leonardo da Vinci of data." by The New York Times. While the skills required to create similar beautiful designs may take years, Tufte's principles of visual design can be understood and applied by any marketer or business analyst to improve communication both within their company and to their customers.

How will marketers dig themselves out of the megapixel hole?

As an amateur photographer and gadget geek, it's been frustrating to see digital camera marketers continue to focus so much attention on megapixels as the primary determiner of a camera's quality or capabilities. Yes, it's the job of technical marketing people to somehow simplify the descriptions of complex gadgets to make them appealing to the masses and by all means, they've been successful as digital has made film obsolete sooner than most expected. However, they've dug themselves into a megahole that will be interesting to see how they get out of.

For the past year or two, as megapixel counts on cameras have become ridiculously large, there's been increasing activity on message boards, blogs and mainstream media about how megapixels don't really matter. For example, the Canon PowerShot SD500, a very compact point-and-shoot camera, has the capability of taking photos with a whopping 7 megapixel resolution. There are only two cases in which people would need that sort of resolution: 1) if they regularly make poster-sized prints of their images and 2) if they regularly take photos of small objects from miles away that need to be cropped. From knowing many casual and hobby photographers, these type of people probably make up only 1% of the population (and that's being generous).

Digital camera marketers are in the same hole that CPU manufacturers have been in for the past two years in facing the megahertz myth. When the criteria you use as your primary selling point doesn't work anymore, how do you get people to buy new products?

Hopefully, they've been monitoring the conversations online about what people want from future generations of digital cameras, but digital camera manufacturers need to do more than just give people what they think they want. They need to determine sustainable criteria for what actually makes a camera "good" and convince people that's what they really want.

As a camera enthusiast, here's my wish list for future generations of digital cameras:

1) Instead of cramming more pixels on the same sized image sensor, figure out a way to put larger sensors in the smaller cameras. This will inherently allow cameras to take photographs in low light conditions without a flash. Yay, less "deer caught in the headlights" shots! This will also inherently give people the capability of taking those nice "professional" looking foreground-in-focus with blurry background pictures which are only currently possible on digital SLRs.
2) Improve auto white balance technology. Do a lot of your photographs tend to come out with a blueish tint or yellowish tint? This is because your camera improperly guessed the white balance settings needed for that shot.
3) Improve metering technology. Less under and overexposed pictures, please.
4) Less zoom, faster lens. What? "Less" zoom? Yes, lenses with longer zoom ranges require more light. Most amateur and pro photographers would agree that, in general, having lenses that require less light (which requires smaller zoom ranges or no zoom at all) is preferable to having 10x lenses. Trust us, zoom is overrated.
5) System for making it trivial to match color settings for your monitor and your printer so that even your grandma can make the photos printed at home look just as good (or even better) than those from the photo lab.

Yes, many of the enhancements on my wish list are less quantifiable than megapixels but that's why I am not a marketing person. :)

Blog Bits - Week of August 8th

Andrew Lark points to an interesting post on ProBlogger discussing SEO for Bloggers.  Darren Rowse is often asked “How do I get ranked number 1 in {insert favorite search engine?}” Over the next week, Darren is going to share 20 SEO tips for bloggers.  Each tip will be posted on 31 days to building a better blog.   

Steve Rubel takes us to a comical presentation on “If bloggers had been around throughout history.”  The presentation put together by Six Apart takes you through six historical scenarios with a blogging twist! 

Don’t miss Advertising Week September 26^th-30^th in NYC.  Adrants discusses, from the Ad Week press release, some of this year’s keynotes/panels including The Creatives on Broadway, Madison Avenue Legends, Dynamic Duos and Global Conversation 2005.  Be sure to also check out Cymfony CEO, Andrew Bernstein, on September 26^th as a panelist at Forecast 2006, which is a featured part of the second annual Ad Week.

I know who you are.

Yes. You. That's right. The person reading this right now. I know who you are......... and wouldn't you like a new shirt? The one you have on is looking kind of dated.

Okay, so I don't really know who you are (and I'm sure your shirt is very nice). But I do know your IP address, and from that can likely find out where you live or work, your demographics, and very possibly your name, address, phone number, social security number, and a few other lovely tidbits. I mention this after reading endlessly about identity theft, and more recently, reading this article in Wired, talking about Google's decision to blacklist C-Net after one of their reporters use.....you guessed it....Google, to discover some personal information about Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO. Apparently this displeased Mr. Schmidt, and he ordered that no one at Google should talk to C-Net until mid 2006. The irony too juicy to ignore, the story quickly became national news.

Which all brings me to by greater point, privacy, or rather, the lack their of. In my own line of work, I often hear people ask, "how can we find out if our employees are blogging?" or "how can we tell if our employees are saying something bad about us?" While I'd be willing to help people find on a macro level if their employees are satisfied, I try to discourage anyone from using that information to go after individuals, from piercing the veil of Internet pseudo-anonymity, and would actually refuse to do so. It's bad PR for them, bad PR for us, and all-around bad practice. That said, with tens of thousands of firms scanning people's e-mails and listening to their phone calls, I know not everyone shares my beliefs, or at least, my morality. With information becoming more pervasive, and access to that information democratizing, there's an almost inevitable march towards the ability to find out most anything about most anyone. Anonymity, and in particular anonymity through obscurity, will all but disappear. The only way to stop this would be very strict laws, with accompanying strict penalties, for data leaks and information sharing, but unintended consequences aside, that's the opposite direction of the one in which we're headed.

I suppose we might as well get used to it.

The Power of Social Networks (and Blogs) to Stimulate Social Change

A single blog by itself has very little influence. It's the communal element of blogging, enabled by features such as pingbacks, trackbacks, and just simple linking, that really makes blogging a powerful force.

The study of social networking has become extremely popular as blogging and message boards have become prominent elements of our web experience. I believe blogging is the enabling technology that will make loosly-tied social networks the predominant form of social change in the near future, replacing traditional civic organizations and lobby groups. Social networks (largely empowered by blogs and other CGM) have the potential to have much more influence than simply ruin Kryptonite locks' reputation--I believe they have the power to cause fundamental shifts in society and even overthrow governments.

Lately, I've been reading the book Urban Tribes by Ethan Watters. (I think it's required reading for anyone who wants to understand the changing nature of the urban 20 to 30-something young adult demographic.) In it, there's a segment that talks about the potential impact of loosely-tied social networks and makes the argument that it was the driving force behind the fall of the Berlin Wall and thus communism throughout Eastern Europe. There were no well-organized rebel movements because they were legally prohibited in those nations. The independence movements spread largely by word-of-mouth through people who weren't close friends but somehow were connected to each other.

We can see the influence of social networks had even before the age of the Internet. Blogging has empowered social networking in a way that can encourage the spread of ideas in a split second (or however fast your internet connection is).

Use your blog to communicate your ideas on how to make this world a better place. Increase the size of your social network by engaging in conversations on other blogs and use trackbacks and linking as much as possible (without being obnoxious of course). :) I think we'll see this having a much greater impact than anyone would have ever expected.

Behaviors of the Blogosphere

Yesterday comScore Networks with co-sponsors Six Apart and Gawker Media released the "first of its kind" research on blogger behavior.   Along with Rick Bruner, director of research for DoubleClick, comScore developed a list of the top 400 blog domains, based on lists maintained by services including Daypop, Blogdex, Technorati, and more than 14,000 sites listed on TruthLaidBear.  Futher analysis of the traffic of thousands of blogs identified 350 top blog sites and blog networks.  The analysis also included large weblog hosting services, including Blogspot, Xanga, TypePad and others, which represent millions of blog sites.  The methodology outlined in the report explained that the visitors and visit counts are projected estimates for the entire U.S. Internet population based on the panel samples. (Bruner clarifies some of the finer points of the methodology here.) This 11 page report (PDF) is well worth the time to check out.

Key findings include:

• 50 million US Internet users visited blog sites in Q1 2005.  That is roughly 30% of all US Internet users and 1 in 6 of the total US pop.
• Five hosting services for blogs each had more than 5 million unique visitors in that period, and four individual blogs had more than 1M visitors each.
• Of 400 of the biggest blogs observed, segmented by seven (nonexclusive) categories, political blogs were the most popular, followed by "hipster" lifestyle blogs, tech blogs and blogs authored by women.
• Compared to the average Internet user, blog readers are significantly more likely to live in wealthier households, be younger and connect to the Web on high-speed connections.
• Blog readers also visit nearly twice as many web pages as the Internet average, and they are much more likely to shop online.

The study incidentally is called Behaviors of the Blogosphere: Understanding the Scale, Composition and Activities of Weblog Audiences.  Nick Denton, publisher of Gawker Media shares his views of the research here.

blogging Marketing

Traditional, CGM Playing an Important Role in Measuring Corporate Reputation

The New York Times published an article from the AP today entitled "Companies Using Tech Analysis on Themselves". Included in the piece is an example of how NACCO Industries, a manufacturer of truck lifts and replacement parts, is using automated analysis of unstructured data to detect flaws in parts.  The technology can look as NACCO's service records and other data as well as consumer discussion online in the form of blogs, message boards and e-commerce sites.  As the AP writes, if NACCO's cargo-vehicle division can detect common problems and fix them in the manufacturing process, it can save millions on warranty claims. 

Not only can NACCO save money by fixing problems before they become widespread - they can also help in managing the company's corporate reputation.  And as marketers and communications professional know, one of the most important intangible assets not directly linked to the bottom line financial is corporate reputation.  Cymfony's own technology, InfoXtract combines information retrivel, information extraction and natural language processing (NLP) technologies to help our customers identify important entities, concepts, relationships and events in documents.   

The way a company, its brands, CEO or corporate representatives are perceived play a significant role in increasing or decreasing company value.  Cymfony believes companies need to place specific measurement parameters around corporate reputation to help monitor this value -- ultimately to help adjust PR and marking strategy to the specific needs of a company.  It is important for companies to have a comprehensive monitoring and analysis system of all news media whether it is traditional or consumer generated. 

Even though this sounds self-serving for a blog post, even a corporate blog post, I'm going to say it anyway - at this time Cymfony is the only firm currently offering NLP-assisted analytics for both mainstream media and consumer generated media.  Okay, enough of the pitch for today.

Blog Bits - Week of August 1st

Earlier this week, the success of the Blogher 2005 conference was posted on our blog.  Jay Rosen of Pressthink also posted on this conference.  Rosen includes his notes on the conference which discuss the following:

1)      Making a conversation public – the reasons behind weblogging

2)      The Technorati Top 100

3)      Suggestions for making the top 100 list “more useful”

4)      Citizen Journalism

5)      The Blogging 101 Workshop session on flaming and anger online

6)  Fears assoicated with Blogging

B.L. Ochman promotes her e-report “What Could Your Company Do With a Blog?” on Whatsnextblog.com.   The report is on how companies are using blogs for marketing and PR success and includes topics such as:  Do you really need one, where should you start and how can you build an audience for a blog?

Are you keeping up with the growing blogosphere? PR Machine reports on a recent  survey by Netcraft that found that in July there was a 2.76 million gain of host names over June.  According to Netcraft this was due to "the explosive growth of weblogs, a growing number which are purchasing domains for branding purposes.

What's the PR Payoff?

Can PR drive sales? More to the point, can that be measured? In a recent article published at Sam Whitmore's Media Survey, Mirapoint CMP Bethany Mayer extolled SHIFT Communications and its commitment to measuring PR's effect on product sales. SHIFT's LeadSensor service "helps me justify money for programs because if a program does well from a lead-conversion perspective, I get more budget for that program," Mayer told me. Mayer signed up for the service when she ran marketing for Vernier Networks, too.

Predictably, this article raised some response in the PR community. One respondent said that building a company's valuation can be vitally important in justifying PR spend. Another said that "lead gen" is a narrow metric, not broadly useful for charting strategy.

Personally, I think that PR agencies -- especially those serving tech clients -- are in for severe pricing pressure. Many of these tech vendors already are asking for "measurement" of their agency's performance. Do you understand what "measurement" means in this context? What does that word mean to you?

RSS 101 for Marketers

Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li shares her insights from two recent reports on RSS for marketers: "RSS 101 for Marketers" and "Using RSS as a Marketing Tool"

The executive summary for "RSS 101 for Marketers" is described as:

In Forrester's February 2005 Marketer Online Survey, 57% of marketers said that they were interested in using Really Simple Syndication (RSS) as a marketing channel. Why the interest when just 2% of North American online adults use RSS? The combination of reduced email marketing effectiveness and growing consumer advertising backlash drives marketers to test RSS — from creating their own feeds to putting ads into RSS feeds themselves. This report introduces who uses RSS in North America and the implications of RSS adoption. The second report in the series looks at best practices for marketers using RSS.

And the exective summary for "Using RSS as a Marketing Tool" is explained as:

Despite its resemblance to the Wild West, best practices for how marketers can use Really Simple Syndication (RSS) are already emerging. In this second of two reports, Forrester outlines why marketers should experiment with RSS, especially marketers with customers who fit the profile of early RSS adopters. Even if it's something as simple as putting press releases in an RSS feed, marketers will benefit from early exposure to distributing information via RSS — and receive valuable feedback from key constituents on what types of content they would like to have.

While the first summary reveals that only 2% of American households use RSS, Charlene reminds us on her blog that this number doesn't include all the people who may be using RSS (for example, through My Yahoo!) and don't realize it. Also that young consumers between the ages of 12-21 were more likely to be using RSS -- 5% of online young consumers say they use RSS. 

In the comments section of Charlene Li's blog, Lockergnome's RSS & Atom Tips points out what I was thinking, that "this data, although based on a survey of 68,000 households, is highly contradictory to other available research of RSS usage, especially the 12% figure from Jupiter Research and the PEW research, which shows that 9% of Americans online have a good idea of what RSS is."  Regardless, I suspect this number is only expected to grow by the end of 2005 and as marketers understand the value.

Jeremy Pepper does a great job summarizing these reports (for PR as well) here.

Blog Tracking by Industry

Name an industry that is not blogging these days?  I can't think of one. WebproNews.com contributing writer Tinu Abayomi Paul shares RSS and Blog marketing tips for Real Estate.  And here's a press release on how prescription blogs are helping to educate consumers on prescription consumption - granted it's a tactic by the company to promote it's ecommerce prescription Web site (and I am in no way promoting this site) but it's still interesting to see how the mere mention of consumer opinions coming from blogs are being used to raise awareness of a company. 

This raises a good point - companies need to be tracking online consumer-generated media as well as traditional media by industry (when possible).  Just analyzing your own company, competitiors and brands may not always be enough. By taking a closer look at a specific industry, companies can discover the next hot trend, issues that are bubbling up or who is being associated with their company or brand.  Take the food and beverage industry for example... 

Earlier this year, Cymfony conducted an analysis of the "low XX craze" in the food and beverage industry.  The analysis tracked the last 10 years of low calorie, low fat and low carb in traditional media coverage.  As one would expect, media coverage of diets shifted significantly, with low-fat and low-calorie mentions remaining steady or slightly in decline, as low-carb mentions rose sharply over the last few years.  We decided to take a closer look at the light beer industry, specifically tracking the launch of "low carb" beer.  Cymfony examined the following brands:

• Amstel Light
• Aspen Edge
• Bud Light
• Coors Light
• Corona Light
• Michelob Light
• Michelob Ultra
• Miller Light
• Rock Green Light

And once again, as expected, the coverage of light beers has been relatively in line with their respective market shares. However, Michelob Ultra - launched as a premium, low-carb beer by Anheuser-Busch - captured a disproportionate degree of coverage since it was introduced.  And while coverage for Micelob Ultra to a certain extent replaced coverage for Michelob Light, instead of eating into media presence of Bud Light, it took away from the mentions of its main competitors, Miller Lite and Coors Light. 

The most surprising discovery of this analysis is that prior to the introduction of Michelob Ultra as a low-carb beer and others marketing themselves to that effect, Miller Lite owned 41% percent of the media share in 2000.  By the end of 2004, its coverage dropped to only 26% percent.  If Miller Lite had been looking at the industry and low carb, they may have been able to shift marketing or messaging earlier on to capitalize on this trend. 

First Blog Conference for Women Smashing Success

The inaugural BlogHer Conference took place over the weekend on the west coast.  Check out a grouping of all the live posts from the event here.  Congratulations to the organizers Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort and Jory DesJardins (and female bloggers everywhere as well as the male supporters) for such a successful event.  The San Francisco Chronicle even published a front page article noting that the conference maxed out its capacity with 300 registrants, 85 percent women with half of them hailing from outside the Bay Area and a few coming from as far as Europe. 

On a side note, Forbes.com came out with the world's most powerful women's list on Friday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hitting number 1 for the second straight year.  Hmmm, I wonder if any of them will take up blogging?  Maybe not, but I predict next year's conference will attract an even wider audience.  Better start looking for a bigger room. 

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