Cymfony's Influence 2.0

Free Webinar - Connecting With Your "Citizen Marketers"

We are excited to host a free live webinar with Jackie Huba the author of the popular book “Citizen Marketers” on June 5th at 1pm Eastern. 

Jackie Huba will join Jim Nail on this live hour-long webinar to profile the people who create content, build communities and influence the opinions of many others.  They’ll discuss the motivations and actions of influential citizen marketers so you can learn what they are looking for from the companies they embrace and how they'd like to be treated.   This webinar will review how you can democratize your business to foster more of these influential brand advocates in social media.

Plus, if you become a citizen marketer for this event we’ll send you a free copy of the book “Citizen Marketers”

Register Today!

Technorati, Google and Influence 2.0

The blog world has been praising Technorati for their relaunch today. Google launched its Universal Search last week. Both events share a common impetus: the realization that the form of content is irrelevant to the searcher.

Technorati has done a nice job with the redesign -- if you haven’t seen it yet, take a look a look.  But the real changes here are much more significant. Your first page of results now includes listings from blogs, visual media and audio sites all on the same page. Tabs across the top let you drill down to view just posts, blogs, videos, photos, music and events.   

With this new approach, Technorati has acknowledged that social media is much bigger than blogs.  This move was foreshadowed back in April when Technorati’s David Sifry changed the name of his “State of the Blogosphere” report to the “State of the Live Web” to represent a wider array of rich social media content. 

You might also have seen the launch of Google’s new “universal search” redesign last week. Google is now blending content from their multiple databases, so with one search query you can now view results from their web archive, blogs, news, books, maps, local, etc.

Bringing together a wide variety of media forms that are relevant to a search is certainly a step in the right direction for these two companies. But it till falls short of users' needs. 

Technorati is still hoping people think “I need to check social media for that” when they are doing a search.  In addition, without any connection to the traditional media web, Technorati’s users are only looking at half the picture.

Google adds search across "traditional Internet" web archive with Google News. But each form of media is still siloed in a different tab. Google is giving you more options, but they are still forcing you to think about your search through a different lens each time. The onus is on the user to draw the connections between these disparate forms of data.

And none of them provide any view into the vast amount of offline data that, for all the growth of the Internet, still accounts for the vast amount of consumer media consumption.

While this may be sufficient for the average consumer looking for the best digital camera to buy, marketers and communications professionals who are trying to wrap their arms (and minds) around this exploding world of content still need more. They need help drawing connections between all the articles, posts, videos, and podcasts about their brands. They need to distill this into a holistic view of how their brand is perceived, how engaged consumers are with it, and what threats are in the wings to undercut it. They need to understand the paths this influence takes so they can allocate their budgets most effectively.

Just about a year ago, Cymfony launched our vision of the Influence 2.0 world where tradtiional and social media fluidly influence each other -- and consumers seamlessly mash-up bits of information with no regard to whether it is traditional or social; text, audio or video; a well-known media brand or the latest viral sensation.

We continue to expand on our vision of Influence 2.0, and it is a continuing work-in-progess as new types of media evolve and consumer behavior continues its evolution. We're glad to see these other leaders validate a principle that is at Cymfony's core!

iPods, Pacemakers, and a brewing crisis for Apple

A storm of coverage has erupted in the last 24 hours over reports that an iPod can cause a pacemaker to malfunction. Both the traditional media and social media are buzzing....

Mickey Khan of DMNews tipped me off to this story.

The first report appears to be in the Pioneer Press and then was quickly picked up by blog Ars Technica and is spreading globally to the UK, Germany, Australia, India. There are about 165 traditional media stories (as of noon eastern time) and about the same number of blog posts. And it is starting to rise on Digg, with 26 votes.

So far, no response on the Apple site (in fact the last press release about the iPod celebrates selling 100 million of the devices), either in the media info section or the support section.

I'll let you check out these stories and assess the facts behind it for yourself. This event raises some interesting questions that will play out in the next hours....

• Will this become the next example of the Influence 2.0 world damaging an iconic brand before it can organize a response?
• Or, as many bloggers suggest, is this no big deal because any electrical device can interfere with a pacemaker?
• Will Apple be forced to respond? If so, will their response make matters worse or reassure iPod lovers?

Stay tuned...

Free Webinar - Analysis of Aggressive Online Behavior Targeted at Companies

We’ve teamed with John Palfrey of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University to present the findings of a new study analyzing aggressive behavior targeted at companies in a free Webinar on May 16.

Ironically, the same social media technologies that strengthen your company’s relationship with consumers also make is easy for a single critic to mount an aggressive campaign against you.  To help our clients become better prepared to respond to an online attack, we worked with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University to analyze some of the most prolific online attacks against companies in recent memory.  This study profiles the three types of online aggressive behavior targeted at companies and summarizes the unique patterns, personal motivations and objectives of each.

Jim Nail and Harvard’s John Palfrey will discuss what drives corporate attacks so you can minimize the impact of an attack target at your company and keep it from building momentum and damaging your brand.  The Webinar will take place on May 16th at 12:00 Eastern and registration is free.

Everyone who attends will receive a free copy of the “Analysis of Aggressive Online Behavior” report and case studies.

Register Today!

New Podcast - How to Mine the Blogosphere

Paul Dunay, of Buzz Marketing for Technology, recently conducted a podcast on “How to Mine the Blogosphere” with our CMO, Jim Nail.  In this podcast, Jim gives advice on what companies should think about when looking at online conversations and includes examples of what companies like Sony and Wal-Mart are discovering in the process.