August 2009 Archives

I turned off the automatic tag posts from Delicious today. Murphy being on the job, the post linking to the recent New York Times article on sentiment analysis promptly got a comment when I did that—a good one, too. But the tag posts are gone. The list of recent posts was overrun with "links for [date]" entries, and I lost some email subscribers who were probably tired of them, too. So they're gone.

I'll continue to use Delicious; it's part of my publishing workflow, as well as my bookmarking service of preference. I'll also continue the practice of adding editorial content in the comments to my tags. Depending on the tag, these items will continue to appear on my web sites. If you want to see all of them, they're also available as an RSS feed.

I have some good stuff in the drafts folder. I really don't want it to be lost is a sea of links posts.

I don't know if this is one of the recognized corollaries of Murphy's Law, but I've long known that you can't game the system. If you count on Murphy to make something work out in the end, it won't.

Talking with a friend who is smart but outside of the bubble, I was surprised that one of my usual comments surprised her. If you really want to find all of the insights on social media that might be relevant to your business, you need to track down some closely related buzzwords: Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, community, and WOM.

These buzzwords aren't synonyms, but they're very closely related. Serious discussions of one tend to bring up the others. The catch is this: events, organizations, suppliers, and thought leaders tend to be aligned with one of them, so it's easy to miss significant contributions to the discussion if you focus on only one.

For those just learning social media, I usually recommend looking up some of these other topics. Here's why:

• Web 2.0
  This buzzword has dropped off the hype charts, but before social media caught on, people were thinking about many of the same trends under the Web 2.0 banner. Web 2.0 lives on in the 2.0 appended to so many buzzwords, such as...

• Enterprise 2.0
  Social media inside the firewall—that's E 2.0 in a nutshell. I realize the vision is a bit different, but the tools are the same, and those who start thinking about using social media inside their companies should know that a different group of thinkers is already on the case. We're seeing the realization that doing social media well (in business) and applying E 2.0 principles are closely related; Dachis Group's social business design construct is an early example of linking the trends.

• Community
  Who you're trying to connect with through social media. Emphasizes the strategy of connecting with people instead of the tools. Can you really talk about social media for more than ten minutes without using the word community?

• Word of Mouth
  What the marketer wants to encourage through social media. Go to a WOMMA meeting, and much of the talk is about WOM in social media.

Rather than debating the merits of a label or limiting ourselves to label-induced intellectual silos, let's focus on figuring out the concepts and making them work. The whole is way more interesting than the sum of the parts.

• 10 things you should cover in your social networking policy
  Interesting high-level outline.
  (tags: policy socialmedia corporate msm)
• Let me Show You Inside a Secret Blogging Alliance
  A group of bloggers work together to make each successful. Hmm.
  (tags: blogging)
• E-Reputation Market Map / Carte du marché de la e-Réputation
  Not just a list, a periodic table!
  (tags: socialmediaanalysis lists)

• Sentiment Analysis Takes the Pulse of the Internet
  I'm struck by the variety of terms used to describe this field and the different results from searching/tracking the variants. This NYT article doesn't include "brand monitoring," "listening," or "social media analysis" as it focuses on "sentiment analysis," but they're all more or less the same thing.
  (tags: socialmediaanalysis textanalytics)

• How to Target Users within Social Networks
  Using Google search to find users of specific networks with your keywords in their profiles.
  (tags: socialmedia search socialnetworking marketing)

• Master List (A Wiki of Social Media Monitoring Solutions)
  Interesting range of products listed here. Going through the list of web sites to figure each out is a bigger project than people realize, especially when they discover the actual size of the industry (~200 companies).
  (tags: socialmediaanalysis lists)

• Social Media Analytics Roundup
  Quick reviews of Radian 6, Techrigy SM2, TNS Cymfony, Trendrr, Overtone, Scout Labs.
  (tags: socialmediaanalysis reviews)
• The problem(s) with social media monitoring technologies
  That's one unimpressed client. He's helpfully provided a list of complaints that vendors can address for him.
  (tags: socialmediaanalysis reviews)

• Advertising's revenge of the nerds
  Quants taking over advertising? Includes profile of Ogilvy's stats operation.
  (tags: analytics)
• For Today’s Graduate, Just One Word - Statistics
  If you work in analytics--social media or otherwise--and your parents have trouble understanding what you do, send them this article.
  (tags: analytics statistics career socialmediaanalysis)
• Teens Don’t Tweet, or, How to Read a Web Panel
  Fred Stutzman on underanalyzing the data for a catchy headline.
  (tags: twitter research socialmedia)

• 7 Social Media Monitoring Tools Reviewed
  A quick look at several tools. Let the "you missed us" comments begin.
  (tags: reviews socialmediaanalysis)