Friday Roundup – Monitoring Social Media 09

The Monitoring Social Media 09 event this week was a 'standing-room-only' event. And I particularly enjoyed the presentations from Marshall Sponder, Giles Palmer, Brad Little and Katy Howell.

Here is a couple of points I made in my participation of the panel debating the future of social media monitoring.

Firstly, this sector will broaden its focus. I define social media as being a subset of the social Web, so the social Web = social media (blogs, facebook, twitter) + apps (tweetdeck, skype) + services (geo-location, social search) + the network (including the Internet of Things). Then things get really interesting!

Secondly, there are more than 70 vendors in this space, and commoditisation has effectively made data, indexing, simple analysis and pretty charts FREE. The conclusive step in this process will be Google's entry into social media monitoring, which I think might happen the first quarter of next year.

So what should you pay for? In short, great data visualisation, interpretation and insight, and the ease with which you can integrate this insight into your business processes and intelligence to improve your organisation's ability to hold the conversation and adapt and respond to market opportunities. I've started to refer to this as the ERPing of the social Web, and will mark the point at which this sector matures and becomes a competitive differentiator. The have's and have-not's will be plain to see.

I'm working with organisations to affect this change, and procuring the right service in the right way is just the start. The transition often demands organisational restructuring to converge the traditionally siloed marketing disciplines and agencies, and a review of the associated optimisation of budget allocation.

I'll leave you with this week's choice cuts. Best regards, Philip and the MarCom Professional team.

Hey B2B marketers: It's okay to have fun!

by David Meerman Scott of David Meerman Scott

Why is so much business-to-business marketing dreadfully boring?

I think it's because the marketers involved think "business" as in "I am marketing to a business" and this results in an overly serious tone. After all, if you are marketing to, say, technology companies that’s different than consumer marketing, right?

Wrong.

B2B marketers seem to forget that what all marketers need to do is communicate to people. People want to do business with people and the companies that understand that in the B2B world develop a following. More...

Don’t sync updates: different networks, different audiences (lessons from a 13-year old)

by Stephen Waddington of Speed Communications

I got an ear bashing from my 13 year old goddaughter this weekend. Why, she asked, do you keep posting nonsense on your Facebook news feed. It’s because I’ve synced my Twitter feed with my Facebook feed I explained. “Twitter?” she said. My Twitter network is made up of a different group of people from my Twitter network. Facebook is family, friends, mates from school, university and stalkers. Twitter is mainly people from my professional life.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s some crossover between the different networks. More...

How (and Why) I Squeeze Posterous Into My Day!

by Trevor Young PR Warrior of Parkyoung

I'm declaring my love right here, right now, for Posterous. Just sayin'.While I'm not generally prone to making sweeping statements about 'the next big thing' when it comes to new media, I reckon Posterous has a pretty bright future.

I'm reasonably active on Posterous (interestingly, I didn't really have as slow a start with it as I did with Twitter).

Given I blog regularly here (obviously!), here and here, I tweet quite often and regularly update my LinkedIn page (and to a much lesser extent Facebook) - do I need Posterous in my life right now?

I guess I don't. More...

Mini-Blog Experiment: IBM, MS, LSI and SGI

by Jon Carlson of LSI

This week, four big tech brands (IBM, Microsoft, LSI and Silicon Graphics) are experimenting w/a “mini-blog” while attending the Supercomputing Conference in Portland. Essentially, technology experts from each company agreed to blog “live” for four days only – a unique opportunity for the IT and data storage communities to join a dialogue w/business-critical technology providers. The target audience was narrow, the High Performance Compute (Supercomputing) a subset of the IT and data storage, data center segment. More...

Stephen Fry: celebs no longer need the press

by Mark Pinsent of Mark Pinsent

I'm not at the #140conf taking place in London today, so I didn't hear this firsthand, but it's been tweeted enough by people that are there that I think we can take it as fact.

UK Twitter poster child, Stephen Fry, just said something like: "Celebrities can cut out the press from their PR. We no longer need them. Why speak to a publication with a circulation of hundreds of thousands when I can speak to millions through my keyboard?"

I imagine it's a quote that'll get replayed a fair bit. More...

Twitter and Facebook could significantly change human health

by Graham Jones of Internet Psychology

What's the biggest breakthrough in human health in the last couple of hundred years do you reckon? Is it antibiotics? Or, perhaps, anaesthetics? Or what about scanner technology? In spite of these significant developments in human medicine, they are not as revolutionary in health terms as the installation of sanitation. Clean water supplies do more to change human health than anything else; much of the problems in "third world" nations can be put down to poor sanitation.

When seniors use onlince social networks they could well be improving their health  More...

eModeration's Social Round-up #13

by Tia Fisher of eModeration Blog

Welcome to eModeration's twice-weekly round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams (@emodkate).
This week: News Corp and Google; Twitter's wailing grumps; Britney's encounter with the Dark Side; and why Stephen Fry is like a giant St Bernard.

Check back soon!

THE HEADLINES  / THE LOWDOWN / IN OTHER NEWS / ON FACEBOOK / ON TWITTER / ON GOOGLE / BRANDS GET SOCIAL / UNDER THE GAVEL / SOCIAL STATS / ON MOBILE
/ VIRTUAL AND GAMES / THINKING

THE HEADLINES ... More...

The Golden Triangle

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

Source: ShutterstockPrior to keynoting the PACA conference in Miami, Maria Kessler, president of the PACA Association, asked me if I had read a recent post by Fred Wilson entitled “The Golden Triangle.” We were deep in conversation as I was seeking an alternate title for my next book that identifies the divide between brands, information, and consumers and how we can, as social architects and engineers, build the bridges between people, contextual relationships, and technology. While “The Golden Triangle” More...

Facebook is right on the button for safety

by Graham Jones of Internet Psychology

Children who get bullied online should rightly be protected; so too should adults who get "cyberbullied" as it is called. Today, though, a major row has erupted between the police and Facebook over a seemingly innocuous little "button" that helps people cope with online abuse. Jim Gamble, the CEO of the UK's "Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre" (CEOP), has been on radio and TV all day doing a good impression of "Mr Angry"; he has been very outspoken in his criticisms of Facebook in particular. More...

Making stuff up

by David Meerman Scott of David Meerman Scott

How do you market your company, products, and services?

Are you sitting around your comfortable offices with your colleagues just making stuff up? Or do you really understand your buyer personas and what problems they have that you can solve?

I share my thoughts on making "stuff" up in this short video.

Thanks to Stacy Melillo Spognardi at Cisco for asking the question that prompted this answer. I sat down with Stacy in my office (yes that's my crap you see in the background of the video). More...

On Twitter and Social Networks, Brands Benefit from Conversations

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

Source: ShutterstockA recent study revealed 20 percent of tweets published are actually invitations for product information, answers or responses from peers or directly by brand representatives. Now we learn that Twitter users are actively paying attention to brands on the popular information network.

According to research conducted by Performics and ROI Research, about half of Twitter users who were introduced to a brand on Twitter were compelled to search for additional information.

The companies studied the activity of 3,000 users of social networks in the U.S. More...

Are You Actively Promoting Your Email Copywriting Expertise? This is Why You Should…

by Matt Ambrose of The Copywriter's Crucible

It might be Facebook and Twitter getting all the attention these days. But there’s one old warhorse of internet marketing that continues to deliver real results – and that’s email. It might not be as sexy as its social media cousins. But email continues to be a reliable, trusty marketing tool for building relationships, delivering special offers and attracting website visitors.

And it’s popularity is set to grow.

According to a recent survey by Campaigner (an email marketing service provider) of 259 small firms: More...