Balance is always a difficult thing to achieve. Whilst the digerati sometimes look down their noses at the masses, much like bankers once did in financial times of yore, they are likely to be as much one side of 'the balance' as the others. Yes, they might still be languishing on IE6 using Favorites rather than Firefox 3 and Delicious, but are they happy?
Here's one songster's take:
Social Web Analytics (SWA) is the application of search, indexing, semantic analysis and business intelligence technologies to the task of identifying, tracking, listening to and participating in the distributed conversations about a particular brand, product or issue, with emphasis on quantifying the trend in each conversation's sentiment and influence.
The advent of SWA is a pivotal moment in the development of the marketing communications industry.
It's just over ten weeks since I posted about my intention to write an ebook on social Web analytics, and now it's done. The ebook is hosted at www.socialwebanalytics.com, or you can simply click here to download it.
I do hope the ebook stimulates discussion and debate about this vital and nascent field, and look forward to the ongoing "distributed conversation". Love to know what you think.
Thanks to Larry Weber, David Meerman Scott, Brian Solis and the Social Web Analytics vendors for their support and contributions.
The B2B Social Web has arrived and it's not going to go away.
I was interviewed recently about the Social Web for a series of articles for Ecommerce Times, and here's the first half of our conversation...
1) What is THE most significant issue regarding the appearance of Web phenomena like social professional networks?
If being an expert or leader in your market is defined as others' regard for your insight, skills or services, then you must participate in the networks where this expertise is being shared, and where the people you want to influence are going to help shape their viewpoint. For many professions, these networks remain predominantly offline, but this balance will tip in favour of online for most if not all professions eventually.
MarCom Professional is a great example in my industry, and other social professional networks include sermo.com for physicians and inmobile for the wireless industry.
2) What major trends should my readers know about?
The all-singing, all-dancing social network (Friendster, Myspace, Bebo, Facebook) will increasingly represent the minority of our online social networking. We will gravitate towards specialised networks dedicated to our specific sports interest, hobby, profession, health condition etc. Read more
It's December. Time for pseudo-snow to uphold the pretence of a white Christmas. Time for Christmas pop songs to replenish the coffers of faded pop idols. And, of course, time for reflections on the year.
The biggest trends in marketing communications in 2007 were without a doubt the rise and rise of social networks, and the associated dominance of video content – professional and user-generated. Not a theme ignored on MarCom Professional I can see.
This has been a subject close to our hearts since we ran the first blog training course for our clients in 2001 and introduced them to conversational PR not long after. That was the term we used then, but now we talk about the brand as the sum of the quality of its dialogue with its stakeholders, and our Chairman Larry Weber decided, rightly, that 2007 was the year the mass market wanted to read more about it. Read more
Attended the Mashup* event last night on "media and advertising agencies in a digital world". It was a wide ranging discussion, featuring Rod Banner from Banner Corporation, a presentation from AKQA's head of mobile, and moderated by Hamish Pringle, DG of the IPA.
Unfortunately, the questions from the audience were so diverse that there wasn't quite the usual cohesion found at a Mashup event, but nevertheless there were some real gems in there. Tony Fish's question on the attention economy put most people on the back foot, and I learned about Openads for the first time. Very interesting.
Coincidentally, I also met Giles Palmer for the first time, of Magpie Brandwatch fame that I posted about yesterday.
And lastly, here's a diary date for you. Mashup is running an event 26th November on Social Networking.