TRAACKR

A blog post by Jeremiah Owyang, Matrix: Brand Monitoring, Social Analytics, Social Insights, recently caught our eye. Since we found it interesting, we thought you might too! If you have a minute, check out his post. If not, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered – read on.

In his post he covers a topic that is obvious, yet still painfully far from being resolved – social data is officially a part of business now, but it is extremely overwhelming. Companies know they need to use it to listen and interact with their customers, but they don’t know the best way to go about doing so. Jeremiah’s research in the Social CRM and Mobile/Social space found that Social CRM is, in his words, starting to get wind under its wings, and mobile/social is already around at the consumer level. It’s what’s going to happen next that is the interesting and most important piece.

He states that corporate social strategists need to evolve their thinking right now and find monitoring companies that truly quiet the noise in the social media landscape. The current state of brand monitoring features are no longer useful in a world of 24/7 updates and change – they only allow for reactive responses, not proactive and actionable ones. Look for companies that will help derive intelligence form the excessive data source of social – not just provide monitoring and reporting.

As the era of social media continues to bring more transparency, responsibility and added expectations of companies, they will need services that can assist them efficiently and effectively. What steps are you taking to assist you with these challenges?

It’s the beginning of July and you know what that means! We’re officially into the summer season, more than halfway through the 2010 year, and the 4th of July is right around the corner. But, more importantly, it’s Influencer of the Month time! Our July Influencer of the Month is a driving voice in the HR world when it comes to industry services and analysis and a great partner of ours, John Sumser.

Who is John Sumser?

You may know him from his “Top 100 HR Influencers” project, but John is pretty much all over the place; he’s the founder and CEO of Two Color Hat, Director at salary.com, editor of HRExaminer and also writes on his personal recruiting blog, johnsumser.com.  In all of the venues he contributes to, John provides invaluable news and views into the HR industry and with all of his knowledge and experience, he also gives his readers foresight into the future of the industry.

Traackr partners with John frequently to create lists that cover specific areas of the HR industry. You can check out the Top 25 Online Influencers in Talent Management, which was featured on the home page of HR Examiner. All the rest can be found on his blog. The array of HR topics these lists cover reflect John’s “influencer style”, which is a healthy and informed view of all aspects of his industry, rather than an extreme focus on one area of it. With this general approach, John maintains a spot among the top influencers in the industry, but doesn’t put him at number one.

With nearly 3,500 twitter followers and 5,000 tweets, John’s energy is truly inspiring and addicting to all of his readers. If you want to learn about the HR industry or need professional advice about your company’s own HR, John Sumser is someone you should read up on!

Congratulations John! We know we will see you again.

Obviously, over the past 3-5 years, there has been an infinite amount of “buzz” (for lack of better term) surrounding the impact of social media on the marketing and PR functions (in case you missed the buzz, you can read about it from some of our Top PR2.0 influencers).  However, of late we’ve been thinking more about the impact social media has had on that highly specialized niche of PR — Crisis Management.

At first glance, it would seem that social media and the web would make the job of a Crisis Management professional much harder.   After all, online, bad news travels fast.  Real fast and real wide.  News of an oil spill, drug recall, executive scandal, or a broken guitar can no longer be “contained” like it could in those beautiful, sunny pre-internet days.  Small rumors become worldwide truths within minutes.  If you are a Crisis Management specialist, this new world is your greatest nightmare.

Or is it?

What if this new world presented the Crisis Management professional with the ability to do his or her job better?  What if it wasn’t something to be feared, but embraced?  Again…not sure I’m right about this, but what if I am?

While it’s true that bad new travels fast in this new world, but so does good news — maybe not as fast as bad news, but it still moves.  That’s a good thing.  But the best thing is that the news is visible and it can be found.  With the right tools, the word being spread on the web can be uncovered and used to better inform and enable a crisis management situation.

As an example of what I’m talking about, our good friends over at Crimson Hexagon and Traackr used our respective tools to offer an example of how the web/social media, coupled with the right tools could actually help to enhance the Crisis Management function — for the gulf oil spill situation.

With Crimson Hexagon’s opinion analysis tool, a crisis management pro can not only monitor the relevant comments spreading across the web regarding the particular crisis, but organize them in a way that will better help that communications professional strategize about his or her next move.  Outside the obvious positive/negative sentiment, the Crimson tool can uncover the specifics of the vast opinions being shared online.  Are people talking about the impact of the oil spill on the environment or government policy relating to oil companies?  Are the opinions based on misinformation or are they legitimate and need to be addressed?  What information is the public looking for most?  Would knowing this information help the Crisis Management team plan their communications?  Sounds like it would be a huge help…

The second big piece to the puzzle is understanding who — what online individuals — are dominating and driving the conversations around this particular topic.  These are the people that are driving opinion and have the greatest impact, positive or negative, on the issue.  So, anyone looking to manage a crisis simply MUST know them.  [You can see a selection of the Top Influencers for the Gulf oil spill at http://lists.traackr.com/gulfoilspill].

Of course, we at TRAACKR believe that you need to know these people well BEFORE a crisis occurs.  Once the crisis occurs, it’s pretty late to start looking for them.  So we highly recommend finding, tracking and establishing a relationship with the influencers in your space today…regardless of a crisis.  Knowing these people ahead of time will help prevent misinformation or ugly rumors from spreading and getting out of control.

Of course, great social media tools cannot prevent a crisis.  They can’t stop an oil spill or a defective drug.  And they also can’t legitimize bad, dishonest communication on the part of those managing a crisis.  Crisis Management 2.0 is about good informed decisions and honest, direct communication.  Knowing the most important information to address as well as the right people with whom to communicate will become essential pieces of all Crisis Management campaigns in the future.

Anyway, would love to hear your thoughts on the impact of Web2.0 on the Crisis Management function and the role that high quality monitoring & analytics tools can play.  Let us know!

After reading Seth Godin’s latest post, Quid pro quo (santa math), I feel compelled to react.

In his blog post Seth Godin advocates that blogging makes no sense economically because it defies the basic logic of trade: this for that. There is no such exchange in blogging. In his words:

I think it’s more like Santa math. Santa flies around the world, giving stuff away, and for what? He earns gratitude, trust and friendship, that’s what. Sure, one day he might decide to license his image or try to sell you something. But right here, right now, gratitude, trust and friendship are plenty. Especially if you enjoy doing what you’re doing. Quid, no quo.

So, Seth’s advice is: go ahead and blog but don’t expect to get anything back.

In my humble opinion, Mr. Godin is dead wrong on this. This is a gross generalization of a very rich media that can be used for so many different purposes that inferring where bloggers see value in their activity (i.e. selling their products or services) is very limiting. Many people blog, participate in forums, tweet to build communities, share knowledge, assert an expertise, or many other value-creating reasons.

Now, if we limit the activity of blogging to those indeed interested in boosting their sales, Seth Godin is right that drawing a correlation between a blog post and sales leads is not an easy thing to do, though I’d argue not impossible at all, as Hubspot’s success has proven. They even coined the term inbound marketing to describe this activity. And here is the real quid pro quo (read misunderstanding): in this respect, blogs are marketing tools, not sales tools, and the ROI of blogging in such case has to use marketing metrics to assess success.

Not to point out the obvious, but this is exactly how Seth Godin himself very skillfully uses his blog…Go figure…

ICOM (a division of Epsilon Targeting) released a new whitepaper today based on an influencer study they conducted between 2007-2009.  Obviously, we always like to see new influencer studies conducted because they greatly help support as well as inform our work.  We’ll share our thoughts in this post, but you can also download the report for yourself here (after giving ICOM your personal information)…

Overall, we didn’t find any groundbreaking results in this study, but there were definitely some very interesting insights.

One big gap in the report was ICON’s definition of an “INFLUENCER.”  There wasn’t one.  The results of the study were based on the differences between a group of “INFLUENCERS” and a group of “Random Members of the Population.”  Without knowing how they determined who belonged in the “Influencer” bucket, we’re not completely sure how to really analyze the results.

Also, it’s important to note that this study did not focus on online influencers, but instead on “influencers in general.”
With that said, here are the most interesting insights we pulled from this study:

1. INFLUENCERS ARE TALKERS.  The study showed that influential people rate high in “talkability” — they simply talk more than random people.  While the study doesn’t show it, it is natural to assume that this behavior trait would translate online, making traditional off-line influencers, active online influencers.  And vice-versa, by the way.  Often times, a person’s online influence is a proxy for his/her offline influence.  This is important to note.  The benefits of finding and engaging with online influencers are often greater than their online presence.
2. INFLUENCE IS CONTEXTUAL.  In other words, as the study says, “Influencers are category specific.”  This means that someone who is influential in the world of baby diapers is not necessarily influential in the world of auto repairs.  In some ways, this is quite obvious.  However the concept of “universal influence” is something that still holds water in general practice.  The idea that the Ashton Kutcher’s or the Chris Brogan’s of the world are influential across any topic area or category is something that some people still believe.  This study disproves this idea.  This “contextual-based” influence is also a fundamental belief of Traackr — we have always believed that an individual’s influence has to be related to how much he/she talks about a specific topic area (which is how we measure an individual’s RELEVANCE).  We don’t believe in “universal” influence.  It’s all contextual.
3. DEMOGRAPHICS DON’T MATTER WHEN IT COMES TO INFLUENCE.  The report delivers a very interesting quote:

No demographic similarities emerged in the data; there was no skewing toward age, gender or income.  Influencers may be grandfathers or twenty-somethings, working mothers or stay-at-home dads.  They could be the well to do or the up-and-coming.

This is another very important insight.  Again, it’s a relatively obvious point, but one that is not widely practiced.  For example, some marketers are still looking to build campaigns that target “Mommy bloggers.”  This study (and we at Traackr) would argue that there is a fundamental flaw in this logic.  The only thing that “Mommy bloggers” have in common is that they are mothers and that they blog.  There is nothing to say that they (or their audiences) are interested in anything and/or everything related to babies, parenting, etc.  Some “Mommy bloggers” are interested in organic food, some in fashion, some in law, some in baby goods, and yes, some may even be interested in auto repair.  Demographics shouldn’t be a factor in an influencer campaign.  Pre-conceived notions about who may be interested in, or influential for, a particular product or topic area can only hurt the results of the campaign.  We realize it’s a hard thing to wrap one’s head around (especially for those with years of marketing experience), but the concept of “demographics” doesn’t have much place in an influencer analysis or campaign.  What matters is an individual’s Relevance to a specific topic area or subject.

That’s it for our immediate assessment of this report.  We may have more thoughts later — we’ll be sure to let you know

With all the hoopla going on about SXSW we simply couldn’t pass up the opportunity to show off our sweet A-List skills and bring you a public list of the Top SXSW Music Influencers. With hundreds of musical acts showcasing their talent on over eighty stages in downtown Austin, we knew the buzz would be huge.

After compiling the data, we can honestly say that we were surprised with the results. Who would have thought that a political journalist, everyone’s favorite gossip columnist, a well-known public television station (not usually associated with music) and not one, but two marketing pros would make a music list?

See the list for yourself here. In the meantime, be sure to follow the top influencers via Traackr’s SXSW Music Twitter list (@traackr/sxsw-music-influencers). Once you’ve seen the list, tell us what you think – did you love it? Hate it? Let us know!

We are putting influencer of the month on hold this month, but only because we’ve been busy cranking on an exciting partnership that was just announced at SXSW…(btw, we’re here now, so if you’d like to meet up, just ping @dskaletsky).

Official logo of SXSW 2010.

As you can read on the release, we’re partnering with PR powerhouse, Porter Novelli, our long-time friend Crimson Hexagon, and a newcomer  Spredfast to create the ultimate marketing/communication/social media application — complete with sentiment analysis, influencer identification and campaign outreach management. We really like the way this application is shaping up, combining what we consider the three most important elements of any quality social media campaign (at least from a tool perspective) — understanding sentiment, finding the influencers and managing engagement.  It’s a powerful solution and kudos to Porter Novelli for having the vision and commitment to put it all together!  We’ll certainly be talking more about this application and business opportunity as it develops in the coming months.

To learn a little more about it, you can check out the Porter Novelli microsite.  We have a Top 10 Trending SWSX influencers list updating on a daily basis on this page.  Check it out and…as always, let us know your thoughts…

Cheers from SXSW!

We are very excited to release a rare public Traackr A-List today :  The Top 25 Authorities who are moving PR forward.  Check out the list here.  Be aware, however, that if you look at the list now you will notice that the Top 5 Influencers on this list have been hidden.  Why is that, you may ask?  Well because we wanted to have some fun with this list before the upcoming holiday season.  We decided to have a contest and invite everyone to make their best guess as to who they think are the TOP 5 Authorities on our list.

Here’s how the contest is going to work:

The Contest

Rather than just giving away the entire list, we want everyone to work for it a bit.  Not only is there a great prize for the winner, but there are a whole lot of bragging rights too!

Dates:

Opened – Wednesday, Nov. 18 at 8 a.m. EST

Closed – Friday, Nov. 20 at 12 p.m. EST

Winner announced – Friday, Nov. 20 at 1 p.m. EST (Winner announced on the Traackr blog)

E-mail answers to: PRcontest@traackr.com

Make sure to give your answers in ranking order 1-5.  Also make sure that you offer the REAL NAMES of the individuals (as opposed to their blog URL or Twitter handle — we don’t believe influencers are defined by any single platform)

Prize: A $50 Amazon gift card – just in time for the holidays!

Tips from the team: The three Traackr measurement scores, reach resonance and relevance, displayed on the list, can help you make an educated guess. Another tip? You don’t necessarily need to be in PR to move PR forward. The first person to submit the correct answer wins!

Traackr’s Methodology

Traackr’s Authority List is developed through a methodical approach that finds meaning in the massive amount of data that is collected and shared throughout the online space. In other words, we take all the jumble on the Internet regarding online influencers, and turn it into meaningful, understandable and useful information for our clients. Through this approach, we identify the most influential individuals who play a pivotal role in a specific space – in this case, moving the PR world into the next millennium.

*Note: While all of these influencers may not be PR professionals themselves, they still play a significant role online influencing the profession.

Like all of our searches, identifying the top 25 PR influencers began with a keyword-based search using industry terminology. Our main focus for this search was around the PR 2.0 space, so the keywords were made up of more recent terminology trends among public relations professionals. Based on the data received from this keyword search, the influencers were ranked using Traackr’s scoring algorithms; reach (the ability to generate views), resonance (the ability to spark and propagate conversations) and relevance (the ability to cover specific topics or a market).

This methodical approach encompasses all of the social media platforms from Twitter to Facebook through Friendfeed and blogs, which is what makes Traackr’s lists so relevant and useful. Traackr sees the value in each online space, and by focusing on numerous platforms, sometimes it enables us to identify influencers who are making huge contributions to their field but may not have been recognized yet. Our good friends at Corporate Eye put it best; we spot the “king-whisperers”.

If you have any other specific questions about our methodology in regards to this list, just send us a note.

Good luck making your picks.  Don’t forget, we will be releasing the final list this Friday at 1 p.m. EST, right here on this blog…

We attended the Gravity Summit event at Harvard this week and I have to give both @rumford and @beverlymacy credit for putting together such a nice event.  It was much smaller and more intimate than most social media/Web 2.0 events and thus very easy for everyone to interact.  I even got to hang out with @MCHammer for a while at the afterparty.  Pretty cool!

The speakers offered good analysis and thorough case studies taken from the social media marketing world.  I took notes to share with those who couldn’t make it.  Here they are (in all their random glory):

Troy Kelly – Ad Exec., Arnold Worldwide

Troy presented good case studies from his work on the Truth, McDonalds Filet of Fish & Ocean Spray campaigns.

• For Truth, Arnold built off-site web apps that could be passed around. Results: 50% of the online traffic for this campaign was on the Truth site,  50% was off the site.  Lesson: Find the audience where they are and go after them.
• For Filet of Fish, they build a Facebook page that reached over 50k fans very quickly.  They released early special Filet of Fish content to this group and allowed them to comment/give feedback on the campaign.
• For Ocean Spray, they used a community of “Cran Fans” to give feedback on trial products.

He also talked about the evolution of Advertising 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0.  Advertising 3.0 defined not by a “Dialogue between the brand and its customer, but a Tri-alogue between the brand, it’s customer, and everyone that customer interacts with.” He is a big proponent of “listening before engaging” with online influencers.  We actually think Traackr could help him a lot with this listening stage of their campaign development.

Wendy Harman – Head of Social Media for Red Cross

Great woman, Wendy.  She came into Red Cross during Katrina.  They brought her in to “get the bloggers to stop” b/c the blogs were generating so much negative press.  Wendy did the opposite — she embraced them and built an enormous community of bloggers/social media mavens who support and evangelize the Red Cross.  She has developped out a large network of hyper-local Twitter accounts for the Red Cross which have proven to be very popular and effective.  The big challenge for Wendy generating relevant content at the national level with this network of local “chapters.”

Todd Defron – Shift

Todd is always good to hear.  He spoke about this new world from a PR-agent’s perspective.  Some nice take-aways:

• Public Relations has never been about Public Relations.  It’s been about Media Relations.  Now it is really becoming Public Relations.  PR must work to generate and nurture the relationship between the brand and it’s public.
• Everybody counts!  Google records and indexes everything online.  A brand’s interaction with the public is now being recorded.  Everyone counts.  Every interaction counts.  Be good and be consistent!
• How often should a brand be present online?  Everyday!  Via blogs, comments, Twitter, etc…Everyday.  Don’t miss one.
• Great case study with H&R Block — Got them involved engaging on Yahoo Answers and Amazon.  Held offline meet-ups around tax time.  Got very nice responses and created tremendous SEO.  60% increase in sales of their tax software on Amazon.
• Some tips on engagement: (1) Don’t spam; (2) Don’t bore your audience; (3) Don’t only talk about yourself; (4) Don’t ask your lawyers for guidance on online engagement…if you do, you’ll never do it.
• Mass media is dead…real soon.

Andy Mitchell – CNN

This talk wasn’t that informative, but it was cool to hear the story behind the development of the CNN/Facebook platform that was used during President Obama’s inauguration (they tried to get it done for the election coverage, but couldn’t get the coding done in time!).  I think CNN, as a mass-media organization, is being very pro-active and aggressive in their use of social media.  It’s good to see…

MC Hammer

Yup, that MC Hammer.  Well, he’s just Hammer now.  He was inspiring and very excited about social media.  It was key to him remaking himself.  Look out for new album in the near future?!?

Gary Vaynerchuk

I’ve been a fan of Gary since episode #37 of Wine Library TV.  Good to hear that that he just picked up a 10-book deal with Harper Collins.  Smart on HC’s part. He’s got huge built in audience (1MM+ Twitter followers), so the risk of publishing is greatly lowered.  Here are some of Gary’s gem from Monday (quotes from my memory):

• “I’m sick of listening to arguments about whether or not social media works and if it’s here to stay.  Guys…knock it off.  That isn’t the argument you should be having.  It’s here, it’s big and it works.  Now figure out how to use it and play with it effectively.”
• “Find your passion and create content around it.  Start a site about ketchup, for Christ sake.  I guarantee if you become the top ketchup review site, Heinz is going to have $75k for your ass.”
• “People won’t start making real money in this social media thing for a while.  In fact, I’m going to be like Willie Mays.  In 10 years some young punk is going to start a wine show online and make millions doing it.  He won’t be nearly as good as me, but he’ll have better timing.  Sucks.”
• “True entrepreneurs aren’t afraid to go to zero.  We’ll bounce right back.  In fact getting to zero is an exciting proposition.  I’ll sell anything.  I’ll sell rocks!”

So that’s about it for my notes.  Be happy to hear from anyone else who would like to share their notes and thoughts (or argue my memory!).

Derek