Social Media Articles

Social Media in Plain English

Social media networking is transforming how professionals connect online. A decade ago, businesses needed to form entirely new relationships with one another. It started with an outreach campaign- such as a simple magazine advertisement or shaking a hand at a cocktail party. Over time and multiple interactions, a relationship was created. In the social media world, relationships jump through hurdles at an amazing pace… sometimes within hours or even minutes.

One of the main driving forces behind this phenomena is social networking being multiplied by a technology revolution. When you visit this site or many of the other sites I write on, you have the opportunity to do something that is amazingly interesting: you can interact with my readers. Just like at a cocktail party, you can listen to the main speaker (me) or choose to take the discussion down other avenues with an audience member. An example of this technology in action is on the sidebar at 123socialmedia.com, the mybloglog.com and blogcatalog.com widgets which show community members who have visited my site.

With that in mind, I am going to state the true power of what I write really isn’t within the words of this article. It is actually in the fact that what I write is spread across hundreds of different sites and social networks.

What does that mean?

If you only come here and don’t know how to investigate the internet like I do, you probably don’t know I am on Linkedin, Biznik, or Namyz. You may not even know what those websites represent.

In my “universal brand” it means a lot.

An example is if I collect a handle of the testimonials and references I have on those sites:

On my Biznik profile:

Janet Burchfield - Real Estate Broker: “Barry Hurd is flat-out brilliant at navigating the complex world of social media promotions. My brain literally hurt a little, in a good way, after his recent Marketing Strategy Workshop for Real Estate.”

Banu Sekendur - Art Therapist: “Barry is a wealth of information and so generous with it. He is not only brilliant but very easy to relate to and so incredibly modest. He is not just a numbers guys he has a social intelligence that sneaks up on you when you think you have figured him out.”

May Nguyen - Amazon.com Business Development - “Barry is absolutely brilliant. He has given me some great ideas about online marketing and search engine optimization that will be very helpful for my business.”

Switching over to my Linkedin profile:

Toby Barnett - Barnett Associates Real Estate: “Barry is a innovative and forward thinking web guru that will warp your brain if you give him a chance. His cutting edge marketing strategies allow for fast and yet manageable growth for any size company.”
Jeff Collins - MyHaberdasher.com: “Barry really knows his way around the web & can get you great results if you want you or your company to stand out on the internet.”

Brian Crouch - Business Development 123SocialMedia.com: “It’s easy to be enthusiastic working for someone who is widely regarded as one of the sharpest minds in the industry. Barry’s reputation as a social media innovator and expert is growing, and I am honored to be associated with him.”

My profile on Namyz

Peter McDowell - Performa Business Development; “Top notch guy who gives freely of his time to help others, like me, understand the ever changing technology landscape. Plus, he’s super smart and visionary when it comes to internet marketing.”

Howard Howell - That Lease Guy: “Barry knows his stuff. I would endorse him as a business associate and recommend his services highly.”

Kevin Hoffberg - Thought leader : “I met Barry several years ago when he did some project work for me. He’s an extraordinarily bright guy. I would recommend him in a heartbeat, particularly when it comes to technologies related to community building.”

What does this mean?

Stop for a moment and think about the nine testimonials above and how much information is available at the click of a button. Sourcing information for what previously took “forever” is now done instantly. Most of the people above are also present on several social networks. You can read more about each person, you can read about what they do for a profession, you can see who you know in common, and if they have a blog you can even see what kind of motorcycle they ride (Kevin Hoffberg’s blog).

In the real world I would have to request this data and take serious effort to track down a small fraction of the same information.

It isn’t just for your eyes only.

One of the amazing and interesting facts of this type of information is that it is not for your eyes only. My professional presence is “out there” for the world to see. I cannot doctor or manipulate it for every person. The article you read here is the same piece of information ten thousand other people will find.

If you have ever hired an employee or a business partner, you have probably discovered that feeling when you question whether or not the person you are hiring is the same one on the piece of paper you are reading. In the social media evolution, the same piece of paper is being sent out to everyone.

Historical data is relevant online.

The internet has a long, long memory. You can find my writing from years ago on my old blog at www.technicaldisaster.com, it has some great articles on leveraging online conversations, online communities, and even psycho blogging.

This data is becoming more and more about YOU.

Right now, there is a lot of information being collected about you. Have you ever searched for your name or company online and looked at the results? Have you ever asked yourself the question about how many of your associates and friends have searched for your results? Have you come to the conclusion it may be a good idea to start understanding how your professional (and personal) information is being used online?

If you haven’t come to that conclusion, don’t worry. While you are thinking about it people like the MIT Northwest Forum are having entire panels about your information and how businesses are making money off it.

You can read more about professional social media profiles, online reputation control, and online brand management here on 123SocialMedia. Let me know if you have any questions.

My friend Joe Hage and I did a marketing workshop last night for a small group of professionals. Normally hosting a marketing workshop wouldn’t be a noteworthy event, but in this case it is a wonderful case example of starting a connection using social media and developing into a trusting business relationship.

Who is Joe Hage?

As a professional, Joe is one of the few marketers I have met that has an extreme grasp of both tactical and strategic marketing. He has a sparkling resume of working with companies like Cardiac Science, 1-800-Flowers, Kraft Foods, Jell-O, and Safeco. When he originally met me, Joe didn’t know a huge volumes about my specialty in social media, and he immediately rolled up his sleeves and began devouring information. In any line of marketing work, the ability to absorb new concepts and create new strategies is essential to exceeding expectations. From a business perspective- Joe is the “full meal deal” when it comes to marketing strategy.

How did we meet?

I originally met Joe by being a casual member of a local online community here in Seattle called Biznik. You can view both of our friendly profiles here - Joe Hage and Barry Hurd. In terms of the relationship between us, Joe and I would simply not have met in real life if not for Biznik. Realizing that two extremely busy professionals such as Joe and I can form a strong and healthy relationship using online networking is an eye-opener for other professionals like us.

How do we interact?

Joe and I use Biznik as a place to shed some of our daily job duties and dive into a creative problem solving mindset working with independent business owners. While I cannot speak entirely for Joe, planning the occasional workshop with a different group of professional personalities allows me to really flex my brain and bring my marketing mind to bear. While some topics in such a class may seem very “101″ to either of us, the unexpected difficulties and obstacles our attendees have require us to think outside of our own box.

What was our workshop about?

The official positioning statement: “To Biznik members in the real estate and related industries, Joe and Barry’s Real Estate Marketing Workshop is your opportunity to learn and apply strategies you need to better stand out in a market crowded with half-hearted real estate professionals.”

In our two-hour session, you will:

• Apply recommendations from the real estate marketing article to your own business.
• Share and learn best practices used by fellow Bizniks in the space.
• Get Barry’s counsel on which search engine optimization key words are virtually impossible to get.
• Walk away with some of Barry’s best tricks to get your name on the Google searches you are targeting.

What did people learn?

A lot more than those four bullet points above. The attendees had a chance to hear relevant and like-minded marketing problems analyzed and trouble-shot by two marketing veterans. However the real value only becomes apparent when the audience and the mentors agree to see things from different angles.

In the normal world most of us accept our problems and obstacles from our own point of view. When we see a wall in front of us, most of us see an option to steer around it or stop.

Joe and I do not see things from the same angle. Yes we are both marketing professionals. Yes we both have a lot of experience.
Yet we each have a fundamental viewpoint and core to the way our mind works.

In an interactive workshop, attendees have the ability to utilize the wisdom and talent of the entire group. Joe and I may lead the discussion, but we cannot see how anyone else perceives the same problem. We can only observe how we see it, along with how we view the interaction of the group members.

By utilizing skill, talent, experience, and different perspectives - a team of professionals working in unison can creatively offer solutions to maneuver around almost any obstacle. With only a few extra viewpoints, the team may also benefit from knowing what is behind the obstacle before they even decide to expend the effort to get around it.

Conclusion - What does this mean in regards to social media?

Simply put= When used correctly, social media allows any professional to use the wisdom and talent of the entire conversation. They may be smart and talented in respect to a certain field of focus, but the intelligence, talent, and return on effort is magnified significantly by the ability to accept that they may have a perspective that is hindering progress. (I.E. truly wise people can admit that they are wrong, not “the best”, or simply need help.)

As a professional who utilizes the online world, every day of my life is exposed to the benefit of having hundreds of experts in my network that serves as a sounding board for my own ideas. That exposure is not just simply readership and promotion for my business, but results in the benefit of my ideas interacting with the talented viewpoint of professionals like Joe and all of you.

Two weeks ago I gave a presentation for The Executive Network of Seattle… and with my technical background and the subject matter at hand I think everyone was expecting some flashy PowerPoint slideshow with bullet points, animations, flashing lights, and statistical information. I didn’t do that. I actually went to the effort to present my material to the audience at hand and draw them into a conversation (which is what social media is all about) and one of the reasons I chose to do that was this video:

I receive several inquiries a week about what “social media” is. Unfortunately the real question most of them want to ask is “what is business social media?” or “how do I drive my business with social media?” Understanding all of the terminology and clutter surrounding emerging online tools and social trends is only part of the answer, the other part of the answer is developing a business mindset to evolve the way you have been doing business.

Social Media, blogging, podcasting, video, communities, networking, is not anything new at the core. In fact most of these things are simply an evolution of what they were five, ten, or twenty years ago.

As a business, using social media takes on a multi-pronged strategic and tactical approach. There is no “magic bullet” that is going to solve your problems overnight- however there are a series of points that social media can touch in your business and help tie together.

Below is my “must read” list of articles on the site that help decision makers educate themselves on how to utilize social media. Each article has a lot of information in it that a reader can spend days, weeks, or months on. The important idea is not to “jump in” on the details right up front. Casually read the articles, absorb the information, let it sit on the back burner for a day, then come back and start making tactical steps and case experiments for your business.

Social Media Keyword Tools - Consider social media a chance to explore your target market. One keyword leads to another, leads to another. Within a few steps you may discover that your best prospect for your business may be two or three levels removed from where you have been trying to reach them.

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Professional Social Media Profiles- The first place 99% of web viewers are going to begin looking for you online is in a search engine (Google / Yahoo / etc). Whether a profile in question is an individual or business one, establishing proper profiles on social media sites can increase search recognition, bolster traffic on specific phrases, and control how visitors perceive your information and presence. You need to have a PROFESSIONAL profile, image, and brand.

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Online Reputation Control, Branding, Insurance, or Blind-Luck?- Every blog, community site, customer review, or competitor has hundreds of different options to voice viewpoints and concerns against a company. If you haven’t done it already… start understanding how to use tools to monitor social media and take proactive steps to keep your business in working order.
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Ethical Media Consulting - 10 Questions to Ask Before Blowing Your Budget - the ethical approach to online marketing (in my humble opinion) is to focus on other like-minded souls and technologies. The next “big thing” could be designed by Bill Gates or some teenager that develops code at two in the morning while eating pizza in his mother’s basement. That leads us farther and farther astray from traditional marketing and advertising models, drives a stake in the public relations industry, and provides a wide-open opportunity for businesses both big and small. If you want to be a smart decision maker, educate yourself.

123 Social Media Education and Weekly Learning Page - 123 Social Media routinely publishes an article covering steps to developing a social media strategy and steps to implement it. Each article is in plain English, avoiding as many “techno babble” and “geek speak” phrases as possible. All of the content is sorted and tagged under “Weekly Learning” in case you miss something or feel like a refresher course on the basics. We encourage you to ask questions!

Free Search Engine and Online Promotion Report
Unethical SEO - Marketing Tactics that get you banned
Social Media Measurement and Brand Control
Can the Web Destroy Your Business? Yes It Can.

If you missed the announcement on several other sites, the MIT Forums of the Northwest is having a great panel on Wednesday night (June 4th) - MIT Event - The Business of Public and Personal Data. Any business professional, especially communications and public relations decision makers should be looking at this information and forming some strategic viewpoints regarding it. This panel will be a good opportunity to hear some different viewpoints on the topic of how personal and public information is being used by companies, and what is in store for the future business models.

The proliferation of social networks here in the Northwest brings this type of topic home pretty quick- where we have community sites like Biznik (10k members), ActiveRain (100k members), Zoodango (membership unknown), along with larger community portals belonging to companies like Amazon and Microsoft.  We also have dozens of smaller communities based on services like social services on Ning and Meetup, which is greatly influenced by the technical savvy and aptitude of our region.

Understanding how some bright minds have monetized the “public information” super-model of business has a huge potential impact to almost any industry. There are databases and sites full of public information that is of little value by itself, but when compared to other public data or indexed with additional proprietary information it  becomes amazingly worthwhile.

This is probably one of the most commonly asked questions I receive - “How often should you update social media?” and it often leads to a slightly raised eyebrow and the answer of “it depends on who you are talking to.”

When you are using social media, you are actually speaking to a minimum of three different audiences (or more.) The three fundamental reader categories are unique and individual, and they often don’t relate to each other very much.

• The Active Reader (a.k.a. The Conversationalist) - active readers are those who participate in with the materials you present to them. They may not be active specifically in your conversation, but they are active in the “global conversation” that may be occurring through-out the blogosphere or other online networks. They are also active in how the interact with your information. They are informed and educated on the topics at hand, or are pursuing a more in-depth understanding of the conversation.
• The Passive Reader (a.k.a. The Researcher)- The passive reader is someone who is “browsing” the web and your social media materials. They may or may not have an idea of what you are presenting. They are typically wandering the greater structure of the net be led to new information, rather than actively seeking it. 
  
• The Robots (a.k.a. Google, Yahoo, MSN, Technorati) - the robots. These are unique little technical programs that browse your content day and night. They don’t speak your language. They speak SEO, link-value, rating comparison, traffic analysis, competitive ratios, keyword density, social networking trends, and love the bitter “code” that most writers run away from.
  

These are only the basic three starting types. There is an ever growing and evolving mix of the three that create new sub-categories every day.
When you understand basic types of readers, you then have to correlate them to the demographics of the people and robots you are trying to reach. One of the most important factors in updating social media is understanding how often your audience likes fresh content.

If you are writing for the powerful “Google Monster”, you have to almost think of it like a very dumb dog that you need to feed. After a few short weeks you can train your Google dog to expect food at specific times and intervals. If you want to score high in search results, it is often best to train your Google dog to expect fresh food (new content) on an almost daily basis.

The problem with planning your meals for the Google dog is that you can serve up little pieces of garbage here and there, yet any human sitting at the dinner table will likely find the scraps to be unappealing.

This creates a huge problem. You need to be able to produce quality content suitable for human consumption and appease the bottomless stomach of the Google dog at the same time.

Entrepreneurial and influential business thinkers have always been a secret passion of mine. In addition to having amazing thoughts, you have to have the business acumen to take action and reach results that many people do not even perceive. The Wall Street Journal had this article about a shift in how business leaders are changing- “New Breed of Business Gurus Rises”

The way professionals (and researchers) define data is also of extreme interest to me, especially when looking at how online information is being passed back and forth through online communication tools such as social media and search engines.

In the Wall Street Journal article, they ranked the gurus by a fairly simple methodology “The ranking is based on Google hits, or results mentioning the person when searched in Google, media mentions in LexisNexis, and academic citations for 110 business “gurus” who ranked high in the 2003 survey or have since won a significant following. The thinkers were ranked in each area, the rankings were summed, and those sums were ranked to create the final list.”

This idea is great from a historical perspective, but it is ironically funny that the WSJ used such an out-dated way of searching for gurus and thought leaders online. I am familiar with Google and LexisNexis data indexing, and the academic citations for “gurus” is pretty straight-forward…

Google is not the “end all, be all” of if you are a Guru or Thought-leader. Sure some people may find information about you… but there are many reasons that someone may have falsely inflated numbers in Google. For instance Bill Gates is on the top five list, but if you count all the “hits” of Bill Gates online, you don’t end up with just business guru mentions… you end up with sites talking about his car and his photo of being arrested when he was younger. Surely Bill Gates is a business guru, but the metrics of his juvenile years throws the numbers off. (He is also the richest man of who owns several search marketing companies that cannot manage to push some criminal photos off his own search results for his personal reputation.)

Along the same line of thinking as the WSJ, I started a series of articles called “Other Smart People” that includes individuals in my industry that are pre-qualified only by my appreciation of the skills and expertise they share.

While my qualifier and testing may be based only on personal interpretations, I think that social media is pushing us farther and farther away from scoring individuals based sheerly on metrics and datasources online. Google itself is shifting over to more and more algorithms that rank the popularity of specific personalities and sites- which is abused fairly frequently by search marketers who don’t “play nice”

In the instance of the Wall Street Journal list, I wonder if there is anyone with my skillset manipulating the scoring system to merely get on top of a list like that? The opening phrase for the WSJ article is “Psychologists, journalists and celebrity chief executives crowd the top of a ranking of influential business thinkers” and I have this gut feeling that Psychologists and journalists ARE NOT on the top of the influential list of gurus, and that people like Robert Scoble (FastCompany blogger) and Seth Godin (Best Selling Author, Speaker) who are influencing hundreds of thousands of business professionals every day should be on that list.

I receive plenty of feedback from peers in the social media space about “reporting and analysis” of the metrics behind online conversations. How do you measure buzz, authority, perspective, bias, trending, cost? All of the above? A mixture of it all?

Regardless of what you measure, with social media the latest information is the most relevant. As a part of this ideology I wanted to go back to last year and clip an article that I wrote in September of 07. While the dates have changed a little- the unfortunate problem it covers in our industry is growing bigger and bigger (rather than smaller).

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Having been a consultant regarding online media for over a decade, I am constantly growing very weary of informational white-paper companies that are charging top dollar for “analysis” of an industry that is forever changing. In my previous life working at a Fortune 50 company on interactive projects, I can tell you that far too many “big boy” companies are absolutely relying on the wrong informational sources to make huge decisions. This old-school system is leading more and more companies down the path of digital suicide.

Today I was sent a reminder about a white paper from IDC, an analyst and research company that defines itself as“the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. More than 900 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 90 countries worldwide.”

While I have no doubt that IDC and companies like it have some amazing information to browse through and collect, I do find that information research firms are moving more and more into “uncharted waters” where they seem to have little actual experience.

Enter Social Media.

The U.S. Social Networking Application 2007–2012 Forecast and Analysis only costs $4500 from IDC.

For purposes of full disclosure, I did not buy this report for two main reasons:

At 22 pages long, it barely has enough room to address the 10+ companies it details.

Every day since it was published in August, 2007 - more and more details become completely irrelevant.

I also didn’t buy it… because just reading the description left me asking questions:

How does a comprehensive report of this topic only have 10+ companies? Last time I checked my bookmark list and personal research papers, there were hundreds of social networking applications.

Why would anyone actually pay $4500 for a white paper that has old data with minimal focus to your business, when for $4500 I can point you to several amazing consultants (some on my team, some on other teams) that will write a 22 page breakdown of how social networking/media affects YOUR business?

When will decision makers and researchers realize that this marketplace is changing on a daily basis? By the time I hit “post” on this article… chances are that some of the information could already be old. The top “movers and shakers” in the world of social media, community applications, widgets, digital communications, and everything Web 2.0 and beyond are creative and fluid thinkers that are making decision based on the “here and today”, not what happened last month.

If you are reading this, you probably realize the social media marketplace is about thinking outside of the box and understanding what potential is right around the corner. Leveraging this technology is about keeping an ear to the ground and a voice in the conversation. It is about new possibilities.

This industry is about understanding that at 2:00 AM this morning, some geeky college intern is eating a bowl of Cheerios and finishing his coding of the next Google, or creating the next FaceBook platform that will change the way the market works. There is no “on-going consistency” in the online world. It is fluid, changing, and amazingly imaginative.

For $4,500… people can stop relying on already dated information and actually get some real consulting about what is happening today.

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I know that old article was a little abrasive, but as an industry participant my responsibility is to raise my hand and voice concern over obvious problems. I have written about things like ethical media consulting, talked about how social media influencers are targets of media manipulation, that ANY business can perform social media measurement and brand control, and have even written up a social media manifesto defining some of my personal beliefs about this industry.

As a professional in my space, I make every attempt to be a thought-leader and thought-provoker. I share my expertise freely, hoping that readers take a moment to think about the “how and why”, motivating them to change a broken industry trend within their own sphere of influence.

Why? This industry is about making BIG decisions that have a “trickle down” effect that changes the way millions of professionals do business. If you do not ask some of the bigger questions and examine the why of how data is created and manipulated, then you become guilty of blindly accepting of “how things are”

If you don’t know what social media and social networking is, stop here and read this.

If you are asking yourself, What is social media measurement? Read on.

Social Media Measurement usually refers to tracking online communications and networking patterns that occur on blogs, podcasts, videos, social communities, and the various commentary that exchanges between them. Many companies are struggled with the task of analyzing when and why people are talking about them online, or if there is something a company needs to be aware of relating to the industry with competitive companies and products.

Why is social media monitoring so important?

Basic business 101 tells us that it is essential to monitor the “pulse” of your consumers, employees, and decision makers. For small business, knowing what your target market is talking about and how they are reacting to similar issues allows you to utilize a nimble business model to achieve rapid growth with short-term opportunities.

For big business it allows businesses to maneuver strategic pitfalls and detect trends in an industry. It is vital to understand what individuals are influencing your market, whether that happens to be an angry consumer or even someone within the organization. From a 30,000 foot view, the ability to measure how your brand, company, and leadership is perceived by online readers could be fundamental to your business- the next set of eyes wandering across the wrong review of your site may be a stock holder in the company or a journalist waiting to spotlight what is happening.

How does 123 approach social media monitoring?

We engage our brains. We participate and join in the conversation. One of the vital requirements in monitoring a conversation is actually knowing the subtle tone and voice of the participants. What may sound gruff to one viewer may be an inside joke amongst friends, and that perception changes based upon how a new participant discovers the information. Did they come in from a search engine? Did they follow a series of comments from another site? Did they have a personal connection to the conversation? Who are they? What are their motifs?

How can you discover what buzz exists about your company?

From a “free perspective” you can establish most of the blog tracking by using a personalized Google homepage or RSS site, setting up watchlists and Google alerts on specific keyphrases. From a less technical perspective, you can simply write up a list of the CEOs and Marketing VPs for ten companies in your industry and they will lead you to 95% of the blog market for you.

• Take that list of 20 names.
  • Search Google and Linkedin for them.
  • Write down company and professional blogs.
• Take the 20-50 blogs and enter the URLs into Technorati.
  • Write down the popularity of each blog
  • Rank them in order
• Starting with the highest ranking blog,
  • Write down the author of the blog
  • Write down the blog’s blogroll

You can also create a homepage or hidden blog page using a widgets from mybuzzmonitor.com to build a whole bunch of different categories and keywords to monitor.

• Feedreader.com - Feedreader is a FREE RSS news aggregation solution that provides robust,
  state-of-the-art features in an intuitive, user-friendly environment.
• Bloglines - my preferred RSS reader of choice. A web based platform that allows me to use multiple computers and share my feeds amongst my professional team and friends.
  
• Newsgator.com- Personalize RSS to get just what you want – from videos to vitamins, finance to fly fishing, technology to toddlers – just pick the news you want.
• Illumio - is a desktop RSS reader, one of the few that has the ability to join groups and have conversations with other like-minded readers. This places it in an RSS Reader/Social Networking category.

Blog Search Engines

• IceRocket.com - has a fairly active database of blogs online, and includes some extra functionality with a keyword trending tool that allows you to chart specific mentions of a name over time.
• Technorati.com - is my preferred blog search tool. You can easily browse search terms, add functionality to your browser, see what is “hot or not” and re-republish information on your own site.
• Google Blog Search - I don’t often use Google blog search, but it is sometimes an easy alternative with having it be “one click away” from some of my other daily searches. It is also very easy to add on to my iGoogle homepage. Of the three choices however, it provides the least amount of data for the casual observer.

Blog Communities

• BlogCatalog & MyBlogLog - see the section on the right column with little pictures? That is MyBloglog. It provides me with fairly detailed information about a variety of the readers browsing this site. It also allows me to follow my readers (or any blog’s readers) back to another site and see what communities they are involved with. This information is vital to me, as a site with MyBlogLog (or it’s competitor BlogCatalog) has the ability to quickly identify what sites are influencing an industry.

Search Engine Ranking

• Semonics (very cheap) can be used for some added functionality for a marketing / PR use. They provide index ranking and search ranking reports

What questions should you be asking?

• Is my company name being talked about?
• Is my company tagline in the news? What about my products?
• Is my management team in the conversation? is their reputation?
• Are my employees talking about us? what about x-employees?
• Do my competitors have any buzz about them?
• Who are the influencers of the conversations?
• Who is reading it all?

CONCLUSION

With the explosion of companies trying to jump into the social media waters, many marketing agencies and public relations firms are looking at what they can “squeeze into a box” so that they can package direct solutions (i.e. automated) to clients. The development of thousands of new communication technology platforms (each with slightly different penetration, reach, functionality, and metrics) creates a huge problem with creating automated statistical tracking.

As more and more companies dive into this problem, the conversations being monitored by company X with toolset X will become lost in cyberspace as a specific industry marketplace adopts different methods of online conversation.

For the companies who do stay on top of conversations and understand the way the market moves- they will have an opportunity for analysis, improved business intelligence, brand protection, customer support alternatives, market research, and new channels for product marketing.

Other articles in the blogosphere:

• Social Media Monitoring; Broken Conversations, Broken Tools - a review of why automated tools have such a hard time of dealing with the fluid social media realm.
• Use of Social Media Monitoring Growing- a bigger picture commentary on social media research through developments and interviews with Forrester research and the Aberdeen Group.