Social Media Listening

Do you know the psychological profile that your trail of tweets tells about you? TweetPsych just may be able to tell you. Another new entrant into the ever expanding world of Twitter measurement tools,TweetPsych is uniquley different in that it seeks to provide a psychological profile of a person through deep linguistic analysis of their tweets. I'm always looking for tools that can provide insight into people's mindset and provide data that helps to build a more accurate persona, TweetPsych is a facinating discovery.

A recent study has found a linkage between social media engagement and financial success and profitability. In the first study of its kind, Engagement DB has provided the marketing community with some compelling directional findings. While the study findings can not show true causality, it's very exciting to see the linkage between deep engagement within social channels and the financial performance of some of the world's leading brands. Some key findings include:

The short answer is yes. The bigger question is how and what will it cost you.

It seems that every business today wants to discover, interact with and harness the connectedness and influence of brand ambassadors. Why? One great benefit is to stimulate authentic word of mouth through people that other people already trust and listen to, AND are outside the formal corporate brand marketing and messaging machine.

Numerous studies have been done which point to the reality of what information sources people trust and it has become clear that brand messages are way down the list while information from colleagues, peers and friends is squarely at the top.

Intel is one of a number of corporations to jump on this trend over the last year and proactively develop a network of brand ambassadors. They’ve reached out to bloggers with influence, who are articulate, opinionated and have a following of readers who listen…and likely act on the ideas these brand ambassadors put forth.

As with many programs of this type, Intel did invest some dollars in making this happen. They pulled the bloggers from the virtual world of the Internet into the real world of the Intel campus, got to know these people better and in-person, gave then an incentive of a free Mac book Air and sent them off to continue putting forth perspective on Intel products. Pretty simple, it will be interesting to watch the evolution of this program to see how the investment of time, energy and dollars pays off, I think it will.

You can read more about the “Intel Insider” brand ambassador program online here: http://www.somewhatfrank.com/2008/06/intel-insider.html. Great to see big brands that get it that organizing people with influence online often involves getting people together in the real world to further solidify connections.

Aaron Bean is the Director of Strategy at The New Group, a digital marketing agency based in Portland, Oregon. 503.248.4505

Yes, Oprah mentioned Twitter in a show and now a million of her fans flooded the network, many of whom got confused or realized they didn’t have time to micro-blog and left, and now we have even more noise in the system. The upside to this sort of mainstream acceptance is the potential to cultivate a real messaging platform in which smart companies and agencies can leverage followers to spread the word on their behalf. Case in point: The CDC Emergency Twitter Stream.

The headlines have been rife with reports of one newspaper or another ceasing publication. It’s like the elephants trumpeting the death of one of their own herd and it’s getting louder as newsies struggle to find their place and a model for profitability in the age of blogs and “free” content. But what can you learn about their demise? It’s the same lesson every business learns for better or worse: adapt or die.

Through Twitter, I found Twitalyzer this morning.  Its an online app that allows you to put in anyone's Twitter handle, and get a set of metrics on several factors.  So far, I have been enjoying Twitter as part messaging tool, part idea stream, and part cocktail party. Ideas come in, and random shouts echo around the alley as my friends react and digest ideas in their own ways. Its fun, and sometimes a distraction.

Social Media as a topic seems to come up in every conversation about marketing among professionals and companies of many types. Many people are struggling with the concept, while at its core, it is a very simple thing to understand: Social Media is about promoting relationships among individuals, for the sake of better communication. Transparency, authenticity, currency all drive this idea, and promise great rewards to anyone about to launch a blog or start promoting an idea. Be yourself, and the world will find you.

If you spend any time reading marketing blogs you’ve probably read a hundred times that you need to engage in social media. Everyone is basically saying the same thing and it breaks down into three parts:

• Monitor
• Build
• Engage

Seems simple enough, right? What few people talk about (and what leads to client frustration and abandoned programs) is the mechanics of implementing a social media program and the resources required for maintaining it. Let’s start with those three basic building blocks first.