Memewatch: Social Media Analysis or Blog Relations?

Over at the Church of the Customer, Ben McConnell suggests that corporations are going to have to find or train people to track what's pertinent to the business in the blogosphere:

[from Job title of the future: social media analyst]

All of this seems to point toward a new job responsibility inside companies whose growth depends on word of mouth: social media analyst.

If a social media analyst could port into Technorati's data warehouse (or BlogPulse's) and rely on her imagination and knowledge of company strategies to create her own, real-time dashboard of gauges, maps and charts of what's being said online, she would probably become the company's most foremost expert on trends, word of mouth and the democratization of culture.

Yeah, but maybe that's too remote: all that staring at graphs and so on, like the foo-foo dust that business intelligence firms peddle. I think it is more likely that a role analogous to press relations will arise: blog relations. These folks will keep tabs on Blogpulse and Technorati, to see what is going down, but they will also maintain and active and on-going relationship with the major bloggers in their sector.

[pointer from Mike Manuel]

tags: social+media+analyst, social+media+analysis, blog+relations, curch+of+the+customer, pointer:mike+manuel, memewatch

Comments

[Ben McConnell]

The responsibility of blogger relations (a must-have it seems these days) could fall under job duties in PR, customer service, marketing, call centers... It doesn't seem easily painted across every industry.

I see the role of a social media analyst as, well, a stare-at-the-monitor kind of person. Someone who crunches numbers on all of the data being generated by social media.

From that analysis would come guidance on what companies could do next, while also trying to quantify the effects of social media-driven word of mouth on sales.

[Matthew Hurst]

This seems to miss the whole sector of companies like mine (Nielsen BuzzMetrics) and others (Umbria, CIC-data, Cymfony, etc.) who make a job out of anlaysing this content and providing timely analyses in the form of reports, dashboards, reporting sites and alerting. Tools like Technorati or BlogPulse are fine for precision based analysis (tell me something about this), but not so good for recall based analysis (tell me something I don't know). Data driven approaches which take a comprehensive view of the data are far more effective. In addition, such companies provide a one stop shop for *all* social media, not just blogs.

Blog relationship management is fine for nurturing ongoing relationships and fire fighting, but not for any serious analytical role.

[Leslie]

I agree with these comments, and think there is a role both for blog relations and analytics. But I would offer a third concept for consideration. In addition to deriving insights from the blogosphere (blog mining and analysis) and leveraging the blogosphere as an alternative form of media relations, I would add the use of word-of-mouth(WOM) marketing as a new distribution channel. WOM marketing is not new. Amway, Avon and MCI’s Friends & Family are all great examples from the prehistoric pre-Internet era. What’s different now is the ability to efficiently design these programs to meet the needs and interests of micro-segments of consumers. The blogosphere (and other forms of CGM) represent millions of conversations on a daily basis. These conversations are among passionate (or at least interested) users who are thinking and dreaming, designing and building a vast array of products and services. Digital WOM enables marketers to tap into these centers of conversation and harness that energy on behalf of the product or service. It’s part digital evangelist, part alternate sales channel. Some combination of each of these disciplines will be in the marketing department of the future. And by the way, if recent reports on corporate blogging and consumer generated marketing are any indication, the future is now.

[Toby]

I agree with Ben. There are different skill sets involved in blogger relationships/pr/customer services, etc. versus monitoring and analyzing the data that is derived from consumer generated media.

Even if they are not actively blogging, major corporations are developing CGM programs. However, I find it interesting that (for the most part) it is the brand/marketing departments not the marketing research departments that are engaging companies like Nielson BuzzMetrics.

This is not "foo-foo dust" Stowe. With the rapid increase of digital conversations, along with the development of social networking communities, the importance of monitoring CGM as a complement to traditional data collection is critical. What is disappointing is the the lack of vision from the marketing research community; it appears the industry is missing the boat on this one.