Just realized that I haven’t updated in quite some time, but that’s related to being busy with some great projects. Just wanted to keep you all in the loop about what’s been going on.

• The Age of Conversation 3 has been released and it’s been listed on Amazon. From the official media release: “Age of Conversation 3 captures the distinct shift from social media as a hypothetical consumer loyalty tool, as it was considered only a little more than a year ago, to its current state as a staple in the modern marketing toolbox.”

Having participated in all three editions, I can tell you that it’s been a truly rewarding experience. Not only do proceeds go to charity, but as a contributor, I have the unique chance to connect with smart marketing folk from around the world. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy being a part of it.

• Things are heating up on the speaking circuit again. Next week, I’ll be presenting at the Social Media for Pharma Conference put on by the Advanced Learning Institute. The topic is: “How To Listen Before You Lead: Developing A Strategic Social Media Monitoring Program In Pharma On A Limited Budget”.

• On June 9, I’ll be presenting at Social Media Breakfast Montreal, again speaking about social media monitoring. Tickets, just $5, are on sale through Eventbrite. Hope to see you there.

• Late next month, I’ll be back with the Advanced Learning Institute team to deliver a workshop at the Social Media for Government Canada conference. The three-hour session is titled, “A Step-By-Step Approach To Using Social Media Tools Anyone Can Understand To Monitor Online Conversations, Manage Community Participation And Build Your Organization’s Reputation”. It’s the morning session on the Thursday.

• Big plans are in the works for socialmediamonitoring.ca. With help from the team at Toast Studio, we’re completely revamping the entire site. Work is just getting underway, but I encourage you to keep an eye out for news either here or on Twitter @All4Monitoring.

• Finally, just a friendly reminder of all the different places we can connect:

– @MarkGoren

– @All4Monitoring

– LinkedIn

– Social Media Monitoring LinkedIn Group

– Social Media Monitoring Tool Directory (#smmtd)

Hope to connect with you soon!

Ever have something come out of your mouth one way and become surprised to learn that the person you’re talking to heard something completely different? You can’t change what the person believes they heard, even if it’s not what you said or meant. And though the intention of your own words seemed clear, the other person’s perception is their truth.

Now imagine writing a thought down and sending it to someone. Without the benefit of body language, it’s hard to know the tone of that message, whether it’s meant to be serious or sarcastic, positive or negative. And if you don’t know the person well, the task is even harder. Just think of all the emails you write that fall into this category.

Writing is tricky, full of nuance and unspoken communication. And in the sentiment analysis game – the practice of determining whether an online conversation is either positive, negative or neutral (or mixed) in tone – that’s a sticky issue. For social media monitoring service providers, it’s a hurdle they’re trying really hard to overcome.

Here’s where things stand right now with sentiment analysis:

• Human filtering: Companies like RepuTrack use people on their team to help determine sentiment.

• Automated: Companies like Alterian’s SM2 use a complex algorithm that looks for “trigger words” to help classify conversations.

• Analyst driven: Individuals, either on the client side or a consultant being paid by the client, positioned between the monitoring platform and the end-user to verify and/or reclassify the information.

However, according to Maria Ogneva of Biz360, you can only get so close to a perfect result. “If two humans were rating an article for sentiment, they would agree 79% of the time (source of this statistic escapes me now), so automated sentiment simply can not be higher than that.”

So if that’s the case, how do you make the analysis as close to perfect as possible?

Over lunch recently with Alexandre Gravel of Toast Studio and Martin Perron of Bloom Search Marketing, we reasoned that crowdsourcing could hold the key. Over on Biz360’s blog, MarketIQ, they describe an experiment they conducted using Mechanical Turk to crowdsource sentiment analysis to verify if their own classifications were accurate. (It’s a fascinating read, take some time to digest it.)

But the question remains, how do you overcome the flaws of sentiment analysis if you’re responsible for tracking conversation related to a brand?

Become intimate with the conversation.

You read that right.

Before you even set up a single keyword search, make sure you have a thorough understanding of the brand and its environment. By getting to know the brand beforehand, you’ll understand the tone associated to it, the issues it faces and you’ll be able to outline the things you expect to hear.

Then, once you start collecting results, you’ll see and understand the trends, key influencers, lingo – and the discussions taking place will just make sense to you. Like any relationship, you’ll know what the hidden body language is within these conversations. Monitor on a daily basis and you’ll find the flow and be able to judge for yourself how a conversation should be classified.

Of course, this isn’t the perfect solution for all projects and search profiles, but no matter how you approach your social media monitoring program, if you’re not reading the results, you’re wasting your time anyway. So become intimate with the conversation and you’ll be in a better position to classify sentiment for yourself.

One of the best ways to get what you want out of a service provider has always been to get on the phone, escalate to the “customer retention” department and make your case. We all know that the front line at the call centre is merely trying to triage your complaint, bandage up the wound and get you on your merry way.

Recently, though, I’ve seen and heard examples of people being able to circumvent the front line and move up the ladder after threatening to take the “story” online. What happens then? Have we reached the point where just threatening to put something on the Internet is enough to gain traction with the folks at the call centre?

From what I’ve been seeing and hearing, the tactic is becoming a powerful one-two punch.

With the internet firmly entrenched as the go-to destination for those looking to out brands for shoddy products and service, people are turning to blogs, Twitter, rating sites, forums, and so on, with a new found power, to air their grievances and make them stick. Now, with more and more companies engaged in social media monitoring programs, companies are beginning to understand the urgency and lasting effect these negative bread crumbs can have.

Not happy with your newspaper price or service? See what happens when you threaten to cancel your subscription and read the paper online.

Not happy when a part goes on a appliance that’s past its warranty? See what happens on the phone when you casually mention that you’ll tweet, blog or rate the product online.

The tone changes. The call center folk become a little more accommodating. And you get moved to the next tier faster. Consumer-friendly solutions follow.

Now, I’m not advocating being difficult or making things harder for Judy the operator every time you need to solve a problem, but this does represent a huge shift in corporate’s understanding of the online environment.

Some thoughts on this:

• Are companies now starting to fully understand the far reaching efforts that a negative review posted online can have?

• Are they also starting to understand the benefit of solving the problem amicably, hoping that it will lead to a positive online mention?

For consumers, perhaps this is a more effective means to an end as well. Sure you can tweet your experience, but then you’re not only saying something about the brand you’re targeting, but you’re also saying something about yourself as well. (Just a little, right?)

So dial the number. Make the threat. See what happens.

Then take it online if you have to. And see if they’re listening.

When you plant seeds online, good things start to happen.

When I first started blogging, I met a ton of great people through my online participation. Commenting, tweeting, discussing books – all these activities ultimately led to new connections and friendships. Three years ago, Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton took it upon themselves to create a book called The Age of Conversation, asking marketing bloggers to create a one page entry for the effort. With all proceeds going to charity, the decision was easy. In fact, proceeds from this year’s book are earmarked for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Beautiful.

Now, after having contributed to the first two books, we’re all proud to announce the launch of The Age of Conversation 3: It’s time to get busy.

With a new publishing partner in place (and a big thank you to Channel V Books, operated by Gretel Going & Kate Fleming, contributors to the book as well), the book will be available in April. Full details of the book can be found over on Channel V Books’ website. Watch this space for official launch news.

In the meanwhile, you can get busy checking out each contributor. There are over 300 of us.

Adam Joseph
Priyanka Sachar
Mark Earls
Cory Coley-Christakos
Stefan Erschwendner
Paul Hebert
Jeff De Cagna
Thomas Clifford
Phil Gerbyshak
Jon Burg
Toby Bloomberg
Shambhu Neil Vineberg
Joseph Jaffe
Uwe Hook
Steve Roesler
Michael E. Rubin
anibal casso
Steve Woodruff
Steve Sponder
Becky Carroll
Tim Tyler
Chris Wilson
Beth Harte
Tinu Abayomi-Paul
Dan Schawbel
Carol Bodensteiner
Trey Pennington
David Weinfeld
Dan Sitter
Vanessa DiMauro
Ed Brenegar
David Zinger
Brett T. T. Macfarlane
Efrain Mendicuti
Deb Brown
Brian Reich
Gaurav Mishra
Dennis Deery
C.B. Whittemore
Gordon Whitehead
Heather Rast
Cam Beck
Hajj E. Flemings
Joan Endicott
Cathryn Hrudicka
Jeroen Verkroost
Karen D. Swim
Christopher Morris
Joe Pulizzi
Leah Otto
Corentin Monot
Karalee Evans
Leigh Durst
David Berkowitz
Kevin Jessop
Lesley Lambert
Duane Brown
Peter Korchnak
Mark Price
Dustin Jacobsen
Piet Wulleman
Mike Maddaloni
Ernie Mosteller
Scott Townsend
Nick Burcher
Frank Stiefler
Steve Olenski
Rich Nadworny
John Rosen
Tim Jackson
Suzanne Hull
Len Kendall
Amber Naslund
Wayne Buckhanan
Mark McGuinness
Caroline Melberg
Andy Drish
Oleksandr Skorokhod
Claire Grinton
Angela Maiers
Paul Williams
Gary Cohen
Armando Alves
Sam Ismail
Gautam Ramdurai
B.J. Smith
Tamera Kremer
Eaon Pritchard
Brendan Tripp
Adelino de Almeida
Jacob Morgan
Casey Hibbard
Andy Hunter
Julian Cole
Debra Helwig
Anjali Ramachandran
Jye Smith
Drew McLellan
Craig Wilson
Karin Hermans
Emily Reed
David Petherick
Katie Harris
Gavin Heaton
Dennis Price
Mark Levy
George Jenkins
Doug Mitchell
Mark W. Schaefer
Helge Tenno
Douglas Hanna
Marshall Sponder
James Stevens
Ian Lurie
Ryan Hanser
Jenny Meade
Jeff Larche
Sacha Tueni and Katherine Maher
David Svet
Jessica Hagy
Simon Payn
Joanne Austin-Olsen
Mark Avnet
Stanley Johnson
Marilyn Pratt
Mark Hancock
Steve Kellogg
Michelle Beckham-Corbin
Michelle Chmielewski
Amy Mengel
Veronique Rabuteau
Peter Komendowski
Andrea Vascellari
Timothy L Johnson
Phil Osborne
Beth Wampler
Amy Jussel
Rick Liebling
Eric Brody
Arun Rajagopal
Dr Letitia Wright
Hugh de Winton
David Koopmans
Aki Spicer
Jeff Wallace
Don Frederiksen
Charles Sipe
Katie McIntyre
James G Lindberg & Sandra Renshaw
David Reich
Lynae Johnson
Jasmin Tragas
Deborah Chaddock Brown
Mike O’Toole
Jeanne Dininni
Iqbal Mohammed
Morriss M. Partee
Katie Chatfield
Jeff Cutler
Pete Jones
Riku Vassinen
Jeff Garrison
Kevin Dugan
Tiphereth Gloria
Mike Sansone
Lori Magno
Valerie Simon
Nettie Hartsock
Mark Goren
Peter Salvitti

Consider this a formal invitation to join the new Social Media Monitoring group on LinkedIn.

After examining the different LinkedIn groups that touch on this subject, it’s clear that not one discusses strategic online listening in a general way. Actually, most groups are directly linked to a monitoring platform.

My goal is to fill the void and, much like the @all4monitoring twitter account we’ve got going, create a destination where we can discuss all related topics, stories and case studies, albeit in a much more in-depth manner.

Right now, you’ll see that there are a couple of news feeds being pulled into the group. These are mostly from different social media monitoring company blogs. If you have suggestions for others, I’d be happy to add those as well. There are already a few discussion thread open, but, obviously, I’d love to see you add your own. And make sure to add your name and info to the “Roll Call” thread, which is designed to help everyone get to know each other.

On “Social Media Monitoring Mondays”, we’ll start a new thread and encourage a new discussion every week. We’ll try to make these threads timely, topical and relevant to current news.

To share information emerging from this group, please use the #SMMLI (Social Media Monitoring LinkedIn) hashtag. Don’t be shy to spread the joy!

Also, we invite you to learn more about monitoring at socialmediamonitoring.ca. This site delivers an easy-to-read explanation of the importance of listening and its Social Media Monitoring Tool Directory (#smmtd) has often been cited for being one of the most comprehensive lists of monitoring services on the web. In fact, there are now over 115 free and paid tools indexed there.

Hope to see you on LinkedIn. I look forward to making the Social Media Monitoring group active and vibrant!

Earlier this week, Cossette posted the results of a survey they conducted last fall of over 3,000 web users in Canada, the U.S. and UK. You can find the complete report here.

Specifically, one of the findings stood out to me:

Among some 20 online activities surveyed that can be tied back to social media behaviour, two are particularly meaningful:

• Two-thirds of Internet users turn to online information about products, brands or companies that have been produced by family, friends, colleagues and others they don’t know personally.

• 30% have shared something online about a brand or a company in the past week. More specifically, 20% have cited a company or brand in a personal web page or blog. They are the only group that finds advertising as useful as social brand content, and a lot more likely to join various types of sponsored communities

Of course, this has many significant meanings for brand managers and the agencies responsable:

1. You’re no longer in control of your message. (If you haven’t heard that before, it’s time you did.)
2. People are planting seeds on your behalf around the web and it’s up to you to know where they’re talking and what they’re saying, as their positive and/or negative comments can have a profound impact on purchasing decisions.

As a result, you must start a strategic social media monitoring and response program. Without one in place, the public becomes your brand’s manager and, due to the shelf life of search, anyone who can type your product/service name into Google can be influenced by what’s already been said. It’s on you to find the relevant conversations and join in, so you can correct wrongs and misconceptions and have your point of view on record.

So, do you know what they are saying about your brand?

When I talk to people about social media monitoring, they’re mostly interested in how it relates to their overall online engagement strategy. And, of course, that’s perfectly reasonable as you think strategically about planting seeds around the web.

However, what a lot of people aren’t thinking about are all the other reasons why they could be monitoring online conversations. After all, it’s one thing to use a monitoring platform to guide your online participation. It’s a completely different thing, though, to collect information for a wide range of reasons.

Over the next few posts, we’ll be taking a look at the different reasons why social media monitoring isn’t just for monitoring social media. For example…

It’s to help you gain business intelligence.

• Generate leads
Beyond engaging in social media and being ready to act on leads generated through participation, you can learn a lot by listening. Keep your ears open and look for issues people are having with your competitors, needs expressed online, news of events related to your service offering and RFPs that are coming through.

• Keep an eye on your competitors
Knowing what your competitors are up to can help you decide how to differentiate your offer. Run keywords that are directly connected to your competitors’ executives to see what they’re doing. Listen to conversations related to their brands to learn what people are thinking about it and to identify its flaws. Consider listening in on their employees, because you never know what nugget of insight they’ll drop in your lap.

• Feel out the issues facing your industry
Listen to industry keywords to learn what influential people industry wide are thinking. Figure out some of the trends that will affect your business. Learn the language people are using to discuss the field and reflect that back in the messages you prepare.

• Gain key product development insights
People will often give you unsolicited feedback on how you can make things better. Whether it’s in customer service, supply chain, or the product itself, keep an eye out for clues on how to better meet the expectations of your users.

How do you use social media monitoring to gain business intelligence?

My friends at Point To Point in Cleveland invited me to guest post and it just went live. The post, titled, “Playing the name game when it comes to online reputation management” comes with a back story.

You see, in February 2007 I was contacted by their president, also named Mark Goren, to discuss our “Google problem.” Since that first chat, we’ve become friends, done a little work together, and continue to serve as each others’ mentor.

The guest post talks about the importance of filtering out bad information from social media monitoring to collect results that are most relevant to your search strategy. Using the example of our name, I illustrate how to do so through simple search.

Why does this relate to planting seeds? Because the more content you produce through different social networks or the more you’re being written about, it’s vital to know where conversations are taking place if you want to manage your reputation online. In some cases, it may even make you want to distinguish your name somehow, to help make it easier to search for. Cleveland’s Mark Goren did so by using his middle initial, which you can see on the right sidebar on P2P’s blog.

Mark is a great guy and the team at Point To Point is at the top of their game. I encourage you to learn a little bit about them, their award-winning work and their unique charity, Change for $20, which they launched last year for the holidays.

To learn about how Mark and I met, read this old post.

To read today’s guest post, head on over to P2P’s blog.

To check out Change for $20 (which is probably the first thing you should do), visit the site.

As I wrote in the original post, and still believe very strongly today:

The world is smaller than ever. People are meeting new people and making new friends every day. It’s all about reaching out, connecting and making meaningful relationships. Last night’s chat was just one more powerful example.

And so is today’s guest post.

I’ll probably hear some good natured opposition to this post from some friends at different Social Media Monitoring companies, but I stand solidly behind this advice.

No matter which social media monitoring platform you’re committed to, use others as well.

True insight comes from using several different kinds of search engines, applications and tools. That’s not a knock on the different services, it’s reflective of the monitoring environment’s reality. By using several of the different services available – mostly for no added cost – you’ll uncover deeper intelligence, greater statistics and a better understanding of the conversation.

There may be any number of reasons for this logic, whether you’re committed to paid or free tools:

• Every algorithm is different. While one tool may be capturing certain conversations quickly, another tool may be filling in the blanks in a more timely way. By cross checking different engines, you’ll be able to catch more results sooner.

• Even if you’re using a robust, feature-rich service, there are likely many different insights that the service doesn’t incorporate. Take Twitter, for example. You’re collecting tweets, but are able to drill down about the user, who the person is connected to, since when they’ve been on Twitter, frequency of Tweets, which links they’ve posted, what pictures they’ve linked to, and so on and so on and so on? The more tools you use, and some offer very specific functionalities, the greater you’ll come to understand a particular conversation.

• Backup your main monitoring service with others, just in case. In case your system is going offline for maintenance. In case results turn up missing. In case you don’t have access to a wifi network. For example, through you may be using a web based service, you may want to download mobile applications – Tweetie and Say What? come to mind – to check in while you’re away from your computer.

• Sentiment analysis. Different services go about providing this analysis in different ways. Some automate the process, relying on different “trigger” words to reach a conclusion, others assign sentiment through human analysis, while still others leave it all up to you. As a result, if you like so many of the features offered by the platform you’re committed to, but don’t “trust” how it handles sentiment, you may want to go in a different direction to gain an accurate measure.

• Unless your platform allows you to add custom RSS sources, which helps ensure that you’re not missing any results, you’ll have to find different ways to keep track of these other results.

These are just some of what could be a very long list. And in no way is this post meant to diminish the importance of finding your comfort zone with a primary platform and sticking to it. That said, a single social media monitoring platform just isn’t enough if you really want to get more out of your monitoring program.

So, I ask you, what combination of sites, tools and applications are you using? Need ideas, here’s an exhaustive directory of social media monitoring tools that will show you the potential of what’s out there.

Building on yesterday’s post about the importance of reading the links you’re collecting through social media monitoring, today we’re going to focus on tags.

What’s a tag?

Well, if you think of the web as one big filing cabinet, a tag is the label you put on a folder within the cabinet. The beauty of these files you’re using is that you can put as many labels on them as you like.

You can create these folders in one of two ways:

1. As a content producer, you’ll use the labels (re: tags) to help others who are diving into the filing cabinet find your content. Your choice of tags is important, because you have to imagine how others will use the filing cabinet and select words that are relevant to them.Content producers will tag their content when they update their blog, post videos to YouTube, add pictures to Flickr and so forth.
2. As a content consumer, you’ll use tags to organize files that you’ll want to reference again later. Social bookmarking services like Delicious provide a practical example. When you bookmark content to your Delicious account, you’re asked to provide tags for that piece of content. You can then search through your bookmarks by tag to find related information.Of course, how you tag content as a “consumer” will help others find information within the filing cabinet as well.

Why is this important for social media monitoring? Because tags are an excellent way to see how people relate the content you’re interested in to other topics. When you examine the tags attached to a particular piece of content – or several pieces of content discovered through the same keywords – you’ll gain insights that go well beyond your keywords. Ultimately, you’ll discover new information that will help you understand the topic you’re researching that much better.

How do you think of tags?