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!

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.

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 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

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!