Making Better Decision finding Influencers – Fresh Networks Social Media Influencer Report

A tip from Charlie Osmand over at Fresh Networks (who I believe spoke in London at #msm10 last week, where I was at and also spoke) caught my attention this morning and I took a look at their (his) review of Social Media Influencers.   The link to download the PDF  is contained in Charlie’s DM  below.

curious to hear what you’ll make of this one: 9 Social media monitoring tools compared for ability to find influencers: http://t.co/pANb2h

Direct message sent by charlie osmond (@cosmond) to you (@webmetricsguru) on Dec 04, 10:10 AM.

The report is excellent in that it goes into some depth of influencer identification because it confines itself to actually focusing on a particular aspect/application of each of the 9 platforms (I was not familiar with PeerIndex, but have worked on all the other platforms listed and have active accounts on most of them).

But the closer you get to the truth, the more you realize there is no “one truth” or infact, one tool good for everything.  According the FreshNetworks paper  BrandWatch is best for finding Forum and Message Board Influeners while Radian6 was better finding Twitter followers (I’d put my money any day on finding Forum followers over Twitter followers as there are so many free tools like Klout and PeerIndex that handle Twitter followers – but identifying  Forum Influencers by topic – that’s rare and potentially much more valuable).  Scout Labs/Lithium was best at finding YouTube and Image influence while Synthesio was better than the rest at finding Facebook Influencers (again, much more valuable because it’s harder to get into Facebook and really find a consolidated influence score there).

The rest of the platforms really stood out for other features but not  for influence identification such as Alterian/Techrigy/SM2 for segmentation, Sysomos for best overall tool (USP) and Social Radar for the best data visualization platform.    The subject of the influence study was “organic baby food” – something every platform should be able to do a good report on.

There is so much “fragmentation” between vendors and what outputs they produce and buyers (and what inputs they need) that each platform tends to be good at certain things but not as good at others – you pick the platform you need for the relationships and capabilities you need on one project, then find it’s unsuitable for others, and you get into the datasoup mess most agencies are in, with a hybrid set of tools that are not interoperable and do not support the workflow or analyst, never mind the stakeholders.

But still, this is the best overall influencer study of a comparative set of social listening platforms I’ve seen so far and does a good job at defining influence in a workable way that is useful for most people reading this blog.

FreshNetworks quotes Dave Sifry, founder of Technorati as …

targeting the Magic Middle of online influencers, sandwiched between Chris Anderson?s Long Tail and well-known A-list influencers.

Makes sense to me as it’s unlikely your going to get Lady Gaga to advocate much of anything (if you can even get through to her handlers) but you may have some luck getting through to people just ahead of the Long Tail (who have groups of niche followers and aren’t so inundated with requests that they are putting up barriers to being contacted).

It’s also interesting the FreshNetworks study talks about 4 types of Influencers yet only shows the three (above), where is the forth type hiding?

Another great thing about the FreshNetworks paper is how of it defines 5 levels Engagement – I don’t know if this is the best definition, but it’s certainly workable and even possible to manually rank influence based on it.

Inactive – aware of the relevant sector or topic but not actively engaging.

Brand Conscious – aware of your brand. Generates some buzz but not fully engaged and mostly fleeting references online.

Word-of-Mouth Amplifiers– spreads key messages and updates that relate directly to your brand, products or services.

Brand Advocates/Evangelists – support and champion your brand online.

Brand Ambassadors – key advocates who have a strong involvement with the your brand online. Could be a commercial relationship.

I doubt you could automate the classification of influence (but it’s worth a try).

There’s also a section on “what’s in it for me” in approaching influencers,  how to do it and how to select the right tool/platform.   I honestly could not have done a better job if I had written the report myself, though I might have tried to pick clear winners and losers instead of giving every platform kudos for something they do better than anyone else, as FreshNetworks did.

On the hand, to be fair and honest, as I am known to be – the real issue here isn’t influencer identification capabilities, it’s rather, the right tool/platform you need for your particular situation – that’s a custom consulting case scenario, not something that a paper like this can fully address.

My book will attempt to set the case and rationale for more strategic investment in tools and processes than any of these types of studies has produced (the basis for the FreshNetworks study is to build more clientele – nothing wrong with that ) but doesn’t really address that fact, nor can it, that every business and situation is different and the precision needed in influencer identification continues to evolve past where any of these tools, profiled, goes.

Also notable, is that this study covers 9 platforms and leaves out others that could have also been interesting such as Traakr (not to mention that just about every PR, Advertising and Marketing firm now is either creating influencer lists of their own or buying them and white labeling it from firms like Traackr or other similar type services).

Prices vary for such lists and are widely dissimilar, often for the similar lists to tell the truth, but having done some of this myself, in various capacities, I am of the belief we should not invent the wheel  unless we can show a much better cut of influence than what the existing tools and platforms produce now, nuff said.

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Social Media Case Studies – I’m smiling – Web Journal – general

Well, I got the first case study for my book back from Synthesio – its for Accor hotels and it’s exactly what I asked for – smiling.  I realize that in asking people to fill out a form with details in a certain structure that I’m making more work (but it’s also the way that many other types of forms are structured – for a specific purpose).

In my case, I need to compare what the case studies show, look for overall patterns and trends, some of that will actually be spreadsheet analysis – some with be broad statements on what Social Media ROI is or is not.

I can’t share the Case Study yet, but it was several pages – it will be in my book along with many interesting diagrams (some of them vendor generated) no one has ever seen before.    What I show will make perfect sense when the book is published.

I am meaning to update my web journal and make some commentary on the recent Google – Groupon acquisition rumors but it’s really hard to do it when all my spare time is going into the book – event the book site isn’t ready yet – it’s still too noisy – frustrating in that as fast I try to move – there is only so far and fast I can move.  It’ makes me more appreciative of how difficult it is to get moving parts to all line up (probably the biggest problem agencies have, if you ask me – along with the idea if that they may or may not be relevant any longer, esp PR agencies – what’s their value proposition?)

One thing that is coming up a lot is Google, and from my talk with Giles Palmer of BrandWatch over the weekend in Brighton, I got an appreciation of how much Google Instant and Google C affine have been changing the web, improving it, yet skewing it to show results that are largely pre cached in order make a richer search experience.  The problem is – if your not someone or something that is searched on often (the long tail or even the pre-long tail) you not going to get that extra “massaging” by Google caching and preprocessing the results.

A few more interesting posts I’ve read include

Research Examines What Motivates People to Comment Online in RWW and JAtIN’s blog about Google Complexity – according to the post …

As Google grows in complexity, the number of bugs in their system multiply. Sometimes you don’t rank because you screwed up. But sometimes you don’t rank because Google screwed up. Typically Google sees minimal difference either way, as there will always be another website to fill up the search results. But as a business owner, when Google gets it wrong you can be screwed pretty bad, particularly if you stock physical inventory and have to tightly manage your supply chain & cash flow.

Another reason why Search Engines need to be regulated – as much as they hate that idea – it’s needed.

View the original article here

Social Media Case Studies – I’m smiling – Web Journal – general

Well, I got the first case study for my book back from Synthesio – its for Accor hotels and it’s exactly what I asked for – smiling.  I realize that in asking people to fill out a form with details in a certain structure that I’m making more work (but it’s also the way that many other types of forms are structured – for a specific purpose).

In my case, I need to compare what the case studies show, look for overall patterns and trends, some of that will actually be spreadsheet analysis – some with be broad statements on what Social Media ROI is or is not.

I can’t share the Case Study yet, but it was several pages – it will be in my book along with many interesting diagrams (some of them vendor generated) no one has ever seen before.    What I show will make perfect sense when the book is published.

I am meaning to update my web journal and make some commentary on the recent Google – Groupon acquisition rumors but it’s really hard to do it when all my spare time is going into the book – event the book site isn’t ready yet – it’s still too noisy – frustrating in that as fast I try to move – there is only so far and fast I can move.  It’ makes me more appreciative of how difficult it is to get moving parts to all line up (probably the biggest problem agencies have, if you ask me – along with the idea if that they may or may not be relevant any longer, esp PR agencies – what’s their value proposition?)

One thing that is coming up a lot is Google, and from my talk with Giles Palmer of BrandWatch over the weekend in Brighton, I got an appreciation of how much Google Instant and Google C affine have been changing the web, improving it, yet skewing it to show results that are largely pre cached in order make a richer search experience.  The problem is – if your not someone or something that is searched on often (the long tail or even the pre-long tail) you not going to get that extra “massaging” by Google caching and preprocessing the results.

A few more interesting posts I’ve read include

Research Examines What Motivates People to Comment Online in RWW and JAtIN’s blog about Google Complexity – according to the post …

As Google grows in complexity, the number of bugs in their system multiply. Sometimes you don’t rank because you screwed up. But sometimes you don’t rank because Google screwed up. Typically Google sees minimal difference either way, as there will always be another website to fill up the search results. But as a business owner, when Google gets it wrong you can be screwed pretty bad, particularly if you stock physical inventory and have to tightly manage your supply chain & cash flow.

Another reason why Search Engines need to be regulated – as much as they hate that idea – it’s needed.

View the original article here

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Monitoring Social Media 2010 London and Integrasco Event Presentations

I’m in London all of this week doing a series of public and private speaking engagements beginning with Monitoring Social Media 2010 Monday and followed by a private event co-sponsored by Integrasco, a social media monitoring firm and platform headquartered in Oslo, Norway.   Here’s the presentations for both appearances.

For the first presentation I am focusing on the “soft” metrics around Social Media and how it’s going to be hard to plug them into a Return on Investment equation since their value is not set.   That got me thinking on how value for a object or service is often set by an market or trading service.   A razor, bottle of soda, sofa bed, bar of chocolate, these all have some value assigned to them that might fluctuate but is still possible to calculate with precision.

Friend, Re-Tweets, Likes?  What kind of financial numbers can you put against them?  Sure, there are people coming up with some figures, but there is no currency exchange, no market where one could or would want to exchange friends or ReTweets, for example.    It’s not clear to me if such metrics could really be plugged into any ROI equation unless someone assigns some monetary value to these things and be willing to pay for that value.

The other event (I’m actually speaking at a third event on Friday, November 26th at the CIPR for Glide Technologies in London  but don’t have the presentation ready for it yet) involves making the right technological choices.   Look, we are faced too often with decisions made that are disasters but affect our lives.

Perhaps,  I can help illuminate the choices that are made in monitoring out of ignorance of what is “out there”.   Most of all, I’m interested in streamlining work so we can all have a life.

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Social Media Analtytics Case Studies

I need Social Media Analytics Case Studies for the the book I’m writing and I put up a  page up on this blog (link in the upper right) where you can read and contact me if your interested in providing a case study that can go into the Social Media Analytics Book.  Here’s a link to the request form that you can download so that you have a hard copy.

Shortly (in a week or so) the Book Blog will be up but it’s not ready yet.

Don’t want to lose the time so here goes.   I realize this form is quite long and not that easy to read; I’ve filled out enough forms of this type to appreciate the time and effort that does into answering the questions.

At the same time there needs to be precision in what I’m asking for an which also makes it easier to compare case studies to each other and summarize the information.

I need your case studies submitted within the next 30 days (by mid December 2010).

Read the information below and if you have something that will fit into what I’m asking for (in the format that I’m asking for it – meaning all the points and sub-points should be followed as much as possible), go ahead and contact me using the form at the end of this post.

A work in progress, by Marshall Sponder

Open Invitation for Social Media Analytics Case Studies for review and potentially for inclusion in the book.  To be published by McGraw-Hill in the spring of 2011, this is an open request to the Social Media Analytics and Data Gathering Vendor and Providers Community.

Analysis of Case Studies is useful for testing whether models, theories, or methods of analytical data gathering and interpretation can truly work in the real world. A case study gives the story behind the results by capturing what happened to bring it about, and can be a good opportunity to highlight a campaign’s or a project’s success.  It may also bring attention to challenges that arose, or to difficulties encountered in the course of the process.

The following is an outline of the data we seek, and a suggestion for a forum or template to use in submitting a Case Study.  But please note: additional input or discussion is welcomed, as are other methods of presentation.

1.       A brief synopsis of your company or service; the analytics it offers, a description of the data or end product.

2.       A short introduction to the Case Study: what was the project or campaign, and some detail regarding:

a.       Was a there a specific problem to be addressed or resolved?

b.       What inspired the project or campaign?

c.        Were there drivers for change, or to develop new information or ways to gather, analyze, or present new analytic details, factors or insights?

d.       What was the context for the work/project/campaign covered in this initiative or work product?

e.        What was the methodology used to generate the data or findings?

Include relevant key facts about the organization or the client, with brief details about any others involved, such as strategic partners, syndicated or publicly available data or streaming information

3.       A discussion of the Aims and Objectives of the project or campaign, including:

a.       Purpose: what was the client trying to achieve or learn?

b.       What benefits or end result was the study or clients or project’s objective?

c.        Description of the project long and short-term goals, including services or applications to be provided, measurement of success, and financial or expansion or strategic objectives, etc.

Note: We suggest the following goals and objectives be used if possible in the language of the case study:

Goals: Awareness, Consideration, Try (trial), Referral (recommend), Advocacy (“Like” or “Share” or “Repurpose”/”Forward”/”extend”).Stakeholders: (who the work was done for): Branding, Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Retail, Customer Service, CRM, Communications or Other.Social Media or Outreach Channels: Email, Facebook, Twitter, Video, Flickr, LinkedIn, Foursquare (or other Geolocation services, Mobile, Viral Marketing, Word of Mouth, Coupons, Point of Sale systems, Paid Search, Organic Search.Industry Segment: (i.e.:  Retail, Banking, Non Profit, Aerospace, Automotive, etc)

Note: If possible, reference the same points and sub points contained in this document when composing your case study; this will help us organize the material more effectively.

4.       Details of Approach, to include:

a.       Specification of requirements – what was specified?

b.       Description of planning process.

c.        Overview of project scope, timeline, execution process.

d.       Key Factors of Project Management, i.e., guidance, best practices and framework, project governance, Milepost reviews, communications and stakeholder management.

e.        Measurement or data analysis details, including analytical methodology of the data, method of data acquisition, timetable, cost basis.

f.        Comments or explanation of how and why this approach was adopted or relevant to the information needs of the client or the project itself.

g.        Process development, quality control measures, KPI’s, etc.

5.       Details of Challenges, to include

a.       Problems encountered in the process.

b.       Cultural, semantic, numeric, difficulties with, or adapting to, interoperable or cross-usable data.

c.        Staffing or communications challenges (internal or with client).

d.       How were these handled, and eventually overcome.

e.        What would you do differently, better, or with greater clarity next time around?

6.       Details of Successes and Outcomes, to include:

a.       Specific challenges to the work or project that were overcome.

b.       What were the contributors to these successes, and can they be put to use in future such projects?

c.        What variables arose that were of significance or value to the project?

d.       How did your service or method satisfy the information or data needs of the client or the project?

e.        How did the generated data (or summary of findings) solve a problem or shed light on a client (or project) area of concern or interest?

f.        How will revenue or actionable information result from the analytic data generated by your product or service?

g.        Summarize how the end result improved or enhanced client operations or sales or productivity.

7.       Conclusions, to include:

a.       What was achieved?

b.       Benefits that have been realized as a result of the analytics generated or presented as summary data.

c.        Future potential benefits.

d.       Lessons learned (b y the client, the vendor, or other stakeholders or partners).

e.        Future plans.

We understand that not every study falls into a neat box and Social Media Analytics is an emerging field and that new data streams and methods of analysis are part of this burgeoning arena.  The ecosystem and datasets and stores of information within the realm of Social Media will often follow a new paradigm of acquisition.  User generated data may require stages of review in advance of analysis; grooming of data and fields may also come into play.

Using the above as a guideline for Case Studies, we thank you in advance for participating in this book project, and welcome your comments and insights.  Please take care to note any confidential or proprietary Case Study data or client tactical or strategic or trade secrets that are not to be revealed, made public or to be put in the published content of the book or the book’s associated website.  Please note confidential Case Study content as, “not to be included in published case study”.  Confidentiality and proper codes of business standards and practices will be in effect as we gather information and write the chapters of the book.

Thank you!

Marshall Sponder

Note: You can contact me via twitter at @webmetricsguru   or you can fill out the form on the page in the upper right of the masthead of this blog (submit a case study).

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In one week – Monitoring Social Media London #MSM10

Speaking in London a week from today (actually I’ll be in London from this Saturday till the following Sunday, November 28th, with a short trip to Oslo, Norway and another to Brussels).  As I’m a speaker at this event, anyone who wishes to attend can get a 10% discount by applying the code SPKR10.

I’ll be speaking about Social Media ROI, but in my thinking, it’s really more like Reverse ROI, and that was the insight I had when I attended Monitoring Social Media 2010 NYC on November 4th and 5th.  While in London I’ll be speaking at two private events, one for Integrasco on November 23rd and another for Glide Technology on November 26th.

Meanwhile, I’m busy writing my book which is coming together nicely.  I thought my readers, who may not have seen the executive summary, might want to read it here – so here goes:

Social Media Analytics, the Book (or the Social Media Analytics Book)

This book will cover much of what is currently known about Social Media Monitoring and Social Media ROI.  It will breakdown what businesses need to track on the web in Social Media based on verticals and applications.   Best practices for effective social media analytics will also be put forward.

Analytics refers to the behind the scenes data relating to web sites, visits and visitors: the source or referral that got them to a page (where were they before they clicked on the site or the specific page), what sort of computer or operating system they use (Mac or PC), how long they spent on a page, how many different pages on the site do they visit, how often do they return to the site (provided cookies can track their information) and many other statistics of interest to owners of web sites.

In an endeavor of this size and scope I’ll reach out to a variety of experts with exposure to different areas of social media and monitoring to contribute thoughts and ideas, and will welcome their suggestions to help round out the book.

Section 1 of Social Media Analytics will cover how to setup up Social Media Monitoring for effective analytics tracking.   This section will contain  definitions of the terms  used for social media monitoring, a history of Social Media return on investment tracking, as well as tracking Word Of Mouth .  Some areas present difficulties for accurate tracking, such as international listening projects.   The book will explain what’s needed to set up effective monitoring for different industry segments, including Branding, Marketing, Public Relations, Sales and Advertising.

The second section will offer several case studies over a diverse arena of online business activity.  Among the business categories currently proposed for inclusion: Real Estate, Restaurants, Hotels/Hospitality, Personal Grooming, Soft Drinks, Public Relations, Politics, Banking and International Brand Monitoring.   Case studies will be looked at in relation to how many more customers did we get? Or how many more products did we get? Or how often was content viewed or updated and finally how many more Sales margins are we able to complete and how many more referrals were gained.   The author will show how limiting or limited a platform can be.  This can depend on the types of tools available, the types of industries where monitoring is used and matters of scale in projects that encompass multinational reporting and analysis.

Section 3 includes chapters on planning and executing Social Media Analytics.  The core questions of Analytics will be addressed.  How to determine what information is required?   This section will review how to ask the right questions, how to check the needs of the organization, how to assemble the right team of tools and people.

Further to these points, the book will deal with how to conduct a cost/benefit analysis. It will offer tips on evaluating service providers as well as new entrants in the social media monitoring space, and how to determine which vendor or the right platform in order to acquire useful data.

Section 4 includes several reviews of existing Social Analytics platforms such as Radian6, Sysomos, Cision Social Media, etc.  Once the platform is chosen, and then comes the need to configure it properly to capture the types of information to be analyzed.  This may include Geolocation, the social graph, crisis monitoring and alerts, identity profiling and reputation management. This section will also cover how to establish the right governance of social media listening platforms within an organization for effective, accurate monitoring of the social web.

Section 5 covers what to look for capturing data.  Add to this “gotchas” and insider tips. Plus overall good information to know related to each of the many analytics platforms covered in the book.

Section 6 covers the Future of Social Media Monitoring.  Questions abound as this field matures:  what’s coming up over the next few years, what new data or types of available social media information will emerge?    A summary of this and an overview of the field will round out the  book.

Now the book site which will be linked to from Webmetricsguru.com is almost ready, but it does need a few more tweaks before going live, so I won’t release the link just yet (unless you can guess it).

I’m also getting an appreciation of how hard it is to pull all the pieces together this book requires and it’s no easy task but I’m learning fast.  As far as my book site goes, my web designer, Charlie Oliver from ServedFreshMedia.NET is doing a great job and the finished site will probably differ in some ways from the image above, though it’s mostly there.

My trip to London will fill out many of the remaining case studies and interviews book will contain.  I see myself almost as a museum curator, picking the very best paintings, or the best bottles of wine, and putting them in a exclusive wine shop.   The premise of the book, from my perspective, which I’ll speak to in London is the technological choices we make have a profound influence on the success or failure of our efforts in Social Media (or for that matter, almost any enterprise effort).

I see so many people think the made the best choices when in fact, they choose horrible ones, that impacted their workflow and ability to succeed, perhaps for years to come.

And … I’m thinking about standing, metaphorically, at the top of a pyramid,  seeing all the different products / platforms come together and  how they contact (or don’t) and that experience enables to know what really is the best thing a business enterprise or individual should engage in (after asking them a bunch of questions to find out what they really need).

In fact, the technology one chooses to employ and the skills used to leverage it have profound implications for pipeline workflow and profitability and I have seen it firsthand, over and over.

Choose wrong and find yourself under the 8 ball, choose right and you work can almost “do itself“.

Needless to say (but I’ll say it, anyway) I’m working on the book that points to how to make the right choices, so that everything else falls into place (almost like a waterfall, following the path of least resistance).

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Converseon and CIC – International Social Media Monitoring coming of Age

As I’m writing a chapter on International Social Media Monitoring and Analytics it comes to light Converseon and CIC have partnered to add depth to Conversation Miner’s  Chinese monitoring capabilities.

November 10, 2010, New York, NY.–(PRWEB)—Converseon, the international, full service social media consultancy, and CIC, the leading Chinese social media intelligence provider, announced today a strategic partnership to effectively integrate CIC’s Chinese social monitoring and analytics capabilities into Converseon’s global Conversation Mining Listening solutions. The partnership extends Converseon’s social mining capabilities into Mainland China, while enabling CIC to access Converseon’s other multi language capabilities and social media consulting services for its clients.

The agreement helps marry a Chinese based “best of breed” provider into Converseon’s rapidly expanding global listening platform to help provide multi-national brands with a consistent, robust and comprehensive social listening solution. Converseon was recently recognized as a leader in a recent independent report by Forrester Research Inc: “The Forrester Wave: Listening Platforms, Q3 2010,” Forrester Research, Inc., July 12, 2010.

When you think about it, this deal makes alot of sense.  4 years ago English and Japanese were about equal in number of blog posts, imagine what the numbers look like today (I can’t find an equivalent chart for 2010, else I’d have presented it instead).

I meant to write about this yesterday, but as I mentioned I lost a good part of last night’s post due to bug in WordPress.  Part of what was in that post was my mention of the Converseon / CIC deal.

I think we’ll be seeing more deals like this soon.

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Monitoring Social Media 2010 Conference & Bootcamp NYC thoughts and Recollections

Decided to write about Monitoring Social Media 2010 and Monitoring Bootcamp, along with some videos I made without my notes (I took many notes on my iPad, but found they are more to help me remember what’s important and paste here).

Katie Paine thinks Social Media isn’t entirely measurable because people are unpredictable (and she’s right); Katie also presented several case studies showing Social Media ROI but it struck me that what we should be calling this is “Reverse ROI” because most of what I hear from Social Media Case studies is how money is saved, how processes are optimized that already existed.   I think what makes more sense is to say that we can generate income from Social Media outreach but we don’t yet have all the neccessary data or processes in place to do so.

And when we can get ROI from Social Media, it’s usually an e Commerce site or business.   The rest of the case studies talk more about money saved, so they really translate into what is generally understood as Return on Investment; ROI does not suit Social Media as a metric, basically.

Trey and Loic from Synthesio had a very nice way of taking the “4 elements” and turning into the 4 Brand Types, and mentioned how monitoring had to be different for a “Boring Brand” that is functional vs. an “Exciting Brand” like Lady Gaga.   If your a “Vital Brand” then you need to be especially responsive to your customers.  I can see where we can make this a built in segmentation in monitoring tools such as Radian6.  It may be the ideal way to collect the data we need is to merge qualitative information such as surveys into monitoring by embedding individuals in target communities to collect slang terms and other types of information that could be used for a listening platform, but can’t be gotten the normal ways by just searching on keywords you’d think the communities are using, but totally bypass the important words and insights they actually use, a problem we often see in this type of listening.

That reminds me – don’t have time to write a full post on it yet but Radian6 is rolling out some improvements shortly, possibly by Monday  that will give users (including me) the following features, most that I’ve been asking for.

- Baseline vs current (last month vs. this month)

- nearness operators (we so need this)

- hashtags and other special characters are recognized (very needed).

Can’t wait to see what my dashboards look like Monday (if they do roll the changes out  this weekend).

Cory Hartlen from Radian6 talked about the key metrics they monitor for with their clients (there are several) and mentioned the presentation of these metrics is up on their Slideshare account – Cory also showed me the neat features that I just mentioned that are coming up.

Giles Palmer, CEO of Brandwatch also went through several case studies showing ROI of Social Media and that’s when the idea of Reverse ROI (should be the subject of  my second book, you know!!!) came to me.

Chase McMichael talked about being able to track the content that is most shared, top affinities and Social Relevance – he gave me a widget I will put up on this blog shortly to show what that all means and mentioned a community manager needs to feed their community good content and do we always know how to find that out?  Well, Chase’s company has found out a way to do that and to know what that content is.

There was also a very interesting presentation by People Browser and a lot say about the Bootcamp yesterday, but that will need to be in another post – but not to leave you empty handed, here’s a few videos I made Thursday and Friday.

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