As the CEO of Collective Intellect, I have the pleasure of interacting with dozens of companies, agencies and technology vendors every month who are at the forefront of social media engagement. These interactions are confirming that the importance of social media is real. I wanted to share some of my perspective on how companies gain strategic advantage through social media engagement, and to do a plug for why Collective Intellect should be a key component in your approach.

As a serial entrepreneur, I have been at the frontline of customer relationships many times. Through these start-up experiences, I have discovered that new business services exist on a continuum from tactical operational improvements to services of truly strategic import. The good news for investors and users is that services everywhere along this continuum have the potential to create value. The dynamics of the value provided have a significant impact on the client’s (i.e. users) underlying business models.
From my perspective, it is clear that many earlier adopters of Collective Intellect’s services are adopting them in ways that deliver strategic advantage. I would like to highlight some the strategic potentials associated with social media engagement.

• First, social media engagement is being used to increase revenue and market share. More and more consumers trust web sites for recommendations and advice than ever before. Several weeks ago, General Motors announced that it was shifting 50% of its marketing spend to digital. The reason was that traditional media was primarily valuable for building up awareness for new vehicle models, but digital media is where consumers made consideration and preference decisions on which cars to purchase based on their own online research and conversations.

• Second, social media engagement is being used to optimize messaging delivered through social media and through traditional media. Identifying the key issues and concerns of authentic voices found in blogs and other social media allows companies to deliver the messages most important. Coca-Cola recently opted to encourage and recognize user-generated mash-ups of creative advertisements rather than continue to try to enforce trademark protection. Now, if you create a cool Coke commercial, you could get sponsored to create the next one.

• Third, early adopters have less competition for the attention of creators and users of social media. Thus, the odds of meaningful engagement will never be higher than now. We have clients that are creating meaningful relationships with the key influencers in social media around topics that are associated with their brands and companies. These relationships form a foundation for future interactions that start to integrate these companies and citizens in valuable communities.

• Fourth, innovators are striving to harness the value of the social media content in their web properties to engage clients. We are working with several clients to build next generation publishing models that integrate social media influencers together in ways that support specialized vertical topics. These early models, if successful, will provide enormous first mover advantage for these clients.

If you’re an adopter of social media engagement, I encourage you to contact Collective Intellect today; so you can take advantage of this outstanding opportunity.

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Brand Management, Social Media Metrics // Add Comment »

Just like the semantic web I think Twitter would benefit tremendously from introducing a micro markup language that monitoring tools could use to pick up data more accurately. It’s a fairly hard problem to parse blogs and tag them with semantic and qualitative data. Now think about shrinking that text down to 140 characters and you really don’t have a hell of a lot to work with. If we introduce an abbreviated name-value system inside our tweets we can convey a ton of rich information that will be easier to get the message across to the companies and services that anger and overjoy us, events we’re attending, observations we make, etc. It’s time to take the next step with Twitter.

I think it would be simplest to put an abbreviated 2 letter type code at the start of the message with a sentiment symbol next (+ = good, - = bad, / = neutral), and the subject that you will be talking about. For instance I just got back from a trip to Minneapolis. My flight was delayed again (probably my fourth flight in a row on United that was delayed).

I twittered the following: “RV-UAL another trip, another flight delay on United”. In the first 6 characters I know that this is a review of United Airlines and it is negative. Simple, brief, easy for both humans and machines to parse and interpret.

The codes I’m thinking of are:
OB = observation
EV = Event
RV = Review

If it’s an event, perhaps the standard could be to create the event in facebook and snurl it for the event subject. what are some others? Let me know what you think!

Tags: Social Media Best Practice, Social Media Organization // 1 Comment »

There appears to be more uncertainty than usual in the mainstream media regarding the Pennsylvania pre-primary polling. Pundits are pointing to the ambiguity that comes with the 300,000 newly registered voters. The old “cell phone” argument is making a comeback, too.

So a lot of doubt is being cast on the poll numbers, specifically that Clinton will be able to maintain her significant lead. Our survey of the political blogosphere will only serve to cast further doubt on traditional polling methods. Real Clear Politics, which averages all the traditional polls, is giving Clinton a 6 point lead.

Our data shows that it will be much closer: Clinton 51%, Obama 49%. So close in fact, that I wouldn’t be surprised that when the results come in, those numbers could be flipped. Using our traditional methodology, Obama is ahead in the Pennsylvania-based blogs, but the national average allows Clinton to pull slightly ahead.

Many within her own party are calling for Ms Clinton to step down if her margin of victory is close, so a 2% win would be a pyrrhic victory at best. This should become very interesting indeed.

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Blog Analysis, Mass Media/Culture // Add Comment »

Collective Intellect (www.collectiveintellect.com), the leading social media analytics company helping businesses track, understand and use social media, today closed its second round of institutional funding by raising $6.6 million from venture capital firms led by Grotech Capital Group and including existing investors Appian Ventures and Croghan Investments and new investor Crawley Hatfield Capital, LP.

Proceeds from the investment will be used to dramatically expand Collective Intellect’s marketing and sales initiatives, leading to expanded distribution of its monitoring services and analytics-based content, as well as broader application of the company’s insights in social media campaigns. This round of funding follows the $2.6 million infusion that Collective Intellect received in February 2006 which was led by Appian Ventures and included other accredited investors in Colorado and New York.

“Social media is now a mainstream phenomenon impacting the bottom line of every business,” said Don Springer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer for Collective Intellect. “This investment validates our success in providing these businesses with real-time intelligence on social media, empowering them with the actionable insight to create relationships, optimize campaigns, and invite closer one-on-one participation. We now have the resources to become the standard in how companies measure the impact of social media.”

Collective Intellect specializes in comprehensively tracking, filtering, ranking, and analyzing social media content for a wide array of businesses. The company refined its approach by helping financial services clients with more than $100 billion in assets utilize social media to make smart business-building decisions. Across blogs, discussion boards and social networking websites, Collective Intellect employs advanced artificial intelligence algorithms to identify and analyze social media.

“Collective Intellect’s management team has a strong record of generating substantial returns to its investors,” said Joseph Zell, General Partner at Grotech. “Collective Intellect enables marketers and communicators to engage in the single largest trend shaping consumer behavior today through data-driven decisions. Their instantaneous data allows social media to be actionable as well as informational. We are confident that Collective Intellect is poised to achieve even greater success.”

More on MarketWire

Tags: Brand Management, Public Relations // Add Comment »

The blogosphere’s take on American Idol was much more accurate this week. Kelly Lee Cook, whom was voted off of the show, was the blogosphere’s second lowest ranked contestant. Syesha Mercado was in both the actual bottom three and the blogosphere’s bottom three. Brooke White rounded out the actual bottom three and was fourth worst among the blogosphere’s bottom three. All in all, the blogosphere’s ranking was fairly reflective of the actual outcome of this week’s American Idol.

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Mass Media/Culture // 1 Comment »

Lawson DeVries, a vice president at Grotech, said the immediacy of Collective Intellect’s technology gives it an edge.

“It allows brands in real time know how their advertising campaigns are going,” he said in a telephone interview.

• From interview with RedHerring http://redherring.com/Home/24134 #

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Tags: Brand Management, Public Relations // Add Comment »

Techcrunch posted a blog about us.

“The service is most useful for marketers who need to understand how well their brands are being received by the media and general public. It tracks discussions about particular topics being posted on news sites, blogs, and message boards. For instance, MTV could decide to check out what people think about “The Hills”. Collective Intellect will use graphs and lists of discussion items to show how sentiment has changed over time, and where the bulk of discussions come from. The analytics can be refined by choosing narrower topics, such as actress Audrina Patridge, to see what people are saying about her in particular.”

• TechCrunch blogged us. Sweet, except for that UI piece. http://tinyurl.com/6b284y

Tags: Brand Management, Mass Media/Culture, Public Relations, Social Media Monitoring // Add Comment »

With over a hundred million blogs and hundreds of millions of users of social networks and readers of social media, the internet is becoming the central location for marketing efforts to influence customers purchasing decisions. Integrating offline and online campaigns are a must in order to achieve optimal reach and conversion opportunities. There are more options to touch the customer today than ever before, and the media and reach combinations can be staggering. The primary purpose of marketing is the same: conversion. The methods to reach people are practically unlimited. And the game has completely changed. Instead of broadcasting it’s now called engagement. At the AdTech conference this week in San Francisco, engagement is all the buzz. So where to begin, what comes next, and how do you measure the effectiveness? Let’s start with the landscape of channels to push a message.

In the traditional offline arena we have the standbys of television, radio, billboards, press releases, print and direct mail. We can expand this well known arena to incorporate web banner ads to draw a circle around the arena of broadcast advertising.

Social media marketing makes up the rest of the picture and is less understood. This area includes blogs, wikis, podcasts, video blogs and webcasts, social network profiles, twitter/text and widgets.

All of these forms of media are intended to do one thing: create a call to action for a customer that moves them through the path of awareness to consideration to preference to purchase. Social media includes both earned and paid components, the more earned media achieved results in lower costs and, theoretically, higher conversions. Conversion is the point at which a customer takes the action to purchase product. Conversion is now largely based on conversation. Social media forms a conversation between buyers, prospects, and producers in all of their permutations. Social media levels the message playing field. Any one of these people could become a key influencer of thousands or perhaps even millions of people around purchasing decisions. One bad experience with an influencer can wreak havoc on a brand. It is time for companies to come out of their shell, find their advocates and detractors, throw out the polls and (dare I contribute to the hype) ENGAGE.

Tags: Blog Analysis, Social Media Best Practice // Add Comment »

Micahel Johns’ departure from American Idol last week threw just about everyone for a loop. This week the blogosphere stands in about the same place as it did last week with Syesha Mercado and Kristy Lee Cook at the bottom of the pack. However this time, Syesha is given the least support from the blogsphere as its lowest ranked contestant.

Surprisingly, David Cook makes the blogosphere’s bottom three this week. Perhaps another shocker is in the mix.

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Mass Media/Culture // Add Comment »

The data was there to support what was thought to be a done deal to send Kelly Lee Cook or Syesha Mercado packing, but a shocking twist of fate voted Michael Johns off of American Idol last night. Whether the “vote for the worst” is continuing this year or an attempt to keep the most beautiful people on the show is happening, clearly the contestants surrounded by the most negativity and lack of talent were not holed into the “bottom three.” Carly Smithson’s inclusion in the group also brings great suspicion and unpredictability to the show’s voting. Of our predicted bottom three, only Syesha was actually stuck in the worst of the best. Much of the blogosphere is just as shocked as we were when the facts didn’t add up:

“…it was so unfair. Sure, his ‘Dream On’ the other night wasn’t fantastic, but, please–Kristy Lee Cook is still there. Syesha Mercado is still there. And my Michael is gone. You tell me: is this a ‘throw him to the wolves’ performance? It’s really not! Even Paula was shocked.” -Hollywood Offender

“By now you have probably all heard that our boy, Michael Johns, was eliminated. If you hadn’t, well yes, he was sent home BEFORE Kristy Lee Cook, Syesha Mercado, and Jason Castro…While we knew with Michael, as we did with Chris [Daughtry], that they probably would not make it to the finale, we thought for sure that talent would prevail and they would make it to the top four. But no, Michael would succumb to the same fate that Chris did. Obviously, the people that are voting aren’t voting for the total package.” - Tube Talk

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Mass Media/Culture // 1 Comment »