Often it’s the small twists and tweaks to ‘established practices’ that can really take things in a new direction — case in point, I was recently reading your run-of-the-mill-mega-company-internal announcement, however, this one was followed by several supporting points pre-packaged in 140 character tweets with all the shortened links and hashtags served right on top. It was one of those moments where your natural reaction is to just gag on the silver spoon working its way down your throat, but after a closer look at things, it really wasn’t over-the-top-type-stuff that this company had pre-defined, it was actually all fairly basic. It was the type of stuff I might, if I was an employee, just retweet for lack of a stronger opinion on the matter. My takeway was this: framing the company news in snack size chunks was helpful for A) holding attention; B) summarizing the news; and C) enabling people to actually do something with it — quickly, at the point of comprehension. I can’t see this working well for every company, but it’s interesting nonetheless…
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Soundbite 2.0
mike manuel
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On Domain vs Off Domain Strategies
mike manuel
So I’ve noticed a strange sort of tug-o-war taking shape among those managing social media programs and without going into all the details here, I’ll just say the tugging typically gets down to this question: where should you put your time, energy and money? Should it be with” on-domain” strategies (e.g., brand communities, business blogs, corporate video, etc., basically any sort of effort that folds into a company’s existing website)? Or should it be with “off-domain” strategies (e.g., microblogs, social networks, monitoring projects, etc., basically any sort of third-party platform or service that could be ‘officially’ adopted to help the company participate with the larger web outside its walls). I guess the ’strange’ part is that this split, this tug, really shouldn’t exist at all, because it’s not an either-or situation. The best programs will inevitably be those that strike a balance between how social media is used on-domain to communicate and connect with people, and how it’s used off-domain to accomplish this exact same thing. I think finding the perfect blend between those two experiences is where every marketer ought to be focusing their time, energy and money right now.
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Voce Adds Web Dev Team, Forms “Voce Connect”
mike manuel
So I just ‘broke’ this news over on the Voce Nation, thought I’d share it here too, the short of it is this: 1) Voce has scooped up the entire cnp_studio team, a group of web developers that specialize in social media design and development work; 2) We’ve formed a combined (social media marketing + web development) service team within Voce that’s now called “Voce Connect;” and 3) We’ve been quietly working together for months now, winning a mix of social media marketing and web development projects with some of the biggest consumer and business brands in the world, much of which we’ll be showcasing and sharing on our new company site which we rolled out today too. Our press page has all the details, and I’ll be posting more on this shortly, but suffice to say, it’s a big day for our company and a good measure of how our firm’s thinking about the changing landscape for marketing and communications. There’s much, much more to come.
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Machine-Based Sentiment Analysis is Flawed
mike manuel
So, it’s sad, but kind’a comical too to see how quickly the everyday use of the web for communication is eroding everyone’s grammar and syntax (cough, Twitter). What’s truly tragic, however, is the frigg’n pandemic spread of companies promising machine based linguistic and sentiment analysis services, all of them knowing oh too well that the web has damn-near its own dialect now, be it acronyms (FTW!), abbreviations (RT) or any number of adhoc classifications (#[hashtag]), and maybe more importantly, a growing appetite for unspoken gestures of expression and opinion (be it thumbs, stars, likes, or otherwise), yet, for whatever reason, these companies continue to over-promise mountains of insight and perspective into “how your customers think and feel,” based only on what a bot and an algorithm spits back!? I don’t know, it’s just, uh, flawed. Update: check out Microsyntax.org, this entire organization is diving into the ‘new’ unconventions of communication on the web.
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Hayden
I know…. but its the best we currently have without getting a human to analyse it.
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mike manuel
what’s wrong with using silly humans?
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Hayden
Nothing, they are the best form of artificial artificial intelligence there is;
http://press20.blogspot.com/2008/09/artifical-artificial-intelligence.html-
mike manuel
yeah, mechanical turk is interesting, flawed in it’s own ways, but interesting. at very least, it’s addressing the ‘human analysis can’t scale’ challenge that’s often voiced.
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Hayden
I’ve yet to see anyone that has automatically linked the Turk to a sentiment engine…. now that would be useful!
Although you’d have a variable cost from the Turk, you could set a maximum budget (like a Google PPC campaign).
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Dave C.
I’m still going with John Henry over the jankety steam engine in this case.
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mike manuel
haha, nice. me too.
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Tac Anderson
It’s the classic tech biz problem of trying to provide customization at scale. The analytics will get better to incorporate these shifts in Web comm but they will always be behind and will always require a certain amount of human filtering/qualifying.
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Rich Reader (WOM-buzz)
for the moment, people are still necessary (best qualified) for the scoring and classification components of sentiment analysis. If this moment should pass, then judgment day will have arrived (Terminator-style), wherein sentiment analysis will cease to be a service that is sought-after, and there will be no bail-outs.
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Mike Driehorst
Of course it’s flawed — both the attempt and the way companies promote that service.
However, having a machine do it is a good starting point for us people to then dig into the results to determine their validity (how close or if the machines are accurate).
To do it in large scale by people is very time-consuming when having the machines take the first step followed by people power is a step in the right direction.
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mike manuel
agreed, i think the ‘hybrid’ approach (to tac’s point above) is our best bet, but for you, me and so many others to know this and still see so many companies hucking sentiment analytics as a ’solved problem’ is both the disturbing and flawed part of it all…
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Rich Reader (WOM-buzz)
If you have a large and persistent data stream, do you then obtain stable classification error rates (type A and B)? If so, how high a pair of error rates leaves you better off than human-based coring and classification? If not, how do you place a value on the output?
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Kevin Murphy
Some analyis and listening is better than none. Automated sentiment scoring is a great flagging tool for spotting key issues. But as a measurment tool, it sstill needs to eveolve.
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mike manuel
yeah, i wasn’t implying it’s an all or nothing thing, kevin, just that if you’re investing solely in machine based analytic systems and services, just understand they’re over-promising and under-delivering right now.
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paullyoung (Paull Young)
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larry levy
Mike - Most people well versed in the space recognize this as a tough problem to solve but still worth trying.
We’ve actually found that the results based on traditional vs non traditional don’t vary as much as you’d expect. This space is being somewhat tainted with companies/programmers just slapping a dictionary onto entity extraction and thinking they’ve nailed the problem.
As we improve our algorithms, we’re achieving results in the high 80%’s in terms of accuracy on negative and positive. It’s the neutrals that cause the most grief - even human inter annotator agreement on these is very low - somewhere between 55%-60%.
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marlinex (Marilyn Clark)
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Corporate Social Media Teams Are Growing
mike manuel
So not that it’s terribly surprising, but the headcount for in-house (corporate) social media teams seems to be growing — very quickly — despite the economy. Two years ago, even in the biggest companies, you had, at best, a collection of quarter-timers, loosely coming together around launches and campaigns. Thereafter, part-time social media/community/online strategists started to take foot, now, shit, most companies have *at least* one dedicated person, with many, many companies having far more. The other observation worth noting here are the organizational models, (err, model), which seems to in a lot of companies boil down to a very lean, very skilled cross-functional strategic team that establishes standards, protocols and practices that are then pushed out to a much larger set of business unit practitioners and regional teams for local implementation. It’s just interesting to see familiar patterns of corporate organization and structure finally taking hold around a new discipline, a sign of the industry’s maturation?
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theMetz (Adam Metz)
Corporate Social Media Teams Are Growing: Shared by Adam Where’s the table? J/K MM.
So not that it’s terribly su.. [link to post]-
mike manuel
yeah, no table, but really, do you need one? http://bit.ly/12wnWF
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mark bjornsgaard
any chance you can post the data / link to the research?
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mike manuel
nope. this is based on my own observations working with a variety of companies here in the bay area — it’s also what im hearing from my peers and friends who work in-house.
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Defining Social Media ‘Expertise’
mike manuel
I joked (mostly) about social media expert-itis in a previous post, but if you really had to try and dig into what makes someone a “social media expert,” it’s really not that difficult of a thing to deconstruct, I mean, if you just focus on direct experiences. So…uh…that’s what I did. Well, it’s a start at least. Keep in mind, I’m approaching this from a communications consultant’s point of view, in-house folks have some unique skill requirements that I’m skipping here. Also, it bears mentioning, while it’s helpful to try and draw some simple distinctions between what it means to have an understanding of this industry verses real-world know-how and knowledge, let’s be honest, in the end, “expertise” will always be relative to need, so yeah, your mileage will vary, but hopefully this is a start. [cross-posted to Voce Nation]
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Ethan
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mike manuel
yes. and, uh, yes…kinda.
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Ethan
ha
the idea of building/working in a talent meritocracy is where I’m seeing the connection.
carry on
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Propeople (Propeople)
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Social Media Education, an Ongoing Challenge
mike manuel
I just chewed through Jennifer Leggio’s piece today which analyzes the results from her second ‘Social PR Survey,’ it’s a good read, and while I can’t say much of the findings were terribly surprising, still, there’s some interesting data points for agency folks at all levels. One of the sections touches on agency education and training, something the lion’s share of respondents seemed to oddly dismiss as a ‘non-issue.’ Really? Really!? I’m telling you, based on my own experience, plus what I hear from my peers at other firms, this dismissal is either our industry spinning itself in the worst sort of way, or people are absolutely clueless about what social media training and education efforts really entail (hint: “learning” and “changing”). I’m not convinced we’ve seen enough of either yet. Oh, and one more thing related to all of this: too often this industry points and prods at undergrads and junior staff as needing the most ‘training and education,’ when sadly, in reality, there are some senior folks who could use a kick in the pants too. In fact, I’d argue if the end result of agency training is, well, organizational change, then top down learning is where it all starts.
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mark bjornsgaard
my experience is very similar - I work with some serious old skool / offline brands Travis Perkins, Axa and others - great people - much mroe inclined to think about social media than they were 12 months ago - but its mostly top management who don’t get it - they’re afraid
I’ve found educating people is critical - and having a process to brands into the online world more powerful than jumping straight into delivery
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mike manuel
thanks for the perspective, mark…
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Voce’s Sponsoring WordCamp SF
mike manuel
So over on the Voce Nation blog, I just posted the news that we’re sponsoring WordCamp SF (it’s taking place later this month, get on it!) As far as I know, we’re one of the few PR firms to get behind a WordCamp event in this sort of way, at very least, we’re one of the first to get behind the SF event. Regardless, it makes a *ton* of sense for our business right now, both in terms of how we’ve been using WordPress and related tech with clients like eBay, PlayStation, Yahoo!, and others, but maybe more importantly, with publishing and networking platforms like WordPress MU and BuddyPress now gaining momentum, the ways we can bend and stretch these platforms for communication and marketing programs feels at times damn near limitless. Anyway, we have some very cool WordPress-related projects in the works, some of which the team may be sharing at WordCamp, others we’ll be talking about later this summer. Hope to see you there later this month.
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2 Tactical Tips for Corporate Video
mike manuel
Okay, so as a quick follow up to my previous post on video distribution, here’s two tactical tips for companies.
Tip #1: Who has the best embeddable player? I think Viddler does (full disclosure, they’re a Voce partner). I say this less for Viddler’s technical merits (even tho I consider them quite good), and more for the simple fact that the Viddler player can be branded with your corporate logo AND embedded with a custom link back to a site of your choosing (example). And this folks is frigg’n *gold* if you want to squeeze more value (over time) out of all the people discovering and spreading your videos on the web.
Tip #2: How do you maximize the reach (and quantify the metrics) of *all* your video services? Try using TubeMogul. It’s a great service that allows you to centrally upload and then syndicate your videos to all the video sharing sites (e.g., YouTube, Blip.tv, MetaCafe, etc.) The central management and control of your videos from TubeMogul allows you to track all sorts of performance metrics, not only for your videos, but for the video networks you’re using too.
So, net-net, Viddler + ‘other’ video sharing sites + TubeMogul = a pretty powerful combination if you’re serious about milking your online videos for all they’re worth.
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3 Ways to Think About Video Distribution
mike manuel
So video distribution is one of those inevitable parts of any social media program. A lot of people, well, too many people will say YouTube’s the easy fix to all your worries. Man, trust me, it ain’t. Yeah, there’s a place for services like YouTube, but my advice is to think about video distribution three different ways: 1). Think about the player. Which service offers the *best* embeddable player? This is particularly important if you’re producing HD content. 2). Think about the reach. Which services offer the best possible reach for your videos? YouTube’s a frigg’n virtual Times Square, so just ask yourself: is that *really* going to reach my target market? And 3). Think about metrics. Which service offers the best access and insights into the performance and spread of your videos? There’s a lot more to video metrics than a simple tally of views. The thing about this three-way slice is that for a nominal amount of effort, it puts you in a position to use a mix of services to help squeeze more value out of your video investments, and hey, right now, given the trajectory of video use and the web, this is a good thing.
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Here’s to 5 Years
mike manuel
So today marks my 5th year blogging here. And yeah, I know, “whoopty friggn do.” But maybe it’s a chance tho to clear up one fallacy and that’s this weird belief that your success attracting clients and business is directly proportional to the frequency of posts you publish. Man, I *really* wish that was true. It’s not. Yes, there was a time, early on, where having a blog, like this one, was unique or at very least showed people I wasn’t completely a mouth breather — but all it’s ever been (at best) is one factor in a series of factors that informed a decision. And trust me, knowing this, there have been many times in the past 5 years where the ah-f*-its have taken over and tempted me to abandoned this, but I’m glad I’ve stuck with it, and my sincere thanks to those of you here who have done the same. Onward.
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Todd Defren
Congratulations! It’s still fun, mostly, eh?
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mike manuel
mostly;)
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Tac Anderson
Congrats Mike. It’s amazing to think about how much has changed over the last 5 years. Thanks for being a pioneer for the rest of us, and thank you for sticking with it.
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mike manuel
thanks tac, will do, will do.
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Sara Batalha
Hi Mike, in 2005 you wrote about the importance of Media Training for Companies. Today, how important do you think Media training or Public Speaking Training are for companies?
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mike manuel
well, i guess nowadays you should ask: what sort of media are you training them for? i’m still a big believer in preparation of any kind.
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Sara Batalha
Traditional Media and New Media, of course.Specially if we think that now WE are all media… training isn’t essential to communicate in a professional way?
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Integrated Programs Are The “New Normal”
mike manuel
Alright, the need to integrate marketing and comms work these days makes a world of sense, trust me, I get it, but you know, when that need requires competitors to come together and work directly with each other, perhaps in ways they might not otherwise, it really forces you to rethink what were once comfortable business boundaries. Case in point, I’m spearheading a social media program and working with an ad firm (that offers social media services), a PR agency (that offers social media services) and a web shop (that, yes, offers social media services). It’s unique for sure, and yeah, at times, it tests an already unhealthy paranoia most service folks have over their IP, but it’s also becoming more common, especially in this market, so maybe in an odd sort of way it’s just slowly turning into the new normal?
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Sam Whitmore
How ’bout I pour you some vino and you tell me the whole story, Mike… you’re seeing the future, as usual, before most others.
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mike manuel
How about shots? ;)
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Todd Defren
But you’re the smartest, right? Please tell me I’m right!
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mike manuel
psft, i wish, but in fairness, i’m learning something everyday, the upside of working with people i wouldn’t normally work with…
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Ed Lee
mike - just wanted say that i’m really loving your quick hits approach to blogging! too much for twitter; not (quite) enough for an exhaustive blog post - very cool.
this particular issue is a major one for me - i love working with our clients’ other agencies but there does always seem to be a little tension…
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mike manuel
thanks ed, yeah, we’re all in the same place — most of us are just trying to do the best job we can knowing also that boundaries *do* exist.
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TDefren (Todd Defren) 7:26 pm on July 1, 2009 Permalink |
Twitter Comment
Interesting post from @mmanuel on internal corp comms packaged in tweet form! [link to post]
- Posted using Chat Catcher
Nictos (Nictos) 8:18 pm on July 1, 2009 Permalink |
Twitter Comment
Thought provoking: RT @TDefren: Interesting post from @mmanuel on internal corp comms packaged in tweet form! [link to post]
- Posted using Chat Catcher