VMR Blog - Latest Comments

Re: Flowtown triples email opens & CTR, says CEO in Twitterview

Hugh Macken — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:47:07 -0000

Thanks Ethan. I enjoyed it as well. Please keep us posted on your progress. Just curious - have you guys considered partnering with Gist.com? I would argue you and Gist offer 2 different products that are complimentary. I don't believe Gist can pull up as much social profile info as you can from just an email address. To my knowledge they do not pull up demographics as you do. Similarly, I don't believe you guys are set up to pull up a person's social profile from just having their twitter id, which is something Gist can do. And their service model is more monitoring oriented than email marketing oriented.

Re: Flowtown triples email opens & CTR, says CEO in Twitterview

Ethan Bloch — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 05:24:40 -0000

Glad I got to be your guine pig for your first #mediachat - other then a few timing hiccups in the beginning, I thought this went really well!

Ethan

Re: Sentiment Analysis: When Humans Are Not More Reliable

Hugh Macken — Mon, 03 May 2010 16:14:05 -0000

Joseph, Thanks for sharing this. I'm curious: Does this breakdown reflect the requests of your clients or the %s you observed without instructions from clients to focus on or not focus on multimedia? In other words, I've found some companies are not concerned about multimedia content monitoring. Therefore, one wouldn't cover that content because of client instructions, not necessarily because of a lack of such content. Can you clarify?
Thanks!

Re: Sentiment Analysis: When Humans Are Not More Reliable

Hugh Macken — Mon, 03 May 2010 16:09:00 -0000

Christopher - Kudos to you on a terrific study. It really made me think. As you can tell.

In response to your comment: In your view, what steps should consumers and providers of the marketing data take to ensure that they are both on the same page? What is getting in the way of the clear communication that is vital to this whole process? Is there perhaps an instruction format that might help to eliminate this problem? Should instructions perhaps always include examples of positively scored vs. negatively scored mentions?

Re: Sentiment Analysis: When Humans Are Not More Reliable

Hugh Macken — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:56:27 -0000

Joseph, Thanks so much for joining the conversation abnd good point on multimedia. I agree, human analysis is key to the "what next" stage. Are you aware of any additional stats by chance, on the SM source format mix trends from Nielsen, Edison, Forrester or others? Also, here's an Edison report that I thought was quite interesting on social media platform trends:
http://www.edisonresearch.c...

Re: Sentiment Analysis: When Humans Are Not More Reliable

Hugh Macken — Mon, 03 May 2010 14:38:45 -0000

Great point on multimedia content. I don't know of any
"technology" that is able to assess sentiment of say, a youtube video. To my knowledge (and correct me please if I am wrong), this is a HUGE blind spot for social media monitoring technology right now. So a services model makes perfect sense.

Re: 8 Steps to Choosing and Using the Best Social Media Monitoring Tool for Small Business

Hugh Macken — Mon, 03 May 2010 13:47:07 -0000

You are funny! Yup 'belly to belly' is the term one of the trainers from Sandler Sales always used to use. It stuck with me! Thanks a lot for reading the blog. I don't normally write on small business related topics but I couldn't pass up this chance!

Re: 8 Steps to Choosing and Using the Best Social Media Monitoring Tool for Small Business

PMC — Mon, 03 May 2010 11:32:44 -0000

Good post, Hugh.

I've never heard the phrase 'belly to belly' - for some reason the image I got resembled more of a sumo fight as opposed to a business luncheon.. but, you know, my mind tends to drift.

Re: Sentiment Analysis: When Humans Are Not More Reliable

Christopher Berry — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 09:16:54 -0000

Thank you for the reference to the Syncapse study and the shoutout,

Indeed, clarity in the instructions should reduce error to an extent. If you go to great lengths defining what is considered 'positive', and those instructions are executed faithfully, there is less margin for error. A much more fundamental problem, systemic in marketing, is that the consumers of the analysis don't necessarily know what the specific definitions are - so when their perception collides with what is scored - dissatisfaction ensues and legitimacy is questioned. The problem has persisted for 18 years in web analytics and will persist in social for much longer. Communication can take us pretty far in solving the problem.

To your second point: yes, it should always begin with alignment to actual business goals.

Thanks again for the shoutout,

Re: Radian6 is Best for Social Media Monitoring. No it’s Not.

Hugh Macken — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:07:11 -0000

Barry -

Thanks for visiting here and for your comment. Great question. I thought it deserved a blog post rather than a quick comment: http://bit.ly/dywiBx

Re: Sentiment Analysis: When Humans Are Not More Reliable

Joseph Fiore — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:35:39 -0000

Not sure what happened to the link I shared, but it's a Twitpic link to a graph on the (%) breakdown of social media mentions our firm has covered through its monitoring assignments. Here is the original Twitpic shared link: http://www.twitpic.com/1e9obe

Re: Sentiment Analysis: When Humans Are Not More Reliable

Joseph Fiore — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:29:44 -0000

I had the opportunity to comment on Jason's post, and I'm glad I stumbled upon yours.

There are so many reasons why human review becomes crucial to the analysis and measurement phases. Video/audio and images (which make up approx 3% of the SM source mix - higher if you include their shared use on social networks sites like Facebook and MySpace) themselves present enough reason for clips to be reviewed by a reader.

This is why we've continued to include human review in all our firms offerings. However we also provide our users an optional dashboard view into monitoring real-time mentions which are auto assigned a sentiment score.

From the standpoint of using monitoring as an advanced warning system to mitigate risk, auto assigned sentiment creates a decent windsock approach to assist with following the direction of trends/topics, however only human review and the interpretation of risk/context (enabled through the actual reading of each incident) makes it possible to proceed to the "what next" stage.

Thanks for advancing the discussion!

Joseph | RepuMetrix Inc.
@RepuTrack

Re: Sentiment Analysis: When Humans Are Not More Reliable

scottmarticke — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:17:32 -0000

In full agreement on the need for clarity in the instructions to analysts. One advantage that human analysis can provide (as witnessed by Sentiment360's monitoring of an advertising campaign for a major government anti-drug effort) is the ability of analysts to connect disparate bits of chatter and discover trends. This same effort also showed the ability of analysts to discern complex videos and imagery and develop not only truer sentiment scoring but also provide meaningful context to the conversation by understanding the range of emotions involved.

Re: Radian6 is Best for Social Media Monitoring. No it’s Not.

barryplas — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:54:15 -0000

Here's my question. Take a small business which is trying to break in to social media. They want to find the key influencers, locate them and engage with them. They will then want to monitor the effects of this reaching out to the key influencers. Which would you recommend in this case?

Thanks for a great post,

Barry

Re: Radian6 vs. Google?

Hugh Macken — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:42:32 -0000

Maria -
I really appreciate you stopping by and sharing your insights. Super excited too about the Attensity acquisition. Congrats to you guys! Esteban Kolsky just posted an interesting piece (http://www.estebankolsky.co... commenting on the move. I really want to know more about (1) semantic analytics of unstructured enterprise data (including emails?) and (2) how you plan to make your monitoring analytics source- and topic-centric. I think what is missing in the marketplace is a platform that allows you to "pivot" between either perspective. Biz360 needs some work when it comes to multimedia monitoring IMHO but I think this move is a smart one.

I'm honored you took the time to comment here. I'm a fan of your writing (including the recent Sentiment post on mashable!) so keep up the great work!

Also, stay tuned... VMR will be announcing something exciting very soon. (can't share here but would be happy to chat offline anytime)

Re: Radian6 vs. Google?

themaria — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:45:07 -0000

Hi Hugh,

Absolutely! The monitoring space is becoming commoditized, and not only are we facing competition from each other, but also from search engines like Google. As Google starts to include more social results, like Facebook, Twitter and such, the way that monitoring solutions can differentiate ourselves is through aiding engagement cross-functionally. But yes, you are right search and social and monitoring are blending.

Cheers!

Maria Ogneva
@themaria @biz360

Re: Radian6 vs. Google?

Hugh Macken — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 17:28:36 -0000

Thanks for the comment Mark. Yes, it definitely appears that new players are entering the market. I just found out about SAS' latest platform today. It really makes me think enterprises will need advice on which ones meet their needs best. Too many options can cause confusion and bad decisions without some guidance, I think. Which brings me to the social media analytics platform survey that Mango! Marketing has graciously offered to help us formulate, distribute and then analyze once the responses are collected. Hopefully the survey results will be helpful to the marketplace in addressing the knowledge gap.

Re: Radian6 vs. Google?

marksysomos — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:30:16 -0000

The social media monitoring and analytics market will likely continue to attract new players as more companies embrace the services and technology. This could include major players who believe that social media monitoring/analytics is an attractive opportunity to serve new and potential clients. At the end of the day, the technology/services that best serve the needs and budgets of customers will thrive.

cheers, Mark

Mark Evans
Director of Communications
Sysomos Inc.
@sysomos

Re: Gist: A Power Networker’s Dream…Come True

Hugh Macken — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:53:54 -0000

Thanks Bryan. Did you have a chance to listen in?

Re: Gist: A Power Networker’s Dream…Come True

Bryan Basamanowicz — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 14:04:39 -0000

Wow, that's an awesome track-record. I bet Mr. McCann's 'Gist' summary is on the verge of superhuman.

Nice work getting the interview. Maybe you should extend the format to an hour or 90 minutes. Learn as much as you can from this guy... sailing tips... i don't know.

Like the new layout of VMR Blog-- keep it running!

Re: “PR At a Crossroads” Executive & Author to discuss PR’s Expanding Role in the Realms of Marketing and Branding.

PMC — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:34:18 -0000

Hugh, the show is really taking off. - great guests over and over again. Might I suggest making it easier for your blog readers to arrange to listen by putting the date and time of the show in the blog as well.

Keep it going!

Re: A Generous Response from VerticalResponse Email Marketing

Hugh Macken — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:41:04 -0000

Yes, Mark it is. Thanks for asking. All of our programs are available for playback on demand. You can go to our showpage and listen anytime:
www.blogtalkradio.com/hugh

Re: A Generous Response from VerticalResponse Email Marketing

Mark — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:17:21 -0000

Is it possible to get a recording of this interview?

Re: Radian6 is Best for Social Media Monitoring. No it’s Not.

Hugh Macken — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:51:03 -0000

Michelle, Sorry for not responding sooner. would you have a link to Ken Burbary's wiki by chance?

Re: Google Wave: Are you using it?

Hugh Macken — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:44:11 -0000

Maria -
I was just on a webinar yesterday and I was (along with the other 50+ people in the Wave) starting to see the potential of Wave. It's very slow and clunky for one thing right now. And there's no way to jump to the most recent wavelet in one click to my knowledge. Right now I'm still seeing more potential than actual usefulness. But that's just me. I've heard some people who love it.