I guess, because I have access to Radian6 AND I'm developing my presentations for Semphonic XChange and Search Engine Strategies in San Jose next month (see below), I'm taking the tools I have at my disposal and seeing what they can do - using them, perhaps, in ways that were "un-anticipated" by the creators of those tools (I certainly hope so … that I'm doing something with Radian6 thats intereresting and innovative).

Track: Social Media
Social Media Analysis and Tracking
Social Search can be used to drive Traffic, Conversions and Increase ROI by monitoring conversations happening in cyberspace, often in real time. By using Buzz Monitoring tools such as Buzzlogic, search professions can be very effective in finding influencer's within online conversations and reaching out to them. As one example of a few that will be presented, learn how Military.com leverages social media and Buzz Monitoring tools, together with solid understanding of business goals, to increase profitability.

Moderator:

• Marshall Sponder, Senior Web Analyst, Monster.com

Speakers:

• Breanna Wigle, Military.com
• Adam Lavelle, Chief Strategy Officer, iCrossing
• Todd Parsons, Co-Founder and CPO, BuzzLogic.com
• Rob Key, CEO, Converseon

First thing I noticed is certain topic keywords were associated with just a few of the blogs - probably due to the way the authors of the blogs write and what they're writing about. Again, I'm thinking as a Web Analyst, not a communications professional or a marketer, which is the target audience of Radian6 - but I believe tools like Radian6 are also invaluable to the Web Data Analyst,and we should be given access to them, along with Site Analytics tools we normally use - and I'll go more into that in a future post.

Think about it - I just using Radian6 to do take the keyword "Obama" and find the most relevent piece of content in the blog section over the last month (why?  it had 533 comments and 504 of those comments came from Unique IP Addresses - which means many different people found that particular post about Obama (which was also about Hillary Clinton - and was written when she gave up her quest for the nomination - more interesting); that's one example of many - you could do the same thing with every keyword in the New Topic Cloud Widget, if you wanted to.

We could also use the New Comparitive Topic Monitor Widget to figure out just how many posts each of the larger keywords in the Cloud Widget had over the last month - again, this ties in to Semantic Analysis of the content of the New York Times Blog Posts:

Dealving further, I used Radian6 New Influencer Widget to isolate those "influentials", both in topic and actual source of data - again, much as Web Analyst does - much different, I suspect, than a PR, Communications or Marketing person would do (but much more like a "dectective" might approach the data - which is closest analogy I can find to the differences Web Analytics is vs. the way "marketing" types - focused on "selling" or "promoting" (to drive revenue) might use tools like Radian6; here's what I found:

Instead of finding content that was in the New York Times Blogs directly - I most likely found the "influentials" that inspired it.  Wow (at least, that is what I think I found -

For example, looking at the YouTube video (seen below) from Prima J - Corazon (You're not alone) (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO) which is also referenced by HispanicTips.com, I'm suspecting that what I'm finding is the content that's actually hot, and may/or may not be written about in the New York Times.

I didn't find evidence of an article recently on Prima J - but, using Google Search, I found an older article linked to on Hispanictips.com site using Google Contextual Search but creating "noise" even as it appears to help find relevent content (but ends up not finding it).

Most likely, what I found here, what a dug up, was a way of picking up the influenctial stories that inspired the content that is in the New York Times Blogs, and of which some of the blogs appear, along with other blogs and websites.

But I haven't yet figured out how to harness what I have found - I uncovered the most important content using Radian6 that's out there right now - but … I haven't determined what you'd use it for - consider this an open thread - I'm looking for ideas here on what all of this means … where does one go next with this data?  

I think that's one of the challenges of Social Media - the tools are still evolving - and there are questions …. that need to be answered - I just came up with an answer … but I'm not sure what it's an answer to …. certainly, I used Radian6 much different than a PR person would have.

I suppose, I believe that it's more interesating, revealing, to use a platform or tool like Radian6, for something else besides what it was actually designed to do - I know what I just did here, was something it was not designed to do - and yet - something interesting happened as by product - making Radian6 (much like many Web 2.0 tools) useful for things beyound what they were designed to do (Twitter is great example).

Ideas anyone?   Where would you take this analysis next?