Was thinking about something Seth Godin said (or wrote) recently about being easily manipulated which I  briefly covered in my Web Journal a few days ago at the bottom of my post.

Every time I find myself getting so used to Seth Godin – he surprises me with something from the corner of his hat ..  In that case, I hope he lets the hat drop off more often.

Seth Godin said it’s easy to identify people who can be manipulated (see below) and I wondered if you can identify signs and behaviors the way he did – could you also detect those signs in Social Media?

I think so – in some cases – it’s possible to do that – which brings in another question – why would one want to use monitoring tools to identify a certain predisposition or a certain behavior?  Probably because knowledge is power and it can also be a protection.

Here’s a couple of Seth Godin’s points from  Who is easily manipulated? post and how I might filter for it in online media using a monitoring platform (I’ll use Sysomos Map in this instance – but I could have used several others – even Social Mention would work – and I cover that in my ebook).

Believing something because you heard someone say it on a news show on cable TV.

That’s actually the easiest case to filter on, and it also happens to be the first case Seth Godin gave in his post. Here’s the query I came up with to filter on people who believe what they heard on a news show.

(“I watched” OR “I watch” OR “I tuned in to”) AND “Fox News” AND (“I believe” OR “I trust”) AND (“he said” OR “she said” OR “they said”)

Actually, what I found were people who disbelieved – and I’m sure I could have written a much better query that included more things.  I even wonder if there are people “out there” doing this stuff already, and in a much more sophisticated way.

Some of the other signs Seth pointed out would be next to impossible to pick up using Social Monitoring tools.  Here’s some examples:

• Buying penny stocks.
• Repeating a mantra heard from a figurehead or leader of a tribe without considering whether it’s true.
• Being a child (or acting like one).
• Repeating a mantra heard from a figurehead or leader of a tribe without considering whether it’s true.
• Trying to find a short cut to lose weight, make money or achieve some other long-term goal.
• Ignoring the scientific method and embracing unexamined traditional methods instead.
• Focusing on (and believing) easily gamed bestseller lists or crowds

I think the points above, as they are defined and written, would be next to impossible to write an effective search query – and even if you could – the data pulled back would be very noisy.

But, if Seth Godin were to re-define – or reword those behaviors in terms of the kinds of things we can observer and measure online – we probably could isolate and segment on it and create analytics around it.

One of the things that’s been top of mind recently is the need to collect data you can take actionable decisions on.

I’m tempted to start asking clients ongoing questions like “What kinds of actions would you like to take based on your analytics”?   Another way of asking that same question is “What is it that you really most want to know, and what kind of answer are you looking for from me”?

Often, there’s difficulty translating something that’s needed to impress a client with the reality of the data and information we can pull (and the time allowed for that process).

I think the process becomes easier as we get closer, as a team, to speaking the same language – and that takes a  lot of work – lots of work – work that most companies do not yet want to invest it.

But I digressed – the point of my post was it’s possible to find people who display certain qualities online (and collect their blog address, twitter handles, and even email address in some cases) – and I did not do a very good job of it on my first pass – but I bet you anything there are people who have perfected this type of approach much more than I have.