Brandtology is starting a new Social Media Analytics Academy – was just notified about it today and wanted to share the news with my readers (press release)- esp those in Asia.  Right now I haven’t seen a course offering – it will be all hands on and in person training, though.

Within the various courses offered by Brandtology, participants would be able to learn about the Social Media landscape in the Asia Pacific Region, with focus on the unique characteristics of each market.

For instance, although Twitter is wildly popular in most countries, it is banned in China, which has its own version called Sina Weibo, while Taiwanese prefer a micro-blog with a timeline by the name of Plurk.

More importantly, the courses would also touch on the measurement and evaluation of Social Media Success, and the use of data analysis tools and services for identifying what creates viral effects online, as well as determining top influencers and key engagement channels.
“Data without analysis is meaningless.

What’s more important is to be able to go beyond simplistic statistics such as buzz, views and re-tweets to find out the driving factors of internet word of mouth, and the overarching concerns of netizens about a brand and its products,” Dorothy Poon, Programme Director of Brandtology Academy, opined. “Extracting actionable insights and using social media analytics to create an effective feedback loop is more important than merely finding out what’s being said and not doing anything about it.”

At the end of the course, participants will be required to undergo a rigorous certification process and demonstrate sound understanding of the key concepts taught in the course.

The first two runs of the Social Media Analytics courses in September are already fully booked and the third run will commence in October. For inquiries, please email academy@brandtology.com or visit http://www.brandtology.com/academy

I spoke with Dorothy Poon a few weeks ago over lunch and dinner where she was visiting New York for Brandtology meetings – the Academy was a hush rumor then – it may have been alluded to in our conversations, but not actually discussed.   I was also speaking with Jay Vasudevan who who introduced me to  Brandtology  and is my primary contact.

According to Jay,  Brandtology Academy will provide sessions in September and they  will be in person,  open for anyone who is interested in learning about Social Media – analytics, monitoring etc.

It’s tempting to see parallels between Brandtology Academy and Omniture’s Certified Professional Program or even the Web Analytics Association Certification for Web Analytics that recently got underway (though it was discussed when I was still part of the WAA Board).    On the Pro side, for certification, there is so much material and disinformation about Social Media  out there that a professional training program with certification, what Brandtology and the WAA offer, is appealing both to applicants and employers.

On the other hand, there are those who feel social media is too young a field to have certification – one being TheBrandBuilder – since it’s not clear what best practices are in many cases.   More often, I’m at odds with TheBrandBuilder (actually, we agree on most things, to be honest) – and I’m with him on this but his emphasis on existing organizations such as the AMA and PRSA instead of the vendors differ with with the approach Brandtology has embarked on.

On the other hand, one could say the same thing of Omniture’s Certification, or before it, Novell’s CNE – these are all vendor created programs – the certifications have not tended to carry beyond the institutions that created them.

Olivier Blanchard argues certification and accreditation is a given, it’s more how it’s done who is doing the accreditation.

Will Brandtology Academy be one of several new Social Media Analytics training centers?

Only time will tell – perhaps we’ll be seeing several academies in 2011.  However, in this case, I’m for the Brandtology Academy as it not only proposes to give a good foundation for Social Media Analytics but it focuses on Asia – an area that rich and thriving but where not much attention has been paid by monitoring vendors – even though the market for social monitoring and social media, I believe, is exploding in Asia Pacific.