I am at the 140 Conference this morning at O2 Indigo (#140conf) listening to Robert Fry.

Robert Fry talks about how Twitter used to be unfamilar to most people but now it’s part of mainstream news (begrudgingly) and to by participating with Twitter you can find out where is value and where is noise.

Robert Fry admits the next big thing might not be Twitter, but admoinshed us not to give up our humanity, by trying to put a rational approach overlay an emotional one.

Andrew Keen spike next about authenticty – being authentic and human you appear, the more powerful you become in the new structure of power in the 21 century (my spelling is not as good since I’m writing on the iPhone).

Andrew Keen seems to feel this new structure is dangerous.

I’ll be at Monitoring Social Media 09 later this afternoon, speaking about The Future Of Social Media Monitoring (check my presentation on Slideshare).

Can’t sleep -maybe I’m thinking about London and Monitoring Social Media 09, next week; perhaps, I  was thinking about a post read earlier today on how Good Bloggers Make Good Neighbors, in ReadWriteWeb, based on a Pew Internet Study suggesting  “geeky” people (similar to the type I met at the Singularity Summit last month in NYC), especially if they’re bloggers, are more socially well adjusted and  ..

…almost 80 percent more likely to do small favors for their neighbors than other groups, and they’re 84 percent more likely to help a neighbor care for a family member, e.g., offer babysitting help.

…… Bloggers and mobile phone users are also 72 percent more likely to belong to a local group or organization such as a charitable organization, a youth sports league, or a religious group.

I think this study shows people who are internet savvy, particularly if they are regular, active bloggers – are more likely to be interested in the world around them, and what’s going on locally.

Social Media, also, can not only help us be more socially adjusted, it can also, according to a Gizmodo post I read today, keep someone out of jail -

“….Rodney was arrested on October 18 as a suspect in two crimes. He declared himself innocent and Robert Reuland—his defense lawyer—found the key to free him: “Where’s my pancakes?“

That seemingly inconsequential Facebook status update proved crucial when the Californian company confirmed that someone wrote it from his father’s Harlem apartment computer, using Rodney’s user and password at around the time of the alleged crime: Saturday October 17, 11:49am.

…. The most interesting thing in this case, however, is that this seems to be the first time in which social networking has been used to save the ass of someone, rather than nailing a really stupid thief.

But then, I’m wondering if something totally unrelated, such as a recent study mentioned in Brain and Cognition shows that Performing horizontal eye movement exercises can boost your creativity

…  Elizabeth Shobe and colleagues have provided the first evidence that creativity is boosted by an intervention designed to increase hemispheric cross-talk.

… The key finding is that on their second creativity attempt, strong-handers who’d performed the horizontal eye movements subsequently showed a significant improvement in their creativity, in terms of being more original (i.e. suggesting ideas not proposed by others) and coming up with more categories of use. Staring straight ahead, by contrast, had no effect on creativity.

…. overall, the mixed-handed participants performed better on the creativity task than the strong-handers, thus providing further evidence for a link between inter-hemispheric interaction, which mixed-handers have more of, and creativity. But it also turned out that mixed-handers didn’t benefit from the horizontal eye movement task.

Now, I’m going to be doing my horizontal eye exercises alot more often – they’ll probably help my blogging, analytics insight, and painting (when have the time and inclination to).

Rambling on to another subject – as I begin to feel sleepy – recalling a post I read earlier today on Top Rank Blog on how major Vegas hotels are using Social Media, presented at PubCon, day 2, that is putting me to sleep …

“…prominent brands on the strip have stepped up to the plate and are actively engaged in social web participation.”

” …While not everyone may check their emails in Vegas, many of them still check their social profiles while traveling. “

“…. have a “toys for Tweets” promotion that will bring awareness to the fact that there is a Hilton in Vegas in a positive light.”

“….The MGM Grand was late to the social media game compared to competitors on the strip – we finally joined for a few reasons.  The effectiveness of our email marketing was beginning to degrade a bit. ”

It’s encouraging the hotels at Vegas are begining to take Social Media seriously – but they seem so uncreative – I feel like telling all the panelists to do horizontal eye exercises for a month – then do your social media – maybe it’ll be different!   Ok, I digress.   Sounds like I didn’t miss much at PubCon this year (haven’t been to a PubCon since 2005 in New Orleans).

Then again, maybe Todd Defren at PR-Squared – is doing his horizontal eye exercises – as he said some good stuff in his post on THE FUTURE OF MARKETING (which reminds me of my slideshare presentation on the Future of Social Media Monitoring(see below)

and he has a nice graphic which I’m adding to this post, similar to one I put in my presentation  ..

I like how Todd says …

…. Facebook and Google will be the long-term winners: it’s not just the fact that they have critical mass, but that that critical mass comes at a time when Social Networks are not just destinations (a la the old AOL and MySpace), but are becoming integral to the holistic Web Experience.

….When we surf and when we search, beyond the Social Network sites, we’re going to be taking our Friends with us; we’re taking our known online activities with us.  Sites and search engines will re-orient themselves dynamically to match our identities. The entire Web experience will re-architect itself on-the-fly based on where we’ve been, what device we’re using, what we’ve looked at or purchased in the past, who we are friends with, what offers and content our contacts have been sharing and purchasing, etc.

That’s an interesting observation – all this stuff is poised to happen – but still hasn’t because the semantic web is still in it’s infancy – and a lot of the automation to make it happen hasn’t evolved yet – ie: Microformats.  In fact, if you read my Slideshare, above,  one thing I left out, is the reason why Alterian and Radian6 can’t geo-locate well – their tools, and the rest of the Social Media Monitoring tools, for the most part, were built, as Bill Hunt, pointed out to me recently, by marketing people looking to track Buzz, and not so much, for the kinds of analysis we really need.

However, even if Alterian/Radian6/Cision/Scout Labs, etc, wanted to – they could not get the precision needed to tell me where most of the content they are monitoring on the web actually originates from, or do topic/sentiment analysis well – that is at least a few years away – and needs the Semantic Web in order to become more accurate and useful.  That’s what I left out (maybe I would have put it in if I were doing my eye exercises).

The rest of Todd Defren’s post is worth reading … but now I’m really fading – time to go back, maybe work on all the nice things going on in London next week, including Monitoring Social Media 09, and London, that I haven’t visited before.

Of course, I’ll be missing Web 2.0 conference, here in NYC – but I had to make a choice on where it was more important to be.

Now I have access again, I found it refreshing to work with Radian6 and find things that I asked for last year, were added, and then some (see my last post on Radian6 New Enhancements plus Social CRM, WebTrends and SalesForce Intergration).

First off, you can now add a set of keywords to a “keyword group” and use it with three of the 5 widgets that require keyword data – before you had to add the keywords manually to each widget.   I asked for this feature last September (see screenshot below where I added a set of keywords to a preset set group called “Brands“):

While it may not be a big deal with a small Topic Profile and a few keywords – for a big Profile with many keywords, having a way to group and use keywords (found under “advanced configuration”) is extremely helpful and avoids operational “fatigue”, by eliminating tedious configuration tasks ,that aren’t really necessary, and tend to fog our minds, leaving less room for analysis and insight.

Also, while your setting up a Topic Profile in Radian6, you can purchase Compete.com traffic data connected with the profile -this was a good move (and something I heard about a few months ago from Compete.com in a meeting with Aaron Prebluda, Director of Market Development at Compete.com, who I briefly met with a few weeks earlier at Search Engine Strategies conference in at the New York Hilton).

You can see that data you just purchased in the Influencer Widget (probably the more powerful feature of Radian6 that makes it stands apart – it’s not that SM2/Techrigy can’t show you, more or less the same thing, it’s that doesn’t yet have the integration, but I’m sure Techrigy will try to match this and the CRM capabilities announced yesterday – and the industry could use some healthy competition – (which is what America is all about, anyway, right?).

Influencer Widget – notice the “Compete.com” traffic data on the far right, in the last 4 columns.  What’s being added from Compete is the

1 – Unique Visitors per month for every influencer

2- Visits per month for every influnecer

3 – Average monthly time spent on site (which in may cases, seems kinda low, but hey, this is “Social Media” and visits are often very directed and of short duration – viewing a page from Twitter or Facebook, you might look at what you want and then leave).

4- Monthly Site Views (Pageviews)

The Compete data intergation helps a Radian6 user decide if an “influener” found in a profile is “worth” going after – in other words – if my client is a translation service that wants Social Media Traffic – would an influener have the traffic I needed to make the effort of contacting them and getting a relationship or link, worthwhile (since this all takes effort to do, it’s worth putting on the table anything that can make your decision of who you want to have a relationship with, as accessable as possible, and the Compete data helps to do that)?

Another feature that is, in my opinion, a “deal breaker“, and that is presently unmatched by Techrigy or anyone else, is the “Social Graph” of a Influener, or any source that comes up as a River of News source (the River of News is one of the 5 Widgets that Radian6 provides and its akin it’s name – a stream of news related to the Topic Profile at a certain point in time).

Social Profile of an “Influencer”

Consider what this means – even though you can isolate influencers – figuring out how to contact them (and which channel to do so – Twitter vs LinkedIn, vs Google Profile, vs Facebook profile, vs email, to name a few, and having that on hand, for any influential – makes Social Media CRM so much easier and more effective).

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that, just because you can isolate an influencer in this way, using Radian6, in this case, that you should automatically go and contact them.

Gary Vaynerchuk mentions, at the 140 Character Conferecne, which I attended last week, and I was sitting right in the front and to the left of Gary, as he gave this talk, 1.4 minutes in, that he owns a company with is younger brother, and he contacts a lot of people, using Social Media, but this come under fire, because, you still have to form a relationship and get permission first, before going off and contacting anyone, and that’s what makes this an Art, not a mass promotion techinique.

I bring it up because, the temptation is – if you can get this data off of Radian6, stick it into a Social CRM via SalesForce, and now see the traffic come in to the site using WebTrends, and estimate Influencer traffic using Compete – your all set, and can go and contact whomever you want.   Except – you still need to find a meaningful and valid way to interact with the influencer, in the first place.  These tools don’t do that for you – you have to figure out a way to do – all the tools can do is identify possible to contact and give you their addresses, you, as the marketer, must decide the right way to connect with that person – and if you can’t do it in a non-invasive way, you many not want to engage with that influencer, at all, because it can backfire, as it did, I’m told, to Gary Vaynerchuk and his brother.

I’m not saying – don’t go out and contact people – I am saying – figure out how you can do it in a way where that contact, identified by Radian6, is going to be welcomed, or don’t bother contacting the influener, at all.     Since the Social CRM tools now make such contacting “easy” we need to figure out the right way to “engage” with that customer, influencer, what ever you want to call them.

Another feature which might be new is the “On Topic Forum Replies” – i don’t think that was in the versions I was using last year – but it is now.   One the reasons why the “On Topic” features of Radian6 is useful is for linking strategy and SEO. Here’s why.

Sopose you wanted to get a lot of links from Social Media to your blog or corporate website – and you were doing SEO on the site, but you knew that Google (still the main Search Engine, but Bing is starting to move up and challange Yahoo!) would rank your site higher if it determined the backlinks your page (either the homepage or a specific page on your site) were more relevent – but how do you find the relevent link (where you might want to leave a comment -even if it ends up being a “no follow” link back to yoru page) – well …. here’s where find that specific comment, specific webpage that is relevent to what your own content is – and that’s the page you want to go after – and get the link from.  While there is still debate on the value of “no follow” links (see Duct Tape Marketing Social Media Profiles as Tools for Links and Traffic)

Radian6 could be very useful for SEO, using Social Media for backlinks, even when they are “no follow” links (which isn’t always the case, btw) – by helping the SEO person identify the right pages to the get the links from.

Getting back to another feature of Radian6 that I mentioned above, the you can add keywords to a list, and then use them for Topic Analysis or Topic Trends Widgets, where this process of adding keywords used to manual, for each widget (and painful) – here’s that this looks like.

To end this long, long post of mine – there’s  a lot to like about Radian6 and it seems to be getting better, and justifying the cost for many firms, as long as you use it as part of a strategy, and you know what your doing and want to accomplish.

Which gets me on my last point – the work it takes to reach out to people – to identify those individuals you want to reach out to.

One thing is becoming more and more obvious – and it can’t be ignored – that Radian6, or any tool with similar intentions – to identify information that is meaningful to your business or cause – has to be sifted through – processed, understood (by you) and responded to – and the Social CRM aspects that are being added with SalesForce and being confirmed, by WebTrends, certainly do help with the task of storing and structuring the data – they don’t really address the nagging question of … do I need to hire people to do this kind of work?

The answer is, Yes, and you need to pay them well.   Here’s why (one more “rant” of mine, before I sign off)

We know that all this “Social Media” content is now being created, much of it “worthless” but parts of it valuable – and as more people engage in Social Media – more and more content is created – at an ever increasing rate – we know we need to “engage ” with that data, but only a human mind can truly analyze it and intelligently respond, and even if we end up inventing positronic brains (like Data, in Star Trek, The Next Generation), we will never be able to replace the human element of what makes communication satisfying and neccessary.

Because we can now sift through the data – we need the right people to understand what to with it – how to build relationships from it – the tools are rapidly maturing – but the human element is atrophying in that, in many cases, we forget to make the effort to reach out and listen.

We need to have insight and wisdom in the use of these tools – experimentation, perhaps making some mistakes, breaking a few plates, so to speak – to learn valuable lessons on how to approach and engage people.   But having said that – you need to sift though this data, and it’s massive – and you need people, good people, great people, and the right strategy to do it.

That’s what I plan on focusing – perhaps the next incarnation of  ”me”, of Webmetricsguru, to be one of the people who figures that out, who “gets it”.

Social CRM is useless without Heart, Compassion and Understanding.

I was at Jeff Pulver’s 140 Character Conference this week part of the time, and when I could not be there (due to work) I decided to subscribe to the entire data stream so I could read it later.   But then, I thought, why not analyze that data stream in a Social Media monitoring platform – so here’s what I found, quickly, using SM2 Techrigy.

I don’t have the time time morning to do a deep dive analysis of the data – I’m just going to present the basic charts Techrigy provides and do a more in depth analysis at another time, soon.

It happened this week

Since #140conf happened this week – the spike on 6/16 makes sense.

The majority of the activity was on Twitter – which was no surprise since the conference was about Twitter.

The Audience, online, was much as Twitter’s audience is known to be, mostly male 35 years old or older – Eric T. Peterson said as much on Wednesday morning in his 10 min presentation.

The Cloud Category Tag Cloud -

Most of the content was of favorable tone – but we’d have to look at the tweets to be sure

The emotions in the datastream ran the full spectrum and the results could be isolated by clicking on each chart element.  Many conversations had more than one emotion.

And the Conference was covered all over the globe.

… the the bulk in New York – but there were Tweeters everywhere spreading the message.