Biznology

Image via CrunchBase

I read an article today that sums up so much of what passes for social media marketing. In that article, Patricio Robles wondered if your Twitter followers are silent or fake. It’s a well-sourced article that links to several studies and articles and well worth the read. (Go read it now. I’ll wait right here for you.) As I read it, it started to make me wonder why we all want Twitter followers. Or Facebook friends. Or LinkedIn connections. Read the remainder of this entry »

Bulls Eye (Photo credit: Jens Dahlin)

Three clients. Three stories. But they are all, in a sense, the same story. a failure to focus. Marketing has always needed focus–focus on who your best customers are and what your biggest differentiation is. Because digital marketing forces you to compete with many more companies from all over the world, it requires that you have a laser-like focus on who your target market is. Because if you don’t, someone else will.

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WI: Milwaukee phone bank and labor walk, September 11, 2008 (Photo credit: aflcio)

Monday, I talked about the Convey API, a new offering from Converseon that earned DataWeek’s Innovator of the Year on Social Media. My point Monday was that the Convey API allows the people who need accurate sentiment analysis to pay for it, even though monitoring platforms are getting cheaper and cheaper and not offering that kind of accuracy. But that’s only half the story. To me, the bigger opportunity for accurate sentiment analysis is how it can be used for entirely new applications that go way beyond social media monitoring. Read the remainder of this entry »

The way you feel now about all those photos of you at the beach, in your suit, body-proud, tanned and drinking — liberation and joy — may end up making you feel completely different in your near future — trapped and ashamed. No matter how young you may be, reading these words, you need to start thinking long-game when it comes to your online reputation.

You’re at the mercy of the Panopticon: networked cameras are almost ubiquitous

Your online reputation on Google Search is a culmination of all your separate, discrete (or indiscreet) choices — sort of like tattoos — and it’s always easier to not get inked in the first place than it is live with the consequences or go through the pain and expense of having all of your tribal, prison, lower-back, ankle, neck, and face tattoos removed. Read the remainder of this entry »

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Most of you know that I serve as Chief Strategist at Converseon, so I spend a lot of time thinking about sentiment analysis techniques for social media listening. My background is in text analytics, so I am no stranger to technology solutions for this problem, but I’ve long felt that technology is only part of the solution to the vexing problem of social media sentiment analysis. The question is, how accurate do you need sentiment analysis to be? Sure we’d all want to know with 100% accuracy whether customer comments about our company are positive or negative. But are you willing to pay for it? Read the remainder of this entry »