“Listening” graphics have a long way to go

Oct 23 2009

“Listening” graphics have a long way to go

blog world grafic

The big BlogWorld Expo was this week in Las Vegas and I was anxious to learn as much as I could about what was going on out there.

One of the outputs was the above image. It’s supposed to tell us what conversations are going on and the relationships between the keywords. I’m tiring of these ridiculous graphics. Am I supposed to oooh and aaah that this graphically depicts that “Vegas” and “blogger” were the two key terms from this conference? What insight does this chart really provide? And yet, I see more and more meaningless stuff like this every day.

I’ve been spending time studying the trends in social media monitoring and have been impressed with the rapid progress. But there is still a lot of noise like this chart that really tells us nothing. The fact is, the most meaningful keyword and sentiment analysis is all still being done MANUALLY.

For all the social media “listening” we’re supposed to be doing, we had better come up with better ways to show our company managment what’s going on.

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Filed in Marketing Solutions | Mark

14 Comments

By Gregg Morris, October 23, 2009 @ 8:01 am

Isn’t this just another indication of what seems so clearly to be a trend in “social media marketing”? A piece that’s put together by the practitioners (or wannabes) for the practitioners (or wannabes). I don’t mean to take a roundhouse cut at the industry with that statement because there is some very good, very valuable information being shared in the space.

But what if some of these graphics, some of the associated writing, was directed at a different audience? The audience who controlled the purse strings, and who seem to want to really understand this new way of marketing?
By Gregg Morris, October 23, 2009 @ 8:14 am

P.S. Here’s a link to a pretty sharp video that documents a day at BlogWorld. http://j.mp/2rajKQ
By Joseph Fiore, October 23, 2009 @ 8:22 am

Node charts are complex and quite sophisticated, and IMHO as much as they can be useful for mapping data, this is one example where keeping visuals simple might have translated into a graphic that could be used to convey the information in more useful and effective manner.

The only other point I wanted to make here is that in our experiences, when clients are sitting in front of teams or departments to present on social media imperatives or strategies, graphs and charts serve as an important visual aid in their reporting.

To not provide graphing and charting capabilities in our tools would be counter-intuitive to the idea of serving to our clients needs. Currently, we use bar charts (stacked), pie-charts, linear graphs and a few others, though where I see node-charts entering into the fray is to map conversations happening in the social Web that we can link or associate by topic, category, trends, people of influence and/or other patterns important to conversation marketing.

To speak on the point in your post, I haven’t seen too many used in an appropriate context or manner, and when they were, you really needed to be knee-deep in the analysis to make any sense of it.

Joseph
@RepuTrack
By Mark, October 23, 2009 @ 8:28 am

@Gregg — awesome video. I think I will use that in my upcoming class! Really drives home the point of mainstreaming social media. It’s not a niche any more … I mean Bud Light was a sponsor?
By Mark, October 23, 2009 @ 8:37 am

@Joseph I’ve spent the past few weeks immersing myself in SM measurement demos. My frame of reference is blue-chip corporate America, so I’m looking for insights presented in the attention span of a corporate exec. Most of the presentations I’ve seen leave me thinking, “This is it? You’re kidding, right?” Most executives won’t have the time or patience to be “knee-deep” in the analysis.

I also think this is the most exciting and important work going on in marketing right now and the progress has been rapid. But it has a long way to go, naturally.

It’s great to have an expert weigh-in! When do I get to see your company’s demo? : )
By Joseph Fiore, October 23, 2009 @ 8:50 am

Most executives won’t have the time or patience to be “knee-deep” in the analysis.

I couldn’t agree more! As far as an online demo is concerned, I would encourage you or any of your visitors to tap me @RepuTrack and/or schedule a demo directly from our site.

Joseph
@RepuTrack

BTW: @Gregg, thanks for the video share – that is one cool video/message
By Jody Pirrello, October 23, 2009 @ 8:51 am

I agree and I think there’s a big opportunity in this space. The monitoring tools of today are great content aggregators, but metrics, graphs/charts and insights are all still a manual process. As always it comes back to ROI – what’s your success criteria and how do you quantify it? And then, how do you communicate it in a useful way?

To a certain degree I think manual work will always be a part of the process. If we compare it to web site monitoring (similar category but more mature) we now get better data but the insights and determination of *which* metrics are important still comes back to good ol’ brain power and critical thinking.

A big part of the puzzle that’s missing in all this monitoring is connecting the dots. Social activity should be a part of overall eMarketing monitoring and analysis, including web site activity, online promotions, seo, ppc, etc. to get a full picture. I haven’t found a single tool that does this well yet although a few are attempting it. Until this happens we’ll need to connect those dots manually.

Having said all that I find it immensely exciting to be a part of it all. It’s a rare opportunity to be in the thick of something that’s changing so rapidly.
By Bob Batchelor, October 23, 2009 @ 9:10 am

Interesting post Mark! Thanks for starting the discussion. I see value in using these kinds of visuals to “educate” executives. Though I agree with you that more could be done by using innovative technologies.

For example, my brother is an expert in GPS mapping. He told me about the countless uses (beyond mapping) for the device and it got me thinking about how it could be applied to communications generally and social media specifically.

Perhaps using something like GPS (at least for mapping projects through an organization) would provide the kind of simple, “real-world” results that execs would value.

Just a thought…
By Mark, October 23, 2009 @ 9:43 am

@Bob — Jason Falls had an interesting post on work he is doing with one of his clients on just this idea. It is new technology that maps conversations geographically. Now THAT’S interesting! Here is a link to his post on this subject: http://bit.ly/3doARZ
By Frank Podlaha, October 23, 2009 @ 11:52 am

Stay tuned, I have a professional version of @LocalChirps coming out in a few weeks. It’s gonna help businesses track Twitter conversations in their community thru data mining tweets. Tag clouds, graphs, and charts will all be part of it. Wish me luck to unclutter the clutter.

Frank
By Synthesio, October 23, 2009 @ 12:05 pm

Hi Mark,
We agree with you that the most reliable type of sentiment analysis that can be provided is carried out manually. Native knowledge speakers can give you a far better idea of how Internet users are talking about your brand, company, competitors, and industry than an automatic software program that cannot detect sentiments such as sarcasm or understand slang.
Also, thank you for the article about tweets by location, this is very interesting.

Best,
Michelle
@Synthesio
By Lil' Miss, October 23, 2009 @ 4:38 pm

LOVE the Jason Falls app. Now we’re talkin.’