I’m pleased to invite you to the open house celebration for LectureMaker, Silicon Valley’s first high-definition streaming video studio. This special event takes place Wednesday, March 24th from 5:30pm to 8:00 pm in Sunnyvale. If you’re interested in creating, posting, or live streaming hi-def video content at affordable costs, you owe it to yourself to attend this grand opening party. Among the perks for attending: you can make your own greenscreen videos and greenscreen portrait photos during the celebration! Free! How cool is that?
Ron Fredericks, founder and videographer, has built an advanced high-def video studio worthy of Silicon Valley. He is pricing LectureMaker services to fit the budgets of startups, authors, consultants, analysts, marketing and PR agencies, and corporate marketing departments.
Join me Wednesday evening to tour the studio, make your own hi-def video clips, and get greenscreen portraits you can use with any background to spruce up your social media profiles. You can witness the ribbon cutting ceremony with the Mayor of Sunnyvale, and enjoy live music, drinks and food. Perhaps wander through an astonishing collection of movie sets and props.
Register at Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/610591295
Again, the details:
Host: Ron Fredericks, LectureMaker
When: Weds, March 24, 5:30pm - 8:00pm
Where: 830 Stewart Drive, Sunnyvale CA, 94085
What: Ribbon cutting ceremony with Sunnyvale’s Mayor
- Live music by Jimmy and the Waverunners
- Food, beer, wine, and soft drinks
- Make your own videos during the celebration
- More info: http://www.lecturemaker.com/2010/03/grand-opening/
You’ll see the creative video, audio and photo possibilities that are now easily within your reach. Even if you’re a solo practitioner like me.
See you there!
Popularity: 2%
I’m pleased to find that a new study validates what I’ve been seeing in client projects and industry conversations: social media is taking on a larger role in business decision-making processes. Social media is enabling decision-makers to reach out to larger numbers of people (the size of their unique influencer ecosystems) and to tap into their influencers through online as well as offline channels. These are among the preliminary findings of a study conducted this summer under the umbrella of the Society of New Communications Research (SNCR). SNCR Research Fellows Don Bulmer, SAP, and Vanessa DiMauro, Leader Networks lead the research and analysis and have begun releasing preliminary findings. Their full report will be released in January.
On the business front, about 4 in 10 respondents incorporate social networks into 4 steps of their decision process:
- seeking peer referral
- reading blogs
- gathering opinions through an online network
- looking the company up on a social network
Other findings relative to social media and influence:
- Information obtained from offline networks still have highest levels of trust with slight advantage over online (offline: 92% - combined strongly/somewhat trust; online: 83% combined strongly/somewhat trust)
- Approximately three quarters of respondents rely on professional networks to support business decisions: 40% gather opinions via their online networks and 39% look up companies on their social networks.
- Reliance on web-based professional networks and online communities has increased significantly over the past 3 years for essentially all respondents
Don has shared one of the interview excerpts, and for me, this comment puts the study results into context:
“I find that I will network offline at events and meetings where I establish connection with many people and I use online tools to follow up and maintain connect. I may meet 20 or so people at an event and then immediately then put them into Plaxo or LinkedIn to keep and maintain connection. I try to maintain my status and activity regularly to keep engaged and keep people informed.”
The methodology for the “New Symbiosis of Professional Networks” study involved a mixed methods approach supported by quantitative data gathered via online survey of 356 professionals to understand their perceptions and experiences with social media in support of their decision-making. Select interviews of 12 professionals were also conducted using a semi-structured interview guide as part of the second phase of the study. All respondents were either the decision makers or influenced the decision process within their company or business unit, and company size ranged from less than 100 to over 50,000 full-time employees.
Find more at Don’s blog and Vanessa’s blog.
Popularity: 32%
While the wildly successful “Groundswell” book by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff continues winning acclaim — most recently from the American Marketing Association — Josh has announced work in progress on a new book. This time, he’s teamed with Ted Schadler as co-author.
The title is “Harnessing the Groundswell: Drive Your Business With Empowered Employees and Customers”. The authors say this next Groundswell book is not a sequel…
“It focuses on individuals empowered by technology — both employees and customers — and how businesses can efficiently turn them into a force for better performance.” - Josh Bernoff
Look for the book in summer 2010 from Harvard Business Press.
Josh is carrying forward some precedents established with the first Groundswell book project. For example, you can keep up with progress and more at the Groundswell blog.
In case you missed it, Charlene Li started her new book project a few months ago. She’s engaging with the community in full force. You can vote on the title for her book right now — check out this post. I’ll write more once she settles on the title. Hers is due out in May 2010.
Popularity: 20%
Many of us are ready to recognize social media as a standard subset of our B2B and B2C communications channels. Even the slow moving Fortune 500 is adopting public-facing blogs, according to SNCR. So it’s time to stop thinking about analyst-written blogs as a novelty and start thinking about them as part of standard analyst business practice. One of the central topics we can start talking about openly is vendor sponsorship. That’s right: analyst-written blogs as vendor sponsored content.
In the analyst business at large, most (maybe all) communications channels contain a portion of sponsored content. The mix varies by firm. Some don’t license any content to vendors. Others license any and all content. Most firms are somewhere in between.
Sponsored content represents a mature, steady stream of income for many analyst businesses. I doubt many of us were around when the first vendor co-branded analyst report was circulated as a sales tool. Lots of us were around to witness the first analyst appearances in vendor-sponsored microsites, webinars and podcasts. These are commonplace today. We accept them — even mine them — as a natural part of everyday communications channels.
Why imagine that blogs will be any different? Or Twitter? There’s nothing about blogging as a communications channel that makes it a poor match to sponsorship interests.
Think about it. Some analyst firms won’t buy into sponsored blogs / blog content, some will. The question is, will you buy-in?
Popularity: 8%
NewComm Forum 2009 is just around the corner. I agree with Tom Foremski that this is not only the largest gathering of social media experts in the US, it is also a favorite of most of us who have attended over the years.
I recommend it to anyone serious about meeting, hearing, influencing or simply hanging out with the A-listers and the in-the-trenches practitioners setting the most important precedents in social media today. In short, if this is your market or these are your target influencers, you should not miss this event.
Now celebrating its fifth year, New Communications Forum will once again bring together thought leaders and decision makers to discuss the impact of social media and emerging communication tools, technologies, and models on PR and corporate communications, marketing and advertising, media and journalism, business, culture and society.
It takes place April 27th to 29th, at the San Francisco Marriott. It’s produced by the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR, pronounced ’snicker’). This time out, it’s co-located with the Inbound Marketing Conference.
Influencer50 is pleased to extend you savings on registration. Use discount code SNCRFRIEND to save $100.
I attend every other year, and this is an off year for me. If you are in town for NewComm Forum and want to get together, ping me here or at Twitter (@bfr3nch) or by email. Our office is over in the Financial District.
Popularity: 3%
Scott Brinker blogged about propinquity and Twitter last week. I’d never heard the word propinquity before. However, propinquity seems to be a label for a familiar concept — the notion that physical promixity promotes relationships. My parents harped about that while I was a teen. Happily, Scott takes a different tack. He suggests that social media applications such as Twitter may wear down the effects of physical promixity in relationship dynamics. I wonder what kind of effect they will have on relationships with influencers. And how we will measure it.
Today, we use several criteria for measuring influence for our Influencer50 clients. Our metrics include factors such as an influencer’s
- market reach
- frequency of impact
- quality of impact
- closeness to decision
“Closeness to decision” is where propinquity comes into play. We include physical proximity and timing in this metric. So, we already think of closeness to a decision as a measure of more than physical distance.
It’s not hard to envision extending “closeness to decision” with new metrics focused on social media, mobile communications, or both.
Several companies already use Twitter as a way to engage with influencers and customer conversations online. Duncan has written about this development in The Influencer, our free newsletter.
One thing is clear. We haven’t gotten our collective heads around the implications of social media in terms of influence. We’re still caught up in early adopter personalities and tactics.
Sometime soon, we’ll need to stop counting social media links and echoes. We need to start agreeing on what counts as distance and what counts as closeness and what counts as influence.
Popularity: 9%
Today I saw 2 more threads in the ongoing debate over whether social media popularity is a good way to measure influence.
First, my colleague Duncan Brown writes that Google is launching an AdWords-style SEM program across big social networks.
As an online publisher, I can see how this Google program makes perfect sense for media buyers. It will play from Madison Avenue to Main Street. After all, the big advertisers say they plan to shift their remaining 2008 and 2009 spending, cutting traditional ad spending while increasing spending on word of mouth and other forms of social media. (For the latest CMO study visit Epsilon; hat tip to Ken Rutowski for flagging it in his newsletter.) Google is offering just the right media product to pick up those extra dollars and euros. I’ve got no issue there.
However, I do see a potential downside. Call it collateral damage. Google is portraying the program as a measure of influence. Duncan describes the confusion this could cause:
“If Google‚Äôs plans get more firms to talk about influence, then fine. But I fear that it will dumb influence down to a few ‚Äòmagic‚Äô numbers that have tenuous relevance to real influence.”
Meanwhile, Graham Hill and I compared notes this morning on Peter Kim’s post, “Influencer Lists as Ego Traps“. We came up agreeing, in Graham’s words:
“Popular people are not necessarily good influencers. And influencers are not necessarily popular. There is much more to it than that.”
We’ve got some very bright people on both sides of the debate — those advocating that we equate influence with popularity/connectedness, those advising against it. Neither side is ready to blink.
In the end, the media buyers may have the final vote on whether online popularity is the path to the influentials.
Popularity: 4%
Tom Smith’s guest post at Mashable makes the point that we now trust the opinions of strangers as much as we trust our close friends, thanks to social media. He’s highlighting findings from the Universal McCann study, “When did we start trusting strangers”. Don’t let yourself get lulled into thinking this phenomenon is taking place only in consumer markets. Social media is also changing the way that businesses source trusted opinions on products and services.
Social media is transforming B2B decision-maker ecosystems in two fundamental ways. The most notable, according to Influencer50 research, is that more categories of advisors are exerting more influence during B2B purchase decisions. Social media is helping make many types of “hidden” advisors more visible, more accessible, more informed.
Another change is the appearance of new types of influencers. Examples include niche consultants, procurement groups, and expert communities.
The bottomline is that social media is changing the way we slice the B2B influence pie, just as it is changing influence in consumer markets.
Popularity: 8%
There’s quite a debate raging over whether IT decision-makers are influenced by blogs and other forms of social media. No matter which side you take in this debate, you’ll find good news and bad news in the latest installment of the “IT Social Media Index.”
The IT Social Media Index is becoming a twice-yearly survey conducted by ITtoolbox (now part of the Corporate Executive Board). It’s sponsored by PJA Advertising + Marketing.
This time out, the Index finds social media content consumption is up across most IT job positions. IT professionals are spending more time per week with social media and user-generated content.
The survey defines social media types as discussion groups, peer-to-peer networks, social networks and profiles, blogs, wikis, podcasts, and mash-ups.
Which is most popular overall with IT professionals?
You probably guessed it: discussion groups. Discussion groups command the most time per week.
There’s an odd split in results among tech decision-makers. The “executive decision-maker” respondents are consuming less social media and user-generated content. That’s bad news for social/UGC advocates because presumably, these are the very decision-makers that the high-rolling tech advertisers will pay dearly to reach.
Meanwhile, the “IT decision-makers” are consuming more social media and user-generated content.
Visit ITtoolbox to download and browse survey results. It’s absolutely free. Plus, there’s some interesting trivia, from early mentors to tastes in music and politicians.
Popularity: 2%
