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: 2%

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: 1%

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: 2%

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’s plans get more firms to talk about influence, then fine. But I fear that it will dumb influence down to a few ‘magic’ 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: 1%

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: 3%

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: 1%

What is a blog? How would you define an industry analyst blog? What separates blogs from the other online destinations and channels published by the ICT analyst community? Is a blog still a blog without an RSS feed? comments? Is an analyst blog tied to his or her expertise? Yesterday, I asked ten or so analysts and consultants in the US and UK to share their thoughts on what is a blog. They responded with free-range thinking on that and beyond: what is an analyst blog, why do analysts blog, and why does anyone care. Good stuff. Here’s a rough cut of my notes.

Background

My intent is to overhaul the criteria for the Tekrati analyst blogs directory. Already, the conversation offers a rich perspective on grounds for deciding which blogs are listed and why they might be tossed out down the road.

I queried analysts and consultants that are successful bloggers: each has a track record as an individual blogger, and has earned credibility as a thought leader within a professional community of practice.

The analysts are: Carl Howe of Blackfriars Communications, Mike Gotta of Burton Group, Alan Pelz-Sharpe of CMS Watch, Charlene Li or Josh Bernoff (Josh responded) of Forrester Research, Dale Vile of Freeform Dynamics, James Governor of RedMonk, John Blossom of Shore Communications, and Stowe Boyd of The Brannan Street Irregulars.

The consultants are: Jen McClure of the Society for New Communications Research, Jonny Bentwood of Edelman, and Erik SR of Tech for PR.

Again, what follows is a rough cut of the discussion threads. I’m pulling excerpts out of the conversational flow, to make for faster reading. More, and perhaps a little more polished, next week.

What is and what is not a blog?

James Governor offers:

1. RSS or ATOM feed
2. no firewall
3. written by named user/s
4. it’s on other people’s blogrolls

Jonny Bentwood agrees with the first two points; sees 3 as more a best practice or preference, and also pushes back on 4.

Dale Vile agreed with points 1 - 3, and adds: “In addition, it might be stating the bleeding obvious, but the ability for people to comment without registration should also be in the list.”

Mike Gotta raises the point of whether blogs are open or are “gated” and require client access: “I think this type of directory should be for blogs or other analyst-associated social media vehicles that are open and community-centric without a lot of strings attached.” Tekrati readers have been rather vocal on this point, too.

Mike and Josh Bernoff both suggest including update frequency. This is another hot point in correspondence with Tekrati readers. The new rev of the directory shows latest posts at a glance, and the actual posts on the detail page. (A blog graveyard might be an interesting addition — instead of a quiet delete.) Josh’s inputs include:

• Publicly available
• Updated at least 10 times per year
• Written in the first person — meaning personal, and expressing a point of view (POV)

He makes a good point: “If you don’t update it at least 10 times a year, it’s not frequent enough to be a blog.”

Disagreeing with James Governor, he reasons that RSS and comments are central to a good blog, but perhaps not mandatory.

Erik poses two criteria to be considered blogs:

• inherently and consistently personal, whether written by a group or one person. (POV)
• formatted as journals on a specific topic — unlike traditional websites. “Meaning you’ve got the main page featuring the past x number of articles, then you’ve got your sorting options (tag categories, years and months)”

Jen McClure disagrees on “personal” being requisite. She points out that blogs aren’t always personal; many businesses and organizations are using the blogging technology platform for their primary corporate website presence, in place of an e-newsletter format , or for special promotions or events. She also made a comment that pulls together many of the different thoughts expressed on what is a blog, and underscores the importance of the softer questions below:

“A blog is more than just the sum of its technological parts - as the important thing is what the technology allows, e.g., instant publication and distribution, linking, commenting.”

What is an analyst blog - and, who is an analyst?

Jonny Bentwood says decide who is an analyst, first. Then sort out the blog criteria.

When deciding who is/not an analyst, Mike Gotta says use company affiliation, basic credentials as an analyst within a sector, but — “I would not want to see something that is exclusionary or reinforce a particular status-quo.”

What is an analyst+blog?

I suspect that analyst salespeople, vendor sales and marketing people, and IT people all have fundamentally different expectations of analyst blogs. Makes answering the question an interesting exercise.

Carl Howe suggests that analyst blogs could resonate with industry research and advisory values, and offers these criteria to kick off the conversation. BTW, he characterizes these as “fairly hard nosed” and not intended to offend:

• Is there accountability? “An analyst is one who is willing to attach her or his personal reputation to their analyses.”
• Is there data to support the point of view?
• Is there original synthesis and insight?
• Is there either prescription or prediction? “Ok, so the blog tells me 1+1=3 — so what? Should I do something about that, like go back and rebalance my checkbook with this new math?”

Some of the other contributors do find these restrictive; I don’t, unless a blog is truly personal. Then again, I am overly jaded on link bait and trolls — a side affect of perusing too many press release and post titles — and I’m not refering to vendor content.

By contrast, Mike Gotta: “Not all analyst blogs contain “analyst-related writings”. Some might be more personal with postings far outside the information topics that one might expect to be associated with an analyst. This is neither good or bad – it depends on what you are trying to accomplish.” Good point, and true to the historical nature of the directory.

Likewise, Mike raises the point that wikis, social bookmark systems and other social media forms all enable analysts to express themselves. So, “fundamental question is whether this is a directory to analysts and how they are expressing themselves via social media”. He’s telling me not to get too hung up in the tech specs, as all tech dies. Et tu, bloge?

Dale shared an interesting model for categorizing blogs, very good and no way to rough cut with justice. Plus, I’m thinking about incorporating into the directory ASAP.

Why do analysts blog, and why does anyone care?

Stowe Boyd, Jen McClure and Dale Vile cracked open this territory with a short debate on social media, thought leadership and the masses. The context is how the blogging and interactive public participates in new ways — and how this can affect opinions, reputations, politics, and more. Clearly, it could affect analyst reputations, as well as the analyst workflow processes (gathering and synthesizing data, reaching and testing conclusions, and publishing).

See Stowe’s post, that kicked off the exchange: What is social media?.

Reprinted from Tekrati

Popularity: 3%

The Tekrati directory of analyst blogs is easier to use, offers more information and is better integrated with its sister directories, on analysts and analyst firms. What’s more, we migrated the OPML to the latest rev and did an extensive housecleaning on the listings. Richard handled the programming effortlessly, as always. I, on the other hand, am still wrestling with a content issue: new rules for separating a blog from any other form of online journal or commentary. I’m asking for help.

You might be thinking that I’m a little slow on the draw, given that I’m just now pondering the universal truths of Blog, some two and half years into publishing a directory of blogs.

Since the 2005 directory debut, my rule has been this: there must be evidence of blog publishing software and/or blog coding and format standards. That’s what split the blogwashers — my term for analysts using web pages that mimic a blog in a cosmetic way — from the bloggers. Only the bloggers that passed this test made it into the directory.

Fast forward to 2007. I’m feeling increasingly self-conscious about this technology-only premise, and that’s not a good thing. More web content seems to be a hybrid, a blend of blog and other content publishing applications. This results in too much dithering on my part. And, I don’t like to guess. Whether a blog is in or out of the directory should be a simple decision. It should not be subjective. (Other elements are subjective, as it is, like who is and who is not an analyst. That’s another conversation.)

What to do? I don’t think that adding more technology to my filtering criteria is the right approach. After all, any kind of page can be turned into an RSS feed, lots of publishing systems allow reader comments, lots of blog templates perform like traditional websites, and lots of analyst blogs don’t accept comments or have feeds that don’t validate.

Over the weekend, I asked Alan Pelz-Sharpe, author of doingITbetter and an analyst at CMS Watch, for his thoughts. He suggested that both purpose and means of publishing could work as criteria. Here’s an excerpt from his email:

“From my perspective a blog is something that is regularly updated and free for open consumption. I guess it is also a little less edited, and (in the spirit of a diary or weblog) more off the cuff - if something requires more thought and examination then this is not the place for it.”

I’m hoping that some analysts and readers will chime in, through trackbacks via the Tekrati weblog. It would be great to get opinions from the likes of Carl Howe, Mike Gotta, Charlene Li or Josh Bernoff, Dale Vile, James Governor, John Blossom, Stowe Boyd, Jen McClure, Jonny Bentwood, and Erik, and of course, more from Alan. And, you.

Thoughts on the redesigned blog directory would be most appreciated, as well. We’re now in position to add more interesting bells and whistles. What appeals to you, and what does not?

The blog directory starts at analystblogs.tekrati.com.*

*Effective 11 February 2011, The Tekrati Analyst Blogs Directory is no longer available.

Reprinted from Tekrati.

Popularity: 2%

Richard Stiennon raises an interesting point in his Threat Chaos post, Finding Cool Companies: should analysts who blog at online media networks — in this case, ZDNet — be given media passes to competitor’s events — in this case, Gartner Symposium?

I don’t think so, but it does raise an amusing question of ethics.

Stiennon, a former Gartner analyst, recently launched an independent research and advisory venture of his own, IT Harvest. However, he blogs at ZDNet, along with analyst blogger buddies like Dana Gardner and Joe McKendrick.

Now, Stiennon’s attempt at getting a Gartner press pass was probably more hijinks than not. But consider this: Lots of analysts blog at various media sites. What happens if analysts take to the habit of introducing themselves as bloggers OR as analysts depending on what’s most convenient, or who they happen to be contacting at an organization, or … ?

As always, I hope you’ll voice your opinion on my opinion at the Tekrati blog.

Popularity: 1%

Auburn University’s Robert French (no relation), with the support of James Farmer, has launched PRblogs.org to bring PR professionals, educators and students together within a blogging community. PR practioners, educators and students can sign up for a free, ad-free, fully hosted blog of their own. For PR pro’s, this is a low risk, no (monetary) cost way to begin experimenting with a blog of your own. It also offers the opportunity to engage with a diverse community of PR bloggers.

The effort quickly earned two thumbs up from the likes of Jeremy Pepper, Neville Hobson, Octavio Rojas, Guillaume du Gardier, Shawn Lea, Scott Kidder, Dale Wolf, Allan Jenkins, and Blake Barbera. What better way to understand blogging than to participate? Sign up for a free blog and get started today.
Source: prblogs.org.

Reprinted from Tekrati

Popularity: 1%