Tomorrow evening I will be speaking at a PR Newswire event about social media. Specifically, the meeting aims to look at a SWOT of this communications platform from a B2B and B2C perspective - looking in depth at:

• what is social media?
• where did it come from?
• why should it be used and what the best tools to use?

Using a full arsenal of case studies (both good and bad) I am hoping to share with you some of the things I have learnt about how marketing professionals can use social media to best effect.

If you would like to come email or sign-up here on the London PR and Branding Facebook page. The event kicks off at 6pm at:

United Business Media,
Ludgate House
9th Floor
Room 15
245 Blackfriars Road
London SE1 9UY

Link to map

Look forward to seeing you there.

Off topic - but allow me this one little indulgence. Roll-on Moscow

Edit: 12 May: updated with 10 additional analysts

After I published the top analyst twitters last week, I am pleased to say there has been a surge of activity amongst the analyst community regarding who twitters and how they use it. I have now updated the table below to take the new players into consideration. Carter has kept his fantastic directory up-to-date and I have used this as a basis for who should be included.

Below this table I have also compiled some of the comments and anecdotes that people have made regarding how they use this tool as part of their job.

	Firm	Analyst
1	Forrester	Jeremiah Owyang	30	15	30	25	100
2	Message	Stowe Boyd	29	15	30	25	99
3	Redmonk	James Governor	27	15	30	25	97
4	Redmonk	Michael Cote	26	15	30	25	96
5	Redmonk	Steve O’Grady	22	15	19	25	81
6	AMR Research	Jonathon Yarmis	21	14	29	16	80
7	Jupiter Research	Michael Gartenberg	22	14	29	15	80
8	The451	Raven Zachary	23	15	19	20	77
9	IDC	Rachel Happe	19	13	18	23	72
10	Forrester	Charlene Li	28	9	18	16	71
11	Aite	Ron Shevlin *	14	15	29	13	70
12	Forrester	Josh Bernoff	24	10	18	18	70
13	Forrester	Peter Kim	25	12	13	18	68
14	Monash Research	Curt Monash	25	14	13	15	67
15	Market IQ	Dan Keldsen	19	14	16	18	66
16	Ovum	David Mitchell	19	10	13	19	61
17	Burton Group	Mike Gotta	16	11	19	14	60
18	Tech~Surf~Blog	Graeme Thickins	16	12	13	19	60
19	Gartner	Thomas Otter	16	13	16	15	60
20	Freeform Dynamics	Jon Collins	15	13	16	14	57
21	Interarbor	Dana Gardner	17	8	14	18	57
22	Gartner	Ray Valdes	19	8	14	13	54
23	Gartner	Jeff Mann	14	9	14	15	52
24	The451	Vishy Venugopalan	14	12	16	10	52
25	Freeform Dynamics	David Tebbutt	16	10	14	10	50
26	Freeform Dynamics	Dale Vile	13	9	16	13	50
27	SiriusDecisions	Jonathan Block	14	8	13	14	49
28	AMR Research	Phil Fersht	15	9	11	9	43
29	Forrester	Event Handle	27	9	0	6	42
30	Accendor	Bruce Stewart	13	9	7	13	42
31	Gartner	Andreas Bitterer	10	7	12	13	41
32	Elemental Links	Brenda Michelson	12	9	11	9	41
33	Clew	David Carpe	11	7	10	13	40
34	Illuminata	Jonathan Eunice	10	7	5	18	39
35	Berlecon Research	PhilippBohn	9	7	7	14	36
36	NPD	Ross Rubin	11	7	2	14	34
37	Forrester	Merv Adrian	9	6	11	6	32
38	Patricia Seybold Group	Patricia Seybold	9	6	5	13	32
39	Hurwitz & Associates	Judith Hurwitz	13	4	8	6	32
40	Gartner	Andrew Frank	9	6	7	8	30
41	MWD	Neil Ward-Dutton	9	6	7	6	28
42	Gartner	Allen Weiner	12	8	4	4	27
43	Hurwitz & Associates	Robin Bloor	10	4	7	5	26
44	Bathwick Group	Gary Barnett	10	7	0	8	25
45	Freeform Dynamics	Martin Atherton	7	2	1	13	22
46	Gartner	Mike McGuire	9	5	2	6	22
47	Jupiter Research	Barry Parr	10	4	4	5	22
48	NPD	Sam Bhavnani	8	5	2	6	22
49	IDC	Frank Gens	9	5	2	4	20
50	Gartner	Gene Phifer	12	5	0	3	20
51	Gartner	David M. Smith	11	2	1	4	17
52	Gartner	Dan Sholler *	4	5	0	8	17
53	Gartner	Yefim Natis	6	3	0	1	10
54	Entiva Group	Alex Fletcher	3	0	0	6	9
55	IDC	IdaRose Sylvester	2	4	1	1	8
56	Quocirca	Dennis Szubert	6	0	2	0	8
57	Butler	Roy Illsley	2	1	1	4	7
58	Illuminata	Gordon Haff	3	3	1	0	7
59	Gartner	Tole Hart	6	0	0	0	6

* Updates protected - average Technobabble score given based upon Follower/Update ratio

Analyst comments:

Jeremiah Owyang:

It’s important for people to know that using Twitter actually helps me with my analysis, I’ve a direct connection with the marketplace that I cover (social computing) and I’m able to find out information at rapid speed, as well as deliver information.

I would guess I have over 100 clients who are on twitter, and we’re building relationships, sharing, and learning about each other.

Peter Kim:

I have to give points to The Guv’nor - a few months ago, I was showing Twitter to a client and he offered his services to them as an alternative.

Rachel Happe:

I’ve found Twitter to be immensely valuable in understanding the state of the conversation in the space I am covering (social media technologies), getting to know people, finding inspiration, getting feedback, and highlighting (occasionally) some of my work.

Sam Bhavnani:

As work life and personal life blend into one, more and more I’m finding twitter to be an effective means of communication. Clients also seem to appreciate being able to reach you easily through whichever connection medium they find easiest at the time, whether its text message, facebook, twitter, phone call, or email.

Dean Bubley:

While I’m absolutely certain of the value of blogging as an analyst, I’m much less convinced by the Twitter proposition. Apart from a few of my clients in the wireless VoIP / Mobile Web 2.0 application area, I’m not aware that most of my contacts (primarily in the mobile industry) use or read microblogging in any form whatsoever. Also, nobody in my social circle has ever mentioned it at all, and I see no reason to play the evangelist.

Patty Seybold:

Count me in–When I noticed that my clients were twittering to the world from our seminars, I wanted in! Now we can thought-provoke one another and keep track… It’s a mini-support network…and having access to the other analysts’ who are out there covering meetings, trade shows, and breaking news, makes it easy to track the pulse!

More comments can be found on SageCircle’s blog on this topic

Analysis

It is not a massive shock that the people who have scored highest are the same as those who use blogging to great affect. Nevertheless, special mention should be given to Jeremiah Owyang, Stowe Boyd and the entire RedMonk crew for showing the world how Twitter can best be used.

Perhaps the biggest shock is that there are only 49 analyst twitters out there. Maybe I have drank too much kool aid but I would be surprised if this number doesn’t increase dramatically over the next year. Perhaps the other change would be that the tool of choice has evolved from Twitter to another media.

Methodology

Followers (0 to 30) – Twitter lists the number of followers each user has. Like subscribing to a feed, this is a clear indication of importance as it requires someone to actively request participation. Follower ranges were determined (i.e. more than 20, more than 30, etc.) and each range was assigned a number (0 to 25) that was used as part of the algorithm.

Updates (0 to 30) – How often does someone update what they are doing. This number is purely objective as it scores someone highly no matter what the content of their post (i.e. how relevant is it). Nevertheless it is assumed that if someone posts frequently but has poor content then their ‘followers’ will decrease. Update ranges were determined (i.e. more than 20, more than 30, etc.) and each range was assigned a number (0 to 25) that was used as part of the algorithm.

Conversation (0 to 40) – How many people engage in conversation with you. The clearest way to establish this is to run a search on the number of people who reference @username in a message. This calculation is based upon a 30 day period between 1 April and 1 May 2008. The number of times this happens is calculated with each range was assigned a number (0 to 25) - again this was then used as part of the algorithm.

Technobabble Points (0 to 20) – As the only personal subjective measure in the algorithm, 0 to 25 opinion points were assigned to each blog. People who scored highest in this category had frequent, relevant and high-quality content (asking questions, posting links or commenting on discussions). Please note that I have not scored people low by not having exclusive analyst-focused content as the very nature of Twitter is to engage in off-topic discussions. I also am fully cognisant that some people use Twitter in different ways (such as posting links, asking questions etc) - this ranking recognises the value of each and scores people accordingly.

Weighting - Each specific variable listed above was given a standard score out of 10. Using a weighting scale I varied the importance of the each metric to establish a blogs total score. For the table listed above the following weightings were used:

This ranking system is not meant to be a score based on someone’s ‘popularity’. I have taken careful consideration of the analysts participation into the community and the corresponding willingness of third parties to engage. As with my other posts, this league table is not an end in itself and I hope to gain valuable feedback to understand how I can make this more valid.

Whilst catching up on several great blogs, I came up across this comment in a post and it has stuck with me.

At the best job interview I ever went to, I asked the guy ‘what are you looking for?’ - he said ‘interesting people, but more than that, interested people.’

The concept of ‘interested’ is something that Russell Davies does a great job of explaining. My interpretation is that being interested is someone who:

• is eager to learn more
• does not accept the status quo
• does not believe in barriers as to what they should be interested about

Writing a blog is a great example of this. I have always had opinions, everyone does. What makes blogging different is that it has forced me to order my thoughts, seek out others opinion, keep an eye and ear open for new ideas and succinctly write them down.

What does this achieve?

Theorists would probably liken this concept to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs stating that what I am really focused on is self-actualisation. Which I guess is what this is really all about. I blog because I enjoy learning more and the feeling I get when I scribe my (previously incoherent) thoughts into a blog post. When this creates dialogue with a community that I respect and value, this feeling is compounded.

I don’t claim to be interesting. That view often depends on an individual having a shared appreciation of something. However, I am interested in many things and that at least makes you interesting.

It came as quite a shock to me to realise that my blog has been going for 1 year. It seems like longer and at times I never believed that I would continue with it but I am pleased that I have.

I know that self-indulgent blog posts are not a recipe for success but please excuse this one attempt (I promise this will be the last one… until next year!)

To make this occasion I would like to share with you my favourite posts - some of which were picked up and became memes of their own:

White paper - distributed influence: quantifying the impact of social media
Top 100 analyst blogs
Social media index
CIO agenda for 2008
Analyst predictions 2008
In praise of open source analysis

I realise that my stats aren’t close to the numbers that many of peers have but I am proud that to-date I have had over 46,000 visits, and 496 comments from 110 posts - this comment figure is the one that pleases me most.

I look forward to whatever the next year brings and am eager to continue the conversations I have been having with all of you.

As a final comment, I would like to thank you - my readers for encouraging me to write what’s on my mind and engage in this wonderful community.

When people cut costs, what industries feel the pressure?

Gartner predict themselves that things are going to be tough in 2008. Mark Raskino explained:

For businesses with global reach, we note that the clouds are gathering rapidly over the UK, US and Japan…

Forrester also share this view. Andrew Bartels echoes Gartner’s comment:

Most technology leaders know where to look for savings in the IT budget: delays in capital investment in equipment; cutbacks in contractors and consultants; cancelling projects with marginal returns on investment; re-negotiation of vendor contracts; and greater use of efficiency tools, such as outsourcing or consolidation. Calculate potential savings and risks, then identify projects or investments that need decisions now.

Often I feel that we are talking ourselves into a recession - however, there can be little doubt that uncertainty is one of the chief catalysts for a downturn in the economy. Companies around the world may not be cutting costs but they may be more cautious before spending any money.

In this time of greater diligence, I wonder whether analysts weather this storm. One view could be that seeking advice on procurement is the best way top cut costs. Ovum for example set a target of saving their software clients $1bn in procurement costs this year.

But what about the many analysts whose income is largely derived from vendors who use them for intelligence gathering. Will these firms do as well?

I am not so sure.

There is a view that IBM keep the analyst market alive. I do not believe for an instant that their investment in boutique analyst houses affects the output from them. I have discussed and praised the patronage model and believe that the world needs more than a few global analyst firms who are often more agile and can get to the heart of a matter far quicker than their counterparts.

Nevertheless as I write this I am interested to know which companies will be around in a year. Mergers and acquisitions aside I am concerned about the level of investment that the smaller analyst firms will receive whilst this ‘dip’ lasts.

Perhaps the real litmus test will be to evaluate how Gartner fair - which will be revealed when they share they financial results for Q1 2008.  The call and webcast are scheduled to begin at 10:00 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday, May 8, 2008. Listeners can access the webcast live on the Internet. A replay of the webcast will be available for approximately 90 days following the call.

Of course, there is a personal side to this too. What about the people who service the AR industry. AR professionals need to ensure that we continue to bring value to our clients and adapt in troubling economic climates and focus our clients limited time and resources on activities that will have the biggest impact - no matter which firm that may be with.

 
I have noticed a trend over the past year in that there has been a steady rise in micro-blogging (using Twitter) from the analyst community. James Governor explained the difference between a blog and a twitter as:

twitter is better as a hearing aid than a megaphone. better for putting feelers out than shouting into the void. conversation

As you may know, I am a great believer in lists - the main purpose of this is that I want to spend my time and my clients resources with the people who have the greatest influence. In an ideal world I would be able to reach out to everyone in a 1-2-1 environment but unfortunately this is not the case so working out which analysts focuses on what and who listens to what they say is important.

This isn’t a popularity contest but more a way of prioritising. It is now agreed that if you want to engage with analysts, the best way of doing so is in a format that they like.

Similar to the list of top analyst blogs, I am currently compiling a list of top analyst micro-bloggers. At this stage I have just finished the methodology and would welcome feedback both on this and whether any analysts not listed on SageCircle’s excellent directory should be included.

Methodology

Followers (0 to 25) – Twitter lists the number of followers each user has. Like subscribing to a feed, this is a clear indication of importance as it requires someone to actively request participation. Follower ranges were determined (i.e. more than 20, more than 30, etc.) and each range was assigned a number (0 to 25) that was used as part of the algorithm.

Updates (0 to 25) – How often does someone update what they are doing. This number is purely objective as it scores someone highly no matter what the content of their post (i.e. how relevant is it). Nevertheless it is assumed that if someone posts frequently but has poor content then their ‘followers’ will decrease. Update ranges were determined (i.e. more than 20, more than 30, etc.) and each range was assigned a number (0 to 25) that was used as part of the algorithm.

Conversation (0 to 25) – How many people engage in conversation with you. The clearest way to establish this is to run a search on the number of people who reference @username in a message. The number of times this happens is calculated with each range was assigned a number (0 to 25) - again this was then used as part of the algorithm.

Technobabble Points (0 to 25) – As the only personal subjective measure in the algorithm, 0 to 25 opinion points were assigned to each blog. People who scored highest in this category had frequent, relevant and high-quality content.

Weighting - Each specific variable listed above was given a standard score out of 10. Using a weighting scale I varied the importance of the each metric to establish a blogs total score. For the table listed above the following weightings were used:  

Followers	30%
Updates	20%
Conversation	30%
Technobabble	20%

I welcome your feedback on this and aim to publish the results shortly.

Just stumbled on a new blog (Helzerman) to add to my reading list - thanks for pointing me to this great problem solver…

Source: Graphjam

I often tell the story in my AR training sessions that the best briefing I have ever had was with a client that had (in his own words) ‘a rubbish legacy product’. I had the joyous task of taking him on an analyst tour round several of the top analyst houses - the end result of this was incredible… the analysts loved him and what he had to say.

There was no dark art magic involved here but simply that my spokesperson followed all the golden rules in how to engage with an analyst in a briefing. After Jeremiah pointed me to the picture above I thought I would share with you my top 10 tips on the art of an interesting briefing (also known as how to avoid making an analyst fall asleep).

My thanks to Nathan Gilliatt, Jon Collins, Jonathan Yarmis, Phil Fersht, Dale Vile and Michael Coté for their contributions to this via Twitter.

1. Enthusiasm - no matter how tired you are, how many times you have done the same spiel, or whether you plainly don’t agree with what you have to say… be enthusiastic. It’s contagious - if you are enthusiastic, the analysts will pick up on this and be enthused too. If you are not, it is obvious and don’t be surprised if the analysts starts replying to emails in your briefing.
2. Keep it short - even if you have been allotted a full hour for your briefing - don’t use all this time unless you need to. If you can cover what you want to say in 30 minutes then don’t feel you have to use the full 60.
3. Know your analyst - make sure what you have to say is relevant. Pitch your meeting at the right level in terms of their existing knowledge (don’t give them a 101 lecture on the industry they cover) and their current research agenda. In other words, if the analyst wants to talk about widgets don’t talk about grommets! Do a bit of research - understand what they have recently written about (refer to it and flatter their ego), what interests them and whether they are techies or not. One of the dark art tricks is to mirror their mannerisms (if they use white boards and diagrams frequently to illustrate their thinking - so do you).
4. Set an agenda - make sure everyone knows what you intend to talk about. This will enable the analyst to be prepared for the briefing and stop you going off topic.
5. Numbers and NDA - analysts love using numbers - in fact they welcome with open arms any data points that give credibility to a claim. Too many times they hear the common statement that these details can’t be given. As a vendor challenge this assumption and give whatever numbers you can to back-up your key points even if it is under NDA. However, on the other side Dale Vile complains when vendors and agencies try and trick analysts to get the numbers up - “don’t big-up a briefing”.
6. Conversation not a lecture - briefings are meant to be a two-way dialogue. I always say that you have two ears and one mouth and they should be used in that proportion. I have managed to gain some incredible bits of intelligence by listening to the analyst and asking pertinent questions - use this time wisely. Analysts understand that you have a point to get across but they would prefer not to be lectured to. Phil twits this nicely and explains that he gets extremely annoyed at vendors who read off a script and don’t bother to to a round of introductions.
7. Good use of PowerPoint - really this should state ‘avoid PowerPoint’. Too often vendors replace what they are going to say with a ppt deck. This has killed the art of a briefing as conversations are not linear like PowerPoints but ebb and flow depending on how the dialogue goes. Vendors should be aware of this and only use slides to back up a point and not to replace what you have to say. By all means, have a deck that you can give to the analyst so they don’t have to make copious notes but do not spend one hour going through 80 slides. Robin Bloor has a good post on the use of ppt and how to make them effective.
8. Roles and Responsibilities - usually there are two people in each briefing (one to speak and one to make notes). However, in order to make the briefing as good as possible I recommend that the people in the meeting have several roles. These include the message giver (who explains the key points); the story teller (who provides anecdotes which are far easier to remember); the inquisitor (who asks questions); the geek (not always necessary but can explain the bits and bytes) and finally the note taker (who captures all the nuggets of information - from intelligence, questions asked to follow-up points). Obviously this may require some homework (having the anecdotes and questions handy) but the results will be worth it.
9. Follow-up - often vendors feel they need to answer every question. However, sometimes there simply isn’t enough time or they don’t know the answer. In this case, follow-up - I am always looking for an excuse to continue the dialogue and follow-ups are a great way of doing this.
10. Disagreements - quite often the analyst will have a  contrary view to the vendor. If this is the case do not get into a heated argument. Instead respond using facts, figures and anecdotes to explain your point of view. If this doesn’t work, it may rarely be OK to escalate the issue but often it is best purely to agree to disagree.

For other pointers I would recommend reading:

• James Governor - suggests changing the format of a briefing.
• Robin Bloor on the analyst briefing (looking at the timing of this post, it appears we were both writing on this topic at the same time). Wonder if my tweet was the catalyst?

Get voting - your favourite analyst needs you.

This survey is open to anyone in analyst relations - in any country either in-house or at an agency.

The preliminary results are in which have already shown a few surprises - not least the traditional Tier 1 firms are facing tough opposition from the boutique analyst companies.

Get voting now and tell your colleagues.

The IIAR will publish all the results shortly.

Edit - I would like to point out one of the conditions for taking part in the survey as I have had to discard some of the results:

Only entries coming from ICT vendors and agencies with a valid email address will be taken into consideration. This helps ensure that all voting is legitimate. Anonymous votes or votes coming from analyst firms will be discarded.