Fishing where the fish are is something that bears have known for years but many folk who use Twitter seem to have forgotten. We cannot simply think our message will be heard by tweeting ourselves which is why we try and target influential people via tools like TweetLevel and BlogLevel.

However, this isn’t the only way of doing it. What I have been doing successfully over the past year is taking part in twitter chats. These are regular conversations that take place about a specific subject on twitter normally for an hour and owned by a specific hashtag.

For example,

· if you are targeting the SME market then look no further than #smallbizchat

· If you are focussing on innovation then #Innochat on Thursdays is the one for you

· Are you a small business that uses LinkedIn (client) – why not use the chat that shares best ways for businesses to use this service on #linkedinchat

My personal favourites are #influencechat and #measurepr – but suggest you look at this larger list to see which ones can help you

Any questions, just chat with me @jonnybentwood

End note: My thanks to Judy Gombita for pointing this list out to me who also wants me to plug Windmill Networking #PR column Wed, Social Capital Byte: Institutionalizing Parity in B2B Relationships

To attend this BrightTalk conference click here

Date: February 9 at 4pm UK, 11am EST

This is the sermon to commiserate the death of the influencer. This expert and all-encompassing figure who would magically solve marketers problems by regurgitating a tweet, a blog post or by liking a Facebook page. This magus who cared little for context, community or conversation but whose narcissism for their own popularity made them believe their power of their own word.

But on this sad day, we welcome a newcomer to our fold. This person, this new influential – who understands the way knowledge flows can finally be identified and engaged with in a way that is appropriate to their behavioural characteristics. RIP the social media influencer and long live the new influential.

T’is the season to be jolly and take part in a quiz or two. These jokes come from the very best of the crackers – we tried this in the office and it didn’t take long for the groans and guffaws to filter their way back to my desk. How long will it take you to get all 15 answers…

1. Why was the AA man crying? He was heading for a B______
2. I tried ringing the Swine Flu Helpline, but all I got was C_____
3. What’s the difference between snowmen and snow-women? S______
4. What’s the quickest way to kill a circus troupe? Go for the J______
5. As Sean Connery said when some books fell on his head, “I’ve only __ ______ to blame”
6. The scarecrow was awarded the OBE for being O_______ in his F_____
7. Who is the coolest guy in the hospital? The U___-S____ guy…
8. …and when he’s on holiday? The H____ R________ guy
9. Statistically most dwarves are sad, __ out of ___ aren’t _______
10. Where do you find a tortoise with no legs? ______ you  ______ ____
11. A termite walks into a pub and asks: “Is the B__ T______ here?”
12. How does Bob Marley like his doughnuts? W’_____ _____…
13. …and what about the Wailers? Well, they ____ ______ ___
14. Why did Santa call the Mind Helpline? Because he was worried about his M_____ E____
15. I bought a litre and a half of Tippex yesterday – _____ _________

Obviously not meant to be taken seriously – hope you like.

For previous puns directed at the analyst community – see: Downfall: Gartner MQ, view on YouTube

This 10 minute podcast explores these questions…

1. What would you define as leadership in today’s enterprise market
2. Which companies are leaders in the enterprise market today
3. How would you classify SAP’s leadership position
4. Do you feel the cloud driven vendors are going to make the traditional on premise guys redundant?
5. Between SAP, HP, Autonomy etc., who has the right answer to the big data questions? Who can deliver the insights?
6. What are your predictions for Constellation Group?
7. Any advice to enterprises listening to this podcast?

Listen to podcast with Ray Wang here

I hope you enjoy.

In summary, a brand must first create awareness, followed by someone achieving association with the concept and only then can resonance be achieved.

This approach works exceptionally well when complemented by what we have been developing at the company for some time through the Topology of Influence.

Whereas the Tuck approach is bottom up, the topology methodology relies on targeting the smallest group first. The raison d’être behind this is that in order for a message to truly flow throughout the web/world then the most effective method is to engage firstly with the idea starters. Of course the approach should not be limited to this group but we should also actively target selected amplifiers and curators too.

We are currently at a tipping point whereby sociology and technology are colliding enabling us to identify and engage with different kinds of influential people according to their behavioural characteristics.

It drives me mad how some brands are pushing the same marketing message at every ‘influencer’. My view is that we should adapt the strategy dependent upon the kind role that someone has in the topology.

For example, for idea starters you should have an argument. This kind of person does not want to be spammed with content but enjoy the rigour of a discussion that promotes or debates their theory. I tested this out personally by seeing if I could engage with someone whose time is in high demand. Instead of requesting a meeting, I sent them an email that referred to a premise they had championed and disagreed with it via a structured argument. The result – I was invited to meet with this ‘idea starter’ in person.

Conversely, this approach would be less successful with amplifiers. To engage with with this group, who do not have the time to get into deep discussion as they have numerous deadlines to manage to feed their high volume audiences, you need to send them pre-packaged content. This shouldn’t be a shock as it was the premise behind a press release. Of course there are other rules to apply (such as relevance, already having a relationship with the amplifier and appropriateness of delivered content).

There is a perfectly valid reason why we need to understand influence. Brands and marketers have limited time and money so we must engage with the people that count in the right manner. Only of we do this can we hope to have our message spread.

The process is pretty simply, I have several columns setup on topics ranging from #influencechat, #ARchat to #measurepr. After a while, i recognise that there are some people whose tweets are interesting that I would like to keep track of regardless.

However, and this is where the twitterquette bit comes in, after I follow them, I frequently get a DM from them. At first i thought it was quite a nice thing to do but now I can’t stand it.

More often than not, they direct me to a link asking me to ACT. I have only just followed you – surely we haven’t built up the relationship for me to start clicking on the links you send me. Other times, its a tweet (un)sincerely thanking me for following them. Should I be flattered that they have setup tweetlater as a way of being sincere with there new followers. In my case, no. Auto-DMs should be first against the wall when the revolution comes (followed by real estate agents and bankers).

The simple rule, which everyone inherently knows is engagement. Why is this forgotten so much? A DM is more intrusive than an @reply so please limit your usage of it to when it is right.

Rant over. You may now eat (but use the cutlery from the outside in).

Image courtesy of nickmack.net

Constellation are now celebrating their first birthday and what a year it has been.

If this was a briefing, I would demand facts and figures to back up this bold statement – and boy, do these chaps have it in trumps.

• 100 buy-side and sell-side clients around the globe
• 31 team members including 13 research analysts and futurists, 5 sales professionals, 6 professional staff, and 7 industry recognized board of advisors
• 735 Open Research insightful blog posts, 25 premium research reports, 15 webinars
• A website receiving 2.4 million page views per year. Q4 page views per day have averaged above 10,000.
• Recognition by the Institute of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR) as the New Analyst Firm of the Year in 2011.
• Creation of the Constellation Supernova Awards – the industry’s first and largest recognition of innovators, pioneers, and teams who apply emerging and disruptive technology to drive business value
• Production of Constellation Connected Enterprise – an innovation summit and best practices knowledge sharing retreat for business leaders with 102 attendees and 25 sponsors

Its not all been a bed or roses. Some people have come and gone as they didn’t align with the core values and meant that not all employees were working in the same direction. This isn’t too surprising in itself as I know from personal experience that growth relies predominantly by the people you hire. After all there is only so much that Ray can do by himself. I am not naive as I know that Ray has fought hard to not create a galacticos experience where the superstar analysts meant that the larger team as a whole couldn’t deliver, nevertheless – he is, and will continue to be the rain maker and champion evangelist of the firm.

As far as the next year goes, it would be interesting to see how sustainable the research model is. With purse strings beginning to tighten, we will be entering a sustained phase within the analyst industry of longer sales cycles for IT procurement which will inevitably lead to cost cutting of conditional budget. Will Ray’s team adapt to the times – their new adoption of ‘Research as a Service’ – providing access to information on demand and bite sized research seats makes it certainly appear that way.

Images courtesy of Google image search – the proverb is mine, the pictures aren’t