Social Networking Archives - Page 3 of 6

Biz Idea: Social Media Market Research App

Want to see a list of links that will boggle your eyes? Last week, I listed a number of online services that could be used to perform market research. After seeing that list, I wondered:

How about a single online app that helps you do all of that? A social media market research app. Here’s what I think such an app could offer.

The Dashboard

It could have a dashboard that provides a snapshot of your market, ideally updated in real-time. There could be search results from the blogosphere, forums, Facebook (Groups and Fan Pages), LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Yahoo! Answers (YHOO), and other social media sites. Perhaps this information could be displayed through different filters:

By relevance
By publication date as a stream of news
By publication date on a timeline
By type of source
By source
By discussion in a threaded format
By tag (more on this later)
etc.

Features

My previous post listed a number of services that searched social media sites, allowed you to post questions, displayed search trends, and offered a wealth of company information. I’ll discuss those features first.

Keyword-Based Search Results of Social Media Sites

All of this information could be obtained through APIs and RSS feeds, some from the sources directly, some from the search services I listed. There would have to be some research done to see how real-time updates could be handled, however. Push or pull? Do they ping us or do we have to constantly ping them?

Asking Questions and Retrieving Answers

A mechanism to post questions & messages on forums, mailing lists, and answer boards could be really helpful. It should also harvest any subsequent answers & replies. This would be a tricky technical problem to solve though. Automatically posting on forums and mailing lists could be seen as spam.

Displaying Trend Data

The trend data could be presented in a timeline similar to Google Trends (GOOG) and Dipity, with items such as news articles, company events, and social media posts aligned with it. There could also be filtering options to control what is displayed. I don’t believe any of the trend tracking services offers APIs, however, so this may require a custom technical solution.

Displaying Rich Company Information

Every time a company is mentioned, it could link to a detailed company page that fetches financial & stock data from Yahoo! Finance and places it alongside rich information from sites like LinkedIn, Jigsaw, Crunchbase, etc. In the case of the paid service Jigsaw, they won’t have any APIs. But perhaps a partnership could be brokered.

Additional Features

In addition to the four features above, there are other cool things this app could do. A neat feature could be a Google (GOOG) map with real-time updates, a la DailyBooth or HashParty’s reach map. Each time a new piece of content is published, it could appear right away.

Another could be related keywords, similar to those seen on search engine results pages. I wonder if any search engines offer up related keywords in their web services.

This could also be a really useful feature: How about the ability to tag, rank, and annotate any piece of content the app finds? This is how you could maintain order when deluged with content. Filtering options could include tagged items as well, like displaying only the events tagged with “positive news” or “negative news” on the timeline. Ranking a piece of content could be a way to prioritize its visibility and/or subjective relevance to your research. Perhaps items could be flagged so customer service or public relations representatives can respond right away. And it’s always helpful to take notes against important pieces of content.

Challenges

The technical challenges are tricky. They are not impossible, but it would take a sharp technical team to think through these issues, such as:

How do we fetch the appropriate data reliably and quickly?
How do we deal with content that requires authentication?
How do we post on mailing lists and forums without triggering spam filters?
How do we get, display, and/or build trend data?
How do we attach metadata to each piece of content we’ve fetched?
How do we display the updates in real-time?
How do we design an easy-to-use user interface that allows non-technical business owners to use this app?
etc.

I’m sure there are a lot of social media consultancies that offer market research services. But as competitors, service firms rarely hold up to self-service packages. In such situations, self service firms tend to focus on the high-end of a market and offer highly specialized & customized services at premium prices. Going for low-end customers puts their profit margins at risk. Meanwhile, self-service packages like this app can afford to focus on the low-end as a cost-effective solution for them, while still maintaining fair profit margins. And who knows, maybe social media consultancies could become customers of this app.

There might even be such an app in existence already, though I haven’t heard of one. If you have, please let me know.

What do you think?

Photo by: curiouslee

Do Your Homework Whenever Meeting Someone New

Admit it, you’ve Googled someone before. Maybe it was someone you were dating. Maybe it was someone you had a crush on.

But how about when you have a sales meeting and are about to meet a new prospective client?

If you are an experienced salesperson, I’m probably preaching to the choir. For those like me who are in the consulting & services business and relatively new to the sales role, I have this to say:

Do your homework whenever you meet someone new.

This applies all around the sales cycle. From following up on leads to meeting other stakeholders to getting their team introduced with yours. Throughout this process, you are likely to meet several different people (or one person fulfilling all of these roles):

Primary stakeholder – the person with the budget
Influencers – other stakeholders who have a say in this decision
Project manager – the person who coordinates the work between your client and your team, also often the main point of contact
Workers – employees from your client’s team with whom your team will have to interact

Do your homework on each of them. For a service organization, all the members of your client’s team are important and critical to your success.

Why?

The goal isn’t to stalk the person. It’s to find meaningful connections. If the person likes the San Francisco Giants, and hey, so do you, then bring it up. If you’re not a fan, then keep your mouth shut. Don’t be insincere with these connections. Use them only if they honestly exist. Otherwise, you might find yourself in a TV sitcom where you’re trying to lie and squirm your way out of a totally alien discussion. And all without a laugh track.

If there are no connections, consider identifying a key achievement that person has made and offering congratulations. Perhaps the person started a company that launched a successful product in the past. Perhaps the person wrote a book or article you’ve read. Again, don’t be overtly insincere, though a little flattery can get you a long way.

It also helps to understand the person’s background. If he/she comes from a technical background, then you can tailor your sales pitch to a more technical audience. If he/she comes from a marketing background, then emphasize potential branding and identity benefits. Use key terminology from their background.

So far, I haven’t had a case where a person has been offended or frightened by this research. In fact, many seem to be flattered by it, even expect it. Some don’t care though; they’re more interested in the deal and how it can help them.

All of this assumes you’ve already done your homework with the company, their department, and their needs. Don’t even bother researching the people if you haven’t researched their business.

Ultimately, you want to form a connection with these stakeholders. If they feel they can relate to you on a personal level, and they feel you can sincerely understand them on a professional & personal level, then they are more likely to sign a contract with you.

How?

Here’s what I do:

Google (GOOG) – I start with a good, old-fashioned Google search. This usually gives me most of the information I need, such as links to a blog, Twitter account, resume, etc.

I always start with the blog, if one exists. This gives me a good overview of the person and his/her personality & interests. Does the person have a sarcastic sense of humor? A dry wit? Does the person have any hobbies or interests with which I can relate? Has this person done anything notable that I want to call out?
LinkedIn.com – If the previous search doesn’t turn up a LinkedIn profile, then I perform one specifically on this site. Most people in my industry have a LinkedIn account.

This gives me an overview of the person’s education and career path, which tells me the language he/she speaks (technical, marketing, design, financial, etc) and how I should tailor my sales pitch.
Others – I know some salespeople go further and check out Facebook, MySpace, and other similar sources. Personally, I don’t. If you aren’t a member of that person’s Facebook network, then you won’t be able to see deeper details. Also, the interests and photos included on Facebook don’t help as much as a blog or personal website. It’s tough to form a connection on a favorite TV show, especially if you don’t know how much they like it, or if their profile has been updated recently. My experience, anyways; some still do this research all the time. And practically no one in my industry uses MySpace (that I know of).

Once you have this information, share it with your team. Help them to understand the client better. This can strengthen the relationship on both sides.

There will be a few cases where such web research doesn’t help because the person keeps a private offline life. That’s fine. That’s where you’ll need to muster up your interpersonal skills and form a connection the old fashioned way. These tips just offer an extra advantage. If the information is out there, why not use it, right?

Photo by: fazen

How to Use Social Media for Market Research

Pssst, wanna hear a secret? You can conduct free market research using online social media tools. I don’t know about you, but free is my favorite price.

You may already know that you can tap into a plethora of statistics from the US government (e.g. census data, economic statistics, etc). There are also a ton of articles from Entrepreneur Magazine, INC. Magazine, and About.com. Not to mention all the great books out there.

But for immediate, real-time commentary, criticisms, and opinions from your customers (potential, current, and previous), social media is the key. Here are some tools to help you.

Search

These tools take a keyword and offer detailed search results sourced from social media sites. All of them are constantly tweaking their algorithms and pool of sources, so their result sets vary quite a bit. Most, but not all, provide RSS feeds of their results too.

The benefit here is monitoring mentions of your brand, products, and/or services. Though you will have to wade through a lot of noise, occasionally, you can find useful suggestions or criticisms. These tools even allow you to engage with potential, current and former customers, which can add to the personability of your business.

I differentiate the blogosphere from social media in my descriptions below. The blogosphere is the collection of blogs on the Internet. Social media sites are social/community-oriented sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, etc. For each, I’ve used the Amazon Kindle (AMZN) as an example topic.

FriendFeed – searches through whatever social media sources its members have added.
Technorati – searches through the blogosphere, but not other social media.
Google Blog Search – also searches through the blogosphere.
BlogPulse – also searches through the blogosphere.
Twitter Search – provides results only from Twitter.
OneRiot – searches just the URLs shared on Twitter.
Dipity – searches through social media sites and displays the results against a timeline.
Kosmix – creates a customized SERP (Search Engine Results Page) for each keyword with results from blogs and social media sites, including notes from human editors.
Addict-o-matic – also creates customized SERPs from social media sites.
Social Mention – searches through social media sites and includes statistics of the keyword: strength, sentiment, passion & reach.
Scour – searches through social media sites and includes the result’s ranking on various search engines.
Samepoint – searches through social media sites and includes how negative or positive that source is on the topic.
Whos Talkin – searches through the blogosphere and social media sites.
BoardTracker – searches through popular forums
Omgili – searches for discussions of your keyword on popular forums, mailing lists, answer boards, blogs, and even reviews on ecommerce sites.
BackType – searches for discussions of your keyword on blogs and social media sites.
Talk Digger – searches for discussions of your keyword on blogs.
HowSociable – provides a visibility score ranking based on the number of keyword mentions on various social media sites.
Google Alerts – sends an email each time a new page based on your keyword is indexed.

Ask

In contrast to searching for existing discussions and opinions, you can also ask specific questions. There are a variety of methods with a wide range of pros and cons. Some of these offer you an automatic community, while others require you to cultivate a community first. Some of these allow you to aim for a targeted community, while others are open to a mass audience. All have inherent biases based on the types of people who use their services. Fortunately, all of these methods are usually cheaper than putting together a focus group.

Be careful not to come across too commercial or promotional whenever talking to the public. People tend not to respond well to someone they perceive as a spammer. Craft your questions carefully. If you are in doubt, start by asking how people solve the particular problem your business is trying to address. They may cite your product, your competitors’ products, or other indirect competitors, all of which could provide interesting insights.

Yahoo! Answers (YHOO) – questions are categorized and social incentives are offered to encourage people to provide answers.
Aardvark – uses your extended social network to answer your questions, which may or may not be your target audience.
Forums – there are forums for almost every topic and industry out there; look for a few popular & active forums aimed at your target market and post your questions there.
Yahoo! Groups – look for a few popular & active groups aimed at your target market and post your questions there.
Google Groups – look for a few popular & active groups aimed at your target market and post your questions there.
Blog – start a blog and ask your questions there, though without cultivating a meaningful following, replies may not be forthcoming.
Twitter – create an account and ask your questions there, though without cultivating a meaningful following, replies may not be forthcoming.
Facebook – start a group or fan page for your business and ask your questions there, though without cultivating a meaningful membership, replies may not be forthcoming.
Hunch – this is a different kind of question & answer service that does not allow outright commercialism or product promotion, though you can ask general questions about your product category or industry; just be careful not to come off as a spammer.

Trends

Want to monitor how popular or unpopular a particular topic has been over a range of time? These tools generally return search result volumes on nice time-based line graphs. Many also allow you to drill down to the individual search result, news article, blog post, or tweet that mentioned your keyword.

The value here is in detecting a growing trend and riding the wave. If you’re trying to start a trend, this can be a good way to monitor its progress. If you’re looking for new product lines or services, this can help you identify new opportunities.

For each, I’ve used the Amazon Kindle as an example topic.

Google Trends – displays the keyword search volume and news articles over time, including search volume within geographic regions, cities, and languages.
bing xRank – displays the keyword search volume over time, including related keyword phrases, news, videos, and images.
Trendrr – searches through a range of social media sites and displays the keyword search volume on each over time.
BlogPulse – searches through the blogosphere and displays uses of the keyword over time.
Trendpedia – searches through the blogosphere and displays uses of the keyword over time.
Hashtags – searches through Twitter’s hashtags and displays uses of the hashtag (if it exists) over time.

Competitive Research

Once you’ve got a list of competitor companies, it is possible to research on them. You can find out a ton of information, including who works there, what kind of roles they’re hiring, and opinions on the company from former employees, current employees, industry analysts, and outsiders.

This kind of information can help you estimate the direction and next steps of your competitor, though it doesn’t offer a view of how customers perceive them. For that kind of info, use the search tools listed above. You can also check up on your own business, of course.

For each, I’ve used Amazon as an example company.

LinkedIn – provides employee listings (current, former, & new), related companies (acquisitions & subsidiaries), general company information (location of employees, number of employees, stock charts, etc), employee demographics (recent promotions, common job titles, common career paths, top universities, median age, gender percentages, etc), and job listings.
Jigsaw – provides employee listings (name, position, contact information, etc) and employee statistics (number of employees in different divisions & positions).
CrunchBase – provides general company information (using wiki software), key employee profiles (current & former), company acquisitions (acquired company, date, & amount if known), company investments (company invested in & date), dates of significant company events, traffic analysis of company website, and list of news articles from TechCrunch, Techmeme, and other sources.
ChubbyBrain – provides ratings & reviews of companies made by members of this site, key competitors, mergers & acquisitions, funding rounds (investor, date, & funding raised), and ratings & reviews of investors by members of this site (portfolio breakdown & companies funded).
Glassdoor – provides ratings & reviews of companies made by members of this site, salary information based on job titles, information about interviews with various companies, and job listings.

Do you know of other good tools for social media market research?

Photo by: curiouslee

Checking Your Twitter Reputation

Have you checked your Twitter reputation lately?

A reputation is an ephemeral thing based on the collective opinion of others. But nevertheless, enterprising individuals have built a variety of tools to compute your Twitter reputation. If anything, it’s a fun way to evaluate your tweets.

TwInfluence: This tool measures the “combined influence of twitterers and their followers, with a few social network statistics thrown in as bonus.” That means the influence of your followers’ followers (your second-order followers) are also factored. TwInfluence is perhaps the most academic and thorough reputation measurement tool currently available. As of this post, my rank (and reach) is 43,527 (81%), my velocity is 4,499 second-order followers/day, my social capital is 6,585.3 +2.2 Very High, and my centralization is 13.20% / 0.0 Average – Resilient.
Twitter Grader: This tool aims to measure the “power, reach and authority of a twitter account” by using a proprietary algorithm that considers factors such as number of followers, power of followers, updates, update recency, follower/following ratio, and engagement. As of this post, my grade is 93 out of 100.
Twitalyzer: This tool analyzes the last seven days of Twitter usage and provides a measurement of impact, engagement, generosity, velocity, clout, and influence. As of this post, my rankings are – impact: 0.3%, engagement: 25.0%, generosity: 100%, velocity: 1.3%, clout: 0.3%, and influence: 0.2%.
Klout: This tool uses “semantic analysis to determine what a person talks about and then measures how influential they are on that topic.” As of this post, my score is 15 out of 100. According to Klout, I am a casual user and “don’t take this Twitter stuff too seriously.” Heh, true.
Twitterholic: This tool scans Twitter’s public timeline “for new twits to tweet. A few times a day, we calculate individual statistics for each twittering twit in our database,” whatever that means. As of this post, my rank is 158,477.
Twanalyst: This tool is a tongue-in-cheek tool that analyzes a profile’s last 100 tweets for readability and types of tweets. As of this post, my Twitter personality is popular, inquisitive, & cautious, with a chatty & coherent style. I am a parrot. (Interesting; I used to be a writer.)

What’s your current Twitter reputation?

How to Find a Designer or Developer Co-Founder Online

Are you an aspiring entrepreneur? Have a great Internet or technology business idea? Lack the ability to come up with a great UI design? Need a way to build out your idea? Sounds like you may need a designer or developer co-founder.

So how can you find one? Your own network is the best source. So are the social networks of your social network. But if you’ve already exhausted those avenues and don’t mind a cold connection (where you are connecting with a stranger), here are some other sources:

This is perhaps a no-brainer nowadays. Here’s a success story: the founders of MyBlogLog met through LinkedIn before they were purchased by Yahoo! (YHOO) for $10 million. Not bad, eh?

Build It With Me

This new service aims to connect designers, developers, and entrepreneurs interested in building an application of some kind, be it web, Windows desktop, Mac desktop, iPhone, Android, or some other mobile platform. It is the brainchild of Drew Wilson and despite being only a little more than a week old, is already sporting a fair number of designer and developer listings.

ProgrammerMeetDesigner

I hesitated on listing this site. It also aims to link up designers, developers, writers, and entrepreneurs, offering an option to work together in a long-term partnership. However, most of the listings cater towards freelance jobs as opposed to founder opportunities. It’s a potential source to check out, though I’m not confident it would be a good source for co-founders right now.

UPDATED 1/21/2010: Just added this one to the list.

Founder Dating

This is an event-based service that pairs up entrepreneurs interested in meeting co-founders. So far, they hold sessions in San Francisco, CA and Seattle, WA, but I’m sure they’ll do more as their service grows. According to their FAQ, they aim for a diverse mix of backgrounds & experience. Since it’s generally more effective to meet with partners in person, this sounds like a great idea.

Do you know of any other good online sources for co-founders?