Working in the CPG industry for many years (9.5 to be exact), it was beat into me by the marketing function that they were the keepers of the brand and voice of our consumer. Sitting at the "country club" in R&D, I was told time and time again how important this function was to the success of our organization. And back in the late 90's early 00's, they were right. They would do their focus groups, run their in home use tests and simulated test markets so Bases could tell us how big of an idea it was. That database had years of benchmarking to accurately tell us what it took to be successful. And if we didn't spend enough on the "marketing" budget the model told us we should, it wouldn't succeed.
In addition, I had the pleasure of sitting in dark rooms with bowl after bowl of M&M's listening to a moderator talk to 24 consumers so we could leverage their expertise in neutrally discussing new ideas in a systematic format with a group of 6 strangers who weren't influencing each other. And then we would sit together and discuss what we learned getting a report that was the letter of the law. I remember distinctly one time sulking in a corner as I listened to this very key discussion around a new idea and why it was a bad one. In fact, I was labelled as sour grapes for sort of calling bullshit on the whole ordeal.(I didn't get to go for a while).
But my favorite memory of my interactions with CPG marketing came in 2006 when we started looking into a new idea of using social media data to explore sustainability trends. In that study there was a trailing insight about water. It just kept popping up again and again. It seemed that water was becoming an important topic even though it wasn't being discussed. When presented with this idea, green was green and it wasn't blue because the demographic didn't care about that. We know our consumers and that is not what they care about. They fit into this group who is 14% of our main focus target and if they are not part of these two groups...blah blah blah blah blah (bring sing songy blah blahs to bear here).
You know what happened 18 months later...blue was the new green. It was as if this large community of people might have the right idea about things. They might be exhibiting coffee talk behavior amongst themselves with (no big whoop), and there might be something to it. But the internet is only run by young people and it will never be a viable means of doing things.
Does this picture sound familiar? My question is this...how many of you have sat on the other end of a crisis that started on the web and not in the news? Is that happening to you more often? Are the issues going more viral? Have you witnessed a blunder on the market by a company and are you thinking to yourself that thank god that wasn't me and my brand?
My more important question is do you have a plan if it is you? Do you have the methods to handle that particular situation or isn't it a concern for your company because you know the demographic you focus on? The reality is this. As consumers the influence general traffic has on our lives is increasing and while we go to work each day to follow the corporate mantra and color between the lines we are told by leadership, as consumers we need clearly think for ourselves. We are influenced by our peers, by our friends and most importantly by strangers who are talking. When you feel something do you find data that sounds the same and go holy shit I have that? Well, this voice is getting louder and it is getting more powerful.
The problem for most marketers I believe is that think the ghost from family circus NOT ME is going to be around when you need him during a corporate crisis is folly we can't afford to believe in. All your methods, while clearly still important, are becoming more outdated by the second. And as the voice of the customer gets louder on the web, the less control you have in your brand.
Do you have control in your brand? Do you think that by simply pushing marketing content virtually you have control of the message? Facebook likes is a measure of success? Do you even know what a like actually means? How much are they actually spreading the word versus clicking the like button? Do you think that because you talk to a specific consumer target via voice of the customer methods that you are safe for the GIANT voice swelling within the virtual world? Guess what you are not safe anymore and if you are only pushing content to a group you want to reach because they are on a mommy blog, think again.
Back in the day, I once remember doing research on disinfecting wipes (my clorox history) and I found a post talking about this product on a NEO-NAZI website. There it was, a women talking calmly about much she like the product sandwiched between hate posts towards who knows what (true story). This is not the demographic, but if there are enough data points it gets interesting doesn't it?
The point is this...C2B or consumer to business is becoming a way of life. The consumer is now controlling the message, not the companies. We can believe that we are, but the cadence of change is increasing (see my last post link to the walmart whistle blower) Or how about pink slime? You think consumers might have told you in a controlled test lab that cheap beef tastes great littered with that stuff until someone showed them what was in it...boy did that demographic speak up and maybe they weren't even yours.
There is no one size fits all solution to things, but if you are not getting open the concept that the consumer is now part of your business in ways they never were before you are going to lose. As a change agent, I have always been about trust, transparency and collaboration. And to drive change you need to find ways people will own the change not the other way around. Guess what...the sooner you stop treating your consumers as someone there for your to sell to and realize they can sell for you and sell against you more loudly then ever, the sooner you got a shot to get some measure of control.
Or maybe you need to let go and figure out how to sniff what's going on in the ether...
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
The Battle of Content is ON!
Sorry for long delays...but I have been fighting the good fight on the social media battlefield so to speak. As I have often used the midnight analogy (when it is noon the market is finally mature), it is almost 9AM. The market is maturing. We have moved from a place of people being seeing social media content as untrustworthy and suspect to a place of need with trepidation. Now...I am happy to say that at 9AM, we are seeing a market that has needs.
Why do they have needs? Because companies are starting realize that they don't own their brands anymore. The real truth of the matter is that we are reaching the inflection point where consumers are now an integral part of your business. Some get it...See the attached Coke 2020 video (link1 and link 2 here). Here is a company that has publicly posted their strategy that states that they recognize that consumers generate more stories than they do. This is total acknowledgement of the change in the social media landscape. Bravo Jonathan Mildenhall for having the courage to champion such a bold statement in such a large organization. It is the mark of a true change agent and someone who sees what is possible.
And for every Coke, there are so many others that don't see what is coming. See the attached link.
If you don't think things are changing, you are sleeping. Here is a person that has gone public using social media working to get the CEO fired for his bad behavior in the Mexico flap. This is a very public whistle-blower out and proud about it. Oh by the way...she still works for the company while doing this. You don't think in the towers of WalMart that someone isn't grousing about why they should fire this person for insubordination. The fact that she still works there is proof enough that social media has influence on what companies can and can't do now. She is public and can push the button and go viral...just like that. Can you say bad PR flap for WalMart?
I am off point a bit, but it is always important when talking about the maturation of social media on the marketplace to check in where we are in the morning so to speak. At 9AM it gets more interesting. There is real movement in adoption. In fact, the key part of this post is really about how in social media tools/services etc. are now being judged differently by a slightly more savvy marketplace.
In my last post I wrote about features, content and accuracy (I forgot to talk about infrastructure the 4th pillar I added but I can come back to that). What I spoke about previously is how to dimensionalize any presentation you see on social media tools to help you think about what tool can work for you. What I am talking about today is what I am seeing as someone who implements these tools within organizations.
The tenor has changed. over the past 18 months, most of the challenges on the customer side have come from people asking if you have a feature. Can you track it this way? Can you analyze it that way? Do you have ability to slice the data like this? Or like that? Most users of social media tools have been very focused on the features part of the equation. That is changing.
I am seeing people ask about features and beginning to understand what is must have, what is wow to have and what is I know you don't have it yet, but I want it. Everyone gets that the tool providers are working to create new and fantastic features. So how do we know that the market is maturing?
Because those using social media tools are realizing that no matter how many features you have if your content is crap so is the chart you are using to analyze the data. And while the content battle is underway, people are again enamored with the wrong things and not thinking about the right ones (in my not so humble opinion today). It is great to see that folks are now understanding the importance of content and how the features of their tools take and analyze that content, but what is sorely missing is what I call the fascination with volume.
There are many instances where I have someone "benchmark" what I bring versus another. And when the do that, we often get into a discussion that goes sort of like this...
"Hey they have 1 million sound bites...do you have a 1million sound bites...why don't you have 1 million sound bites...if you don't they are better". (This conversation sounds like Kramer from Seinfeld on too many cappuccinos)
Here is the link to what that conversation would sound like ===> link
When this moment happens, I wonder the following...
1. Do you know what is in that 1 million sound bites?
2. Do you know if there are duplicates?
3. Are the 1 million sound bites accurate? (oh yeah...the battle for accuracy is the next frontier)
4. Do you know how that number was actually calculated? There are some who estimate by the way
I could keep going, but the main point here is if you are going to challenge people on content and not the features going forward, make sure you think about what content means, what makes up good content and how much content you actually can have.
Great features are useless without Great Content...but Great Content is useless if it is not Accurate...
But that is for 10AM not 9AM.
Happy adoption folks...if you haven't gotten started someone is eating your lunch today...
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Who owns a broken Social Media TOOLbox? - If your fault not the tools
Dawn is becoming morning....
Companies recognition that they need to bring social media into their everyday workflow is accelerating rapidly. As I have stated in the past, 2010 brought people still thinking about it and even experimenting with it. 2011 brought action-based choices as to what tools they would make work for them.
2012 is about what? Its about market maturity. How do we know? My previous post discussed it briefly, but I predict 2012 is going to be a war on content.
Social media tools are really about three things (I figure I would reiterate here and maybe add some more depth as I am learning what this means with each passing week). It is about FEATURES, CONTENT AND ACCURACY.
What do I mean by these categories? see the definitions below...
Features - This is all about my tool looks better than your tool. It is about how a tool looks when you use it, what types of charts it can produce for you, what types of languages you can make it work with, what types of measurements it can calculate for your...etc. It is the candy of social media tools. Many have been lulled by features. It makes sense. Features are what the car looks like, but not necessarily what is under the hood. And for the past 18 months, many organization have been absolutely enamoured with what they see when trying to get their program off the ground. And you know what? That is really important. If you are trying to use something to help you run your business it needs to give the user three things: control, confidence and efficieny. And from a feature prespective if it doesn't do this then you are screwed (a topic for another post).
Content - This is about my data count is better than yours. Once you sit in and drive the car, you need to worry about how your fuel is making the engine work. This is content. I believe the battle of features will continue, but it is getting pretty clear what are musts to run a social media program. And while you can continue to improve how you view and measure your data, the amount and quality of that data is important. Content is only now really becoming a robust discussion. I guess more simply put when you get a 1,000,000 sound bites is that a real and accurate number of what should or shouldn't be counted as data. Sadly, most people fall in love with big numbers...as a scientist it is true that there is no bad data only data, but in social media getting enamoured with junk content is dangerous. Why? Because if you run the new metrics that will develop using inaccurate counts you are making mistakes that can lead to major issues. I would be asking my social media provider how they calculate their content? Even if they have everything are they taking time to make sure that the stream includes the most meaningful information or simply recounting crap?
Accuracy - This is all my sounbites are better than your sounbites. This is about how the engine runs. The car can look pretty, the fuel can be top notch to give great performance, but if the engine isn't tuned so all its parts run seamlesslly the car will eventually breakdown completely. Accuracy is about the algorithims that process the data. There are many debates as to what the best way to do this is: natural language processing, text analytics, keywords??? That doesn't matter. Accuracy does. I am sure there are functions that require prefect creation of the data set to make sure it is 100% right. This is an ongoing discussion and one that will make its way to the forefront later, when real social media metrics are created that must be right all the time to win the war on the battlefront...
How do I think of these definitions together??? See below
Market research metrics junky - I need a tool with boolean features to enable great control of the
search with the ability to nail the content very accurately...this could take weeks but it will be right.
Agency creative owner - I need a tool that enables me to very easily input my search terms with as much accuracy as possible but not critical. I need to be able to easily navigate the data to uncover fast consumer insights. These insights will be used to create neat ideas having nothing to do with the data to drive consumer behavior.
Marketing manager - I need a tool that someone else can set up for and enable me to see the data I need. It needs to be able to allow me to understand my business AND uncover insights that I can have others look into for me. I don't use tools
I could go on...but this shows that every tool has different stakeholders. So am I off track right now? No. Here is why. Everyone is so focused on getting their tools in AND are holding those who create the tools accountable for their ability to solve the problems. And frankly, I have seen many customers and talked to many industries and I still hear the same crap. These tools don't work.
I would submit which TOOLS aren't working. I believe that there are companies out there that have very smart people buying really awesome tools to put in a toolbox, but they are putting the onus on everyone to make them successful. The challenge for the busienss world? Application! Process! Human methods! A tool is just that a tool. You don't pick up a great hammer it just puts the nails in does it? No! You need to learn how to best use it for what you are doing to make it work. You may have a strange way to get nails out of a board, hell you might even use your teeth, but it is your ideas on how to solve the problem that get things to work. Same things goes with business tools. They can only have so many features, so much content and be only so accurate. And while this will certainly evolve in coming months (and I mean months in most cases), you can win on the playing field by recognizing you have to take the bull by the horns and figure out how to put all this together to work for you!
If your social media program sucks and you are pointing the finger at your tool provider, remember there are three fingers pointing back at you.
I would start to ask these questions...
1. Does my leadership understand what it really takes to have a social media program?
2. Are we thinking holitiscially about what problems need to be solved by our program?
3. What functions need to be integrated into my social media program to prevent lost time?
4. What should I hold my tools responsible to provide and what do I need to provide?
5. Are my processes rudimentary internally?
6. Are we recognizing that creating online programs is only part of it? Shouldn't we really know the effectiveness too?
7. Do I really have the right people doing the job or are they just person who was there? What have my resources delivered?
8. Are my people blaming the tools and not looking for ways to blame ourselves to solve the problem?
9. Am I supporting my people who are crying out for help internally?
These are just a few questions of leadership who wants a social media program that functions. Too many people are blaming the vendors. And while the vendors are responsible for making great products for dealing with all that content, as with any change it is up to the organization to fight itself to become a successful enterprise.
I would submit...it is our job to give you control, confidence and efficiency in how these tools provide value. It is your job to create methods that take these technologies to their greatest heights.
Otherwise you are wasting your money and time in trying to compete with a Yugo when you need a Ferrari....
Companies recognition that they need to bring social media into their everyday workflow is accelerating rapidly. As I have stated in the past, 2010 brought people still thinking about it and even experimenting with it. 2011 brought action-based choices as to what tools they would make work for them.
2012 is about what? Its about market maturity. How do we know? My previous post discussed it briefly, but I predict 2012 is going to be a war on content.
Social media tools are really about three things (I figure I would reiterate here and maybe add some more depth as I am learning what this means with each passing week). It is about FEATURES, CONTENT AND ACCURACY.
What do I mean by these categories? see the definitions below...
Features - This is all about my tool looks better than your tool. It is about how a tool looks when you use it, what types of charts it can produce for you, what types of languages you can make it work with, what types of measurements it can calculate for your...etc. It is the candy of social media tools. Many have been lulled by features. It makes sense. Features are what the car looks like, but not necessarily what is under the hood. And for the past 18 months, many organization have been absolutely enamoured with what they see when trying to get their program off the ground. And you know what? That is really important. If you are trying to use something to help you run your business it needs to give the user three things: control, confidence and efficieny. And from a feature prespective if it doesn't do this then you are screwed (a topic for another post).
Content - This is about my data count is better than yours. Once you sit in and drive the car, you need to worry about how your fuel is making the engine work. This is content. I believe the battle of features will continue, but it is getting pretty clear what are musts to run a social media program. And while you can continue to improve how you view and measure your data, the amount and quality of that data is important. Content is only now really becoming a robust discussion. I guess more simply put when you get a 1,000,000 sound bites is that a real and accurate number of what should or shouldn't be counted as data. Sadly, most people fall in love with big numbers...as a scientist it is true that there is no bad data only data, but in social media getting enamoured with junk content is dangerous. Why? Because if you run the new metrics that will develop using inaccurate counts you are making mistakes that can lead to major issues. I would be asking my social media provider how they calculate their content? Even if they have everything are they taking time to make sure that the stream includes the most meaningful information or simply recounting crap?
Accuracy - This is all my sounbites are better than your sounbites. This is about how the engine runs. The car can look pretty, the fuel can be top notch to give great performance, but if the engine isn't tuned so all its parts run seamlesslly the car will eventually breakdown completely. Accuracy is about the algorithims that process the data. There are many debates as to what the best way to do this is: natural language processing, text analytics, keywords??? That doesn't matter. Accuracy does. I am sure there are functions that require prefect creation of the data set to make sure it is 100% right. This is an ongoing discussion and one that will make its way to the forefront later, when real social media metrics are created that must be right all the time to win the war on the battlefront...
How do I think of these definitions together??? See below
Market research metrics junky - I need a tool with boolean features to enable great control of the
search with the ability to nail the content very accurately...this could take weeks but it will be right.
Agency creative owner - I need a tool that enables me to very easily input my search terms with as much accuracy as possible but not critical. I need to be able to easily navigate the data to uncover fast consumer insights. These insights will be used to create neat ideas having nothing to do with the data to drive consumer behavior.
Marketing manager - I need a tool that someone else can set up for and enable me to see the data I need. It needs to be able to allow me to understand my business AND uncover insights that I can have others look into for me. I don't use tools
I could go on...but this shows that every tool has different stakeholders. So am I off track right now? No. Here is why. Everyone is so focused on getting their tools in AND are holding those who create the tools accountable for their ability to solve the problems. And frankly, I have seen many customers and talked to many industries and I still hear the same crap. These tools don't work.
I would submit which TOOLS aren't working. I believe that there are companies out there that have very smart people buying really awesome tools to put in a toolbox, but they are putting the onus on everyone to make them successful. The challenge for the busienss world? Application! Process! Human methods! A tool is just that a tool. You don't pick up a great hammer it just puts the nails in does it? No! You need to learn how to best use it for what you are doing to make it work. You may have a strange way to get nails out of a board, hell you might even use your teeth, but it is your ideas on how to solve the problem that get things to work. Same things goes with business tools. They can only have so many features, so much content and be only so accurate. And while this will certainly evolve in coming months (and I mean months in most cases), you can win on the playing field by recognizing you have to take the bull by the horns and figure out how to put all this together to work for you!
If your social media program sucks and you are pointing the finger at your tool provider, remember there are three fingers pointing back at you.
I would start to ask these questions...
1. Does my leadership understand what it really takes to have a social media program?
2. Are we thinking holitiscially about what problems need to be solved by our program?
3. What functions need to be integrated into my social media program to prevent lost time?
4. What should I hold my tools responsible to provide and what do I need to provide?
5. Are my processes rudimentary internally?
6. Are we recognizing that creating online programs is only part of it? Shouldn't we really know the effectiveness too?
7. Do I really have the right people doing the job or are they just person who was there? What have my resources delivered?
8. Are my people blaming the tools and not looking for ways to blame ourselves to solve the problem?
9. Am I supporting my people who are crying out for help internally?
These are just a few questions of leadership who wants a social media program that functions. Too many people are blaming the vendors. And while the vendors are responsible for making great products for dealing with all that content, as with any change it is up to the organization to fight itself to become a successful enterprise.
I would submit...it is our job to give you control, confidence and efficiency in how these tools provide value. It is your job to create methods that take these technologies to their greatest heights.
Otherwise you are wasting your money and time in trying to compete with a Yugo when you need a Ferrari....
Monday, March 26, 2012
Social media revolution or evolution?
Its 2012...and frankly it is starting to move very quickly. We are almost finished the 1st quarter of the year. As I am now entrenched in the maturation of a new marketplace (not only the creation of social media but the usage of it for running the business), I am starting to think about what key factors will drive the success or failure of those trying to help companies successfully use the data to their advantage.
There is an ongoing battle that is being debated one company at a time. It is this...what is the best way to tap into what I fondly refer to as THE CROWD? This is using all the social media data available to understand consumers in their new natural habitat. The questions that are troubling everyone at this point in the debate is the following
1. How much data is enough to make decisions?
2. What are the metrics that will help you measure its impact?
3. Can you trust the dataset that is being created on the web?
4. Can I trust the content?
5. Is is getting the best quality data more important that getting all the data to make decisions?
This is essentially the PRECISION versus RECALL debate.
Precision by definition is getting the most accurate data to make decisions. Recall is not missing a single piece of data when deciding what to do. It is a dicussion that has been going on over the last 24 months.
As a member of the precision camp for more than 5 years, I have defended the following concept for a long time. I used to say what is key is being able to collect the right data set the same way everytime to make sure that you are comparing apples to apples with every study you do. Call it the way of the scientist (which I am) because I have been trained to carefully manage variables to make sure that only the right study is done. With only the best data, I have argued that you can do your work to understand consumers in the social media sphere. I have championed that it takes many measure like the ones I have access to to be able to really create meaningful business knowledge and metrics (that is buzz, sentiment and passion data). The whole time I have been able to very easily prove time and time again, that I can develop insights and create social media theories that will push the envelope.
I am here to say that I have been wrong...dead wrong.
In the last 3 months, I have been able to learn something critical to success of any social media program. In order to make the shift across the enterprise, it takes BOTH precision (my camp) and recall (the other camp) to really tell the complete story for the business.
Why?
Three reasons
1. Recall is critical to surface issues being discussed acros social media. I have had some experiences with some methodologies (can't discuss today or yet) that are showing me recall type measurements are outstanding and way more senitive for surfacing an issue. If you can grab the key discussion points from all that is being said, you will get to the what more effectively.
2. Precision helps you understand why. I have one customer who I work with that has shown me how they help their constitutents understand what consumers are saying online about their brands. What I learned is this, they cannot get the depth of insight they need from simple recall. Recall is the fluff and precision represents the depth in studying consumers online.
3. Both precision and recall will be the key to unlocking one's ability to measure the ROI from social media. What do I mean by this? Anyone who has spent their time trying to figure out this problem gets too stuck creating data breakdowns that lead down the path of someone asking them so what. The reality and the next big thing in social media validation is going to come from leveraging the speed at which data can be collected (the buzz, the sentiment and the passion...the recall and precision) will be mixed with the data that companies trust.
The fight over how to best leverage social media data to run the business has been always founded in what I consider a culture change. Even when you steadily prove what it can do, there is someone who is always skeptical of what you did. This is the nature of culture battles. Social media analytics has always been asking people to use new methods but also to use a new set of data. To best overcome the changes needed by the organization, those interested in proving its worth will need a way to mix what is trusted and what is new.
Precision and recall will be the path to success. Mixing all the data (so those wondering if they are missing something can be appeased) with the most accurate ways to measure consumers' opinions is the first step. The second is building trust by making sure measures (sales, units, margin...etc that are near and dear to their risk adverse hearts is part of the solution not an old friend to be cast away for some thing new an better.
That is all I have to say now...but stay tuned here to the proof in the pudding...
I will go Social Medieval on this point soon...
stay tuned!
There is an ongoing battle that is being debated one company at a time. It is this...what is the best way to tap into what I fondly refer to as THE CROWD? This is using all the social media data available to understand consumers in their new natural habitat. The questions that are troubling everyone at this point in the debate is the following
1. How much data is enough to make decisions?
2. What are the metrics that will help you measure its impact?
3. Can you trust the dataset that is being created on the web?
4. Can I trust the content?
5. Is is getting the best quality data more important that getting all the data to make decisions?
This is essentially the PRECISION versus RECALL debate.
Precision by definition is getting the most accurate data to make decisions. Recall is not missing a single piece of data when deciding what to do. It is a dicussion that has been going on over the last 24 months.
As a member of the precision camp for more than 5 years, I have defended the following concept for a long time. I used to say what is key is being able to collect the right data set the same way everytime to make sure that you are comparing apples to apples with every study you do. Call it the way of the scientist (which I am) because I have been trained to carefully manage variables to make sure that only the right study is done. With only the best data, I have argued that you can do your work to understand consumers in the social media sphere. I have championed that it takes many measure like the ones I have access to to be able to really create meaningful business knowledge and metrics (that is buzz, sentiment and passion data). The whole time I have been able to very easily prove time and time again, that I can develop insights and create social media theories that will push the envelope.
I am here to say that I have been wrong...dead wrong.
In the last 3 months, I have been able to learn something critical to success of any social media program. In order to make the shift across the enterprise, it takes BOTH precision (my camp) and recall (the other camp) to really tell the complete story for the business.
Why?
Three reasons
1. Recall is critical to surface issues being discussed acros social media. I have had some experiences with some methodologies (can't discuss today or yet) that are showing me recall type measurements are outstanding and way more senitive for surfacing an issue. If you can grab the key discussion points from all that is being said, you will get to the what more effectively.
2. Precision helps you understand why. I have one customer who I work with that has shown me how they help their constitutents understand what consumers are saying online about their brands. What I learned is this, they cannot get the depth of insight they need from simple recall. Recall is the fluff and precision represents the depth in studying consumers online.
3. Both precision and recall will be the key to unlocking one's ability to measure the ROI from social media. What do I mean by this? Anyone who has spent their time trying to figure out this problem gets too stuck creating data breakdowns that lead down the path of someone asking them so what. The reality and the next big thing in social media validation is going to come from leveraging the speed at which data can be collected (the buzz, the sentiment and the passion...the recall and precision) will be mixed with the data that companies trust.
The fight over how to best leverage social media data to run the business has been always founded in what I consider a culture change. Even when you steadily prove what it can do, there is someone who is always skeptical of what you did. This is the nature of culture battles. Social media analytics has always been asking people to use new methods but also to use a new set of data. To best overcome the changes needed by the organization, those interested in proving its worth will need a way to mix what is trusted and what is new.
Precision and recall will be the path to success. Mixing all the data (so those wondering if they are missing something can be appeased) with the most accurate ways to measure consumers' opinions is the first step. The second is building trust by making sure measures (sales, units, margin...etc that are near and dear to their risk adverse hearts is part of the solution not an old friend to be cast away for some thing new an better.
That is all I have to say now...but stay tuned here to the proof in the pudding...
I will go Social Medieval on this point soon...
stay tuned!
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Features, Content and Accuracy...Oh MY!
I figured I would write a short post from the trenches. I wanted to pose a question to the masses...
How do you know that your "counts" of sound bites are even accurate?
I have been spending an enormous amount of time working with people across the social media wild west and one of the things I cannot get my head around is the battle of numbers in social media data. Culturally, we are shifting the very foundation of what data means from a place of strict quantification to a place of the more data the better with blind faith.
As a scientist who is trained in variable management, I was always taught that there is no bad data only data. And this tenet is surely true as the field of social media measurement continues to mature slowly. That being said, I am surprised at how much push people are asking in the area of quantificaiton, but rarely question how the data was counted.
Yes, it is imperative that when someone tells you a sound bite is positive that it truly is, but for any technology company, trying to live up to the perfect coding standard is impossible. Then I will see someone question how many sound bites they have on their brand.
I am shocked that people are so quick to declare victory of their facebook fan page likes, but are so loathe to stop and think when you tell them that their multimillion campaign on generated 7500 soundbites naturally. Why is this the case?
Yes, social media data is extremely powerful. The data is vast and the potential for real time understanding translating to business results is real and will become tangible as this year wears on, but to simply say more data is better without asking how that number was generated is folly.
I figured I would post some thoughts on how to think about social media analytics to "clear the air". We all want our tools to look pretty and do wild things. But what else is there to consider? I would argue there is more than one thing to think about when getting a great tool.
In fact, there are three critical components to think about
Features - This is the obvious part. This is about bells and whistles, slicing and dicing the data so you can mine it and use it. Most peopl solely focus on the ease of use that a tool has. And by the way I couldn't agree more with that thinking. Many tools are very powerful but very difficult to use. Having something that is flexible, powerful and nimble is critical. This is becoming table steaks for anyone interested in building something good. But frankly if you have a great tool there are two other things to think about...
Content- This is the point I am trying to make here. Did you get ALL the content? Or better yet, did you get ALL the CLEAN content? Here is the distinction...if you get 100,000 sound bites and 30,000 are duplicate posts it doesn't matter how great your features are, you now have crappy content and you are comparing apples to oranges in doing your work. Many social media junkies will focus solely on the numbers and not on whether they are accurate. Are you asking that feature provider to open their kimono so they can tell you how they get there content? Do you know how they verify their streams? I think people need to spend a whole bunch more time on this issue before worrying about how pretty the data is sliced and diced. Why? Becuase if you are so worried about the ROI of social media data then your content and thus you counts better be good or you data is bad and your reco is flawed.
Accuracy - Again if you are trying to understand what social media is telling you (not listen) then you need to be concerend with this small thing. No one is going to get you all the way to 100% accuracy. At least, not until skynet is built and we all go down in a ball of MATRIX flames. But for now, after you get your counts right, you need to make sure that sentiment is accurate. There are a lot of claims out there as to how to best calculate it. While I work for an NLP company, I won't argue that we are the end all be all, but we do go for accuracy of the smaller sample set as one of our targets to help you know WHY people feel a certain way. Accuracy is the key to good sentiment analysis and critical if you want to get away from coding a thousand soundbites by hand...ugh.
Why am I writing this? Because I see a lot of resistance from people I work with when trying to get comfortable with social media data. It starts with not asking question about what appears to be bigger and better. It is about making sure that what is under the hood is in working order or you just bought a car that has a beautiful body, paint job, awesome seats, great stereo and an even cooler steering wheel, but is powered by a YUGO engine under the hood. That car is great to stand around an party and look good but could get you to the liquor store to buy a case of beer...
How do you know that your "counts" of sound bites are even accurate?
I have been spending an enormous amount of time working with people across the social media wild west and one of the things I cannot get my head around is the battle of numbers in social media data. Culturally, we are shifting the very foundation of what data means from a place of strict quantification to a place of the more data the better with blind faith.
As a scientist who is trained in variable management, I was always taught that there is no bad data only data. And this tenet is surely true as the field of social media measurement continues to mature slowly. That being said, I am surprised at how much push people are asking in the area of quantificaiton, but rarely question how the data was counted.
Yes, it is imperative that when someone tells you a sound bite is positive that it truly is, but for any technology company, trying to live up to the perfect coding standard is impossible. Then I will see someone question how many sound bites they have on their brand.
I am shocked that people are so quick to declare victory of their facebook fan page likes, but are so loathe to stop and think when you tell them that their multimillion campaign on generated 7500 soundbites naturally. Why is this the case?
Yes, social media data is extremely powerful. The data is vast and the potential for real time understanding translating to business results is real and will become tangible as this year wears on, but to simply say more data is better without asking how that number was generated is folly.
I figured I would post some thoughts on how to think about social media analytics to "clear the air". We all want our tools to look pretty and do wild things. But what else is there to consider? I would argue there is more than one thing to think about when getting a great tool.
In fact, there are three critical components to think about
Features - This is the obvious part. This is about bells and whistles, slicing and dicing the data so you can mine it and use it. Most peopl solely focus on the ease of use that a tool has. And by the way I couldn't agree more with that thinking. Many tools are very powerful but very difficult to use. Having something that is flexible, powerful and nimble is critical. This is becoming table steaks for anyone interested in building something good. But frankly if you have a great tool there are two other things to think about...
Content- This is the point I am trying to make here. Did you get ALL the content? Or better yet, did you get ALL the CLEAN content? Here is the distinction...if you get 100,000 sound bites and 30,000 are duplicate posts it doesn't matter how great your features are, you now have crappy content and you are comparing apples to oranges in doing your work. Many social media junkies will focus solely on the numbers and not on whether they are accurate. Are you asking that feature provider to open their kimono so they can tell you how they get there content? Do you know how they verify their streams? I think people need to spend a whole bunch more time on this issue before worrying about how pretty the data is sliced and diced. Why? Becuase if you are so worried about the ROI of social media data then your content and thus you counts better be good or you data is bad and your reco is flawed.
Accuracy - Again if you are trying to understand what social media is telling you (not listen) then you need to be concerend with this small thing. No one is going to get you all the way to 100% accuracy. At least, not until skynet is built and we all go down in a ball of MATRIX flames. But for now, after you get your counts right, you need to make sure that sentiment is accurate. There are a lot of claims out there as to how to best calculate it. While I work for an NLP company, I won't argue that we are the end all be all, but we do go for accuracy of the smaller sample set as one of our targets to help you know WHY people feel a certain way. Accuracy is the key to good sentiment analysis and critical if you want to get away from coding a thousand soundbites by hand...ugh.
Why am I writing this? Because I see a lot of resistance from people I work with when trying to get comfortable with social media data. It starts with not asking question about what appears to be bigger and better. It is about making sure that what is under the hood is in working order or you just bought a car that has a beautiful body, paint job, awesome seats, great stereo and an even cooler steering wheel, but is powered by a YUGO engine under the hood. That car is great to stand around an party and look good but could get you to the liquor store to buy a case of beer...
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Looking at the space between the cracks - Between the theatre and DVD
In the every continuing quest to figure out how to apply social media to business, I continue my mini use cases with a new look at something different. In the past, I have looked at politics a ton. Most recently, I looked at the concept of the social media fingerprint (which in my professional work continues to bear fruit as being an interesting concept) and today...what about white space?
What do I mean by white space? What happens between the launch of a product. You can apply this idea on longer time frame the first launch of product to its product improvements. In fact, some would call this launch analysis because the time frame between product launch and improvement can often be months. Another good example would include monitoring a test market of new product or service. Many times if one studies what occurs during the test market there is a great chance to learn something idea before you go full launch. The focus of this study is to look at another shorter time frame white space; between when a movie launches and when its dvd goes live.
What is amazing about this particular use case is that the time frames are getting so short between when movies hit the screen and when we see them at home that social media will become a critical methodology for studying such white space.
In the analysis I will do today, I chose to look the movie Cars 2. The reason for this choice is it launched last year and also launched its DVD in 2011 as well. It's box office totaled $191MM in the US and $368MM outside the U.S.. In addition, it was ranked the #4 most successful DVD sales in 2011 with $71MM dollars. The Movie hit the theaters June 24th, 2011 and the DVD launch occurred on November 1st. 2011. Below is analysis of the launch, white space period and after the DVD launch.
First Lets take a quick look at the net sentiment and summary metrics for the entire year around the topic of Cars 2.
This chart gives a very good overview of the movie Cars 2. You will see that net sentiment for the film is pretty strong overall. What is good about this full year look is the obvious spikes that occur in sentiment around the time of the launch with a smaller spike during the DVD release. This correlates with one would expect from the movie launch.
As we analyze the concept of movie white space, we will look at three quarterly periods. The first is May, June and July. This will represent the launch of the movie and about six weeks after launch. The white space period will include August, September and October. This is perfect as the the DVD launched on November 1st at the end of the white space period. And after the DVD launch will be the third period which includes November, December and January.
Let's look at the launch to get a sense of what people were saying. I will look at 4 things here. The first is the net sentiment trend for the period that you see above and the summary data. I will also look at the sources breakdown and the top 10 likes and dislikes for the period.
For the launch...
You will see a blow up of the launch period. In this period, we see the majority of sound bites. In addition, the net sentiment and passion intensity scores vary little from the overall data set. As for the source breakdown, almost 87% of the traffic comes from both social networks and twitter. These two sources often represent mainstream discussion. One would expect during the launch that much of the chatter would occur on these channels.
As for likes and dislikes...some of the highlights are sort of interesting. For one, the major like is the movie trailer. If you remember this movie didn't receive very strong critical acclaim. It seems that most people were excited by the concept of the movie more than its delivery. In fact, none of the other likes (while voluminous) are not very strong. They include like good movie and okay. These are not ringing endorsements of the film. It is interesting to note here that this movie did almost over 600MM in sales with only about 33% coming from U.S. sales.
As for dislikes, we see there is many mentions of the less than critical acclaim. In fact, rotten shows up (which is focused on rotten tomatoes less than fresh rating of 38%.
Let's move onto the white space breakdown.
Below are the same set of charts we saw for the launch period.
The summary metrics for this period look very similar to the launch period except for the fact that the volume is much lower. You will see more peaks and valleys in the sentiment postings. But as you move into the likes and dislikes you will see some differences.
In the likes category you can see some of the Pixar's marketing efforts are emerging. The number one mention is the Cars 2 App. At the launch of the movie, the app launched and was a huge success on the marketplace. In addition, we see mention of the Cars 2 toys. What is evident here is the fact that Pixar's marketing efforts are keeping buzz on the movie going beyond its stint in the theaters. This is very interesting because it does show that the concept of keeping the movie top of mind could be a critical component of the white space period for films between the theater and the DVD launch.
What becomes most interesting, however, is the change in the sources breakdown. Previously, 87% of traffic came from consumer channels like twitter and facebook. During the white space period, this number drops to 64% (a total change of 23% on an absolute basis). Subsequently, the blogs and forums have gone from 18% to 31%.
What does this mean? It means that the social media fingerprint is a real thing. You can read about the hypothesis here (link to Iran blogpost on social media fingerprint). As I have written previously, blogs represent a place where experts speak to the world and forums are those who like a topic love to chatter at each other. Facebook is friend talking amongst themselves. And twitter is the individual shout out to others letting them know how they feel.
How does this manifest for the movie industry. My hypothesis here is that to best study the consumer for a DVD launch, one must look to the blog/forum chatter to connect with those who will buy the DVD. These people are talking about there thoughts and usually movie buffs are interested in movies. This isn't the greatest example because in the case of Cars 2, a children's movie, parents will simply buy it. But the fact that these channels grow in chatter suggest it is a robust place to study.
Lastly, I will post the after launch period.
This period shows some continued evolution. For one, from a likes perspective we see two pieces of pie around take flight and thrill. Both of these slices center around marketing of a new cars 2 toy (presumably for Christmas). Again...the marketing continues and keeps the momentum for the film. On the dislikes side, there is a unique mention of not get nomination. The chatter continues for the film. The volume is reduced, but there continues to be evolution in the topic.
But again, the forums and blogs percentage has again gone up to 40% from 31%. This shows that the continue dialogue around Cars 2 eventually is centering on passionate people discussing the film and not mainstream consumers (when compared to the launch period)
Let's look at the brand passion.
the first is a chart of the brand passion during the three periods.
this chart shows the the rotten tomatoes score of 38% is about accurate. In this quadrant which looks at buzz (size of bubble), sentiment (y-axis) and passion (x-axis) to get an overall view of the brand across time, we see that people simply liked this film. And we see that during the white space period there is a decrease in passion while it increases in overall passion after the DVD launches.
This helps us get sense of what was going for the film over time.
I also looked at the white space period's BPI with a breakout of the sources during this timeframe.
It is below...
Here we see how each source is contributing to the brand passion during the white space period. This is a good guide for deciding where the passion is coming from before the launch. It help see where the positive chatter is happening and where the negative chatter is happening. It is a map to study your consumer prior to launch.
While there is major planning to the entire period when a movie launches this study has shone there is great nuance to what social media can tell us. In the case of Cars 2, there seems to be changes in the chatter during this crucial white space period. While I have only scratched the surface in this blogpost, the concept of social media fingerprint again plays out. The question remains will the current culture of planning and process keep organizations from learning on the fly as their critical dollars are spent on their business.
It looks like Pixar has the last laugh with its mediocre release...why...because of the 600 million box office and 150MM in DVD sales...we don't even know what the toys brought in.
Happy viewing...
What do I mean by white space? What happens between the launch of a product. You can apply this idea on longer time frame the first launch of product to its product improvements. In fact, some would call this launch analysis because the time frame between product launch and improvement can often be months. Another good example would include monitoring a test market of new product or service. Many times if one studies what occurs during the test market there is a great chance to learn something idea before you go full launch. The focus of this study is to look at another shorter time frame white space; between when a movie launches and when its dvd goes live.
What is amazing about this particular use case is that the time frames are getting so short between when movies hit the screen and when we see them at home that social media will become a critical methodology for studying such white space.
In the analysis I will do today, I chose to look the movie Cars 2. The reason for this choice is it launched last year and also launched its DVD in 2011 as well. It's box office totaled $191MM in the US and $368MM outside the U.S.. In addition, it was ranked the #4 most successful DVD sales in 2011 with $71MM dollars. The Movie hit the theaters June 24th, 2011 and the DVD launch occurred on November 1st. 2011. Below is analysis of the launch, white space period and after the DVD launch.
First Lets take a quick look at the net sentiment and summary metrics for the entire year around the topic of Cars 2.
This chart gives a very good overview of the movie Cars 2. You will see that net sentiment for the film is pretty strong overall. What is good about this full year look is the obvious spikes that occur in sentiment around the time of the launch with a smaller spike during the DVD release. This correlates with one would expect from the movie launch.
As we analyze the concept of movie white space, we will look at three quarterly periods. The first is May, June and July. This will represent the launch of the movie and about six weeks after launch. The white space period will include August, September and October. This is perfect as the the DVD launched on November 1st at the end of the white space period. And after the DVD launch will be the third period which includes November, December and January.
Let's look at the launch to get a sense of what people were saying. I will look at 4 things here. The first is the net sentiment trend for the period that you see above and the summary data. I will also look at the sources breakdown and the top 10 likes and dislikes for the period.
For the launch...
You will see a blow up of the launch period. In this period, we see the majority of sound bites. In addition, the net sentiment and passion intensity scores vary little from the overall data set. As for the source breakdown, almost 87% of the traffic comes from both social networks and twitter. These two sources often represent mainstream discussion. One would expect during the launch that much of the chatter would occur on these channels.
As for likes and dislikes...some of the highlights are sort of interesting. For one, the major like is the movie trailer. If you remember this movie didn't receive very strong critical acclaim. It seems that most people were excited by the concept of the movie more than its delivery. In fact, none of the other likes (while voluminous) are not very strong. They include like good movie and okay. These are not ringing endorsements of the film. It is interesting to note here that this movie did almost over 600MM in sales with only about 33% coming from U.S. sales.
As for dislikes, we see there is many mentions of the less than critical acclaim. In fact, rotten shows up (which is focused on rotten tomatoes less than fresh rating of 38%.
Let's move onto the white space breakdown.
Below are the same set of charts we saw for the launch period.
The summary metrics for this period look very similar to the launch period except for the fact that the volume is much lower. You will see more peaks and valleys in the sentiment postings. But as you move into the likes and dislikes you will see some differences.
In the likes category you can see some of the Pixar's marketing efforts are emerging. The number one mention is the Cars 2 App. At the launch of the movie, the app launched and was a huge success on the marketplace. In addition, we see mention of the Cars 2 toys. What is evident here is the fact that Pixar's marketing efforts are keeping buzz on the movie going beyond its stint in the theaters. This is very interesting because it does show that the concept of keeping the movie top of mind could be a critical component of the white space period for films between the theater and the DVD launch.
What becomes most interesting, however, is the change in the sources breakdown. Previously, 87% of traffic came from consumer channels like twitter and facebook. During the white space period, this number drops to 64% (a total change of 23% on an absolute basis). Subsequently, the blogs and forums have gone from 18% to 31%.
What does this mean? It means that the social media fingerprint is a real thing. You can read about the hypothesis here (link to Iran blogpost on social media fingerprint). As I have written previously, blogs represent a place where experts speak to the world and forums are those who like a topic love to chatter at each other. Facebook is friend talking amongst themselves. And twitter is the individual shout out to others letting them know how they feel.
How does this manifest for the movie industry. My hypothesis here is that to best study the consumer for a DVD launch, one must look to the blog/forum chatter to connect with those who will buy the DVD. These people are talking about there thoughts and usually movie buffs are interested in movies. This isn't the greatest example because in the case of Cars 2, a children's movie, parents will simply buy it. But the fact that these channels grow in chatter suggest it is a robust place to study.
Lastly, I will post the after launch period.
But again, the forums and blogs percentage has again gone up to 40% from 31%. This shows that the continue dialogue around Cars 2 eventually is centering on passionate people discussing the film and not mainstream consumers (when compared to the launch period)
Let's look at the brand passion.
the first is a chart of the brand passion during the three periods.
This helps us get sense of what was going for the film over time.
I also looked at the white space period's BPI with a breakout of the sources during this timeframe.
It is below...
While there is major planning to the entire period when a movie launches this study has shone there is great nuance to what social media can tell us. In the case of Cars 2, there seems to be changes in the chatter during this crucial white space period. While I have only scratched the surface in this blogpost, the concept of social media fingerprint again plays out. The question remains will the current culture of planning and process keep organizations from learning on the fly as their critical dollars are spent on their business.
It looks like Pixar has the last laugh with its mediocre release...why...because of the 600 million box office and 150MM in DVD sales...we don't even know what the toys brought in.
Happy viewing...
Friday, February 24, 2012
The social media fingerprint....Iran...Iran so far away
There has been much talk in the papers about Iran. Most of it centers around the issues with their nuclear program. But recently, there has been a ton of talk about linking the recent climb in gas prices to Iran. Rather than simply sit on the sidelines, I figured I would take a quick look to see how the "news" reporting on this has been accepted by consumers.
This post will be short, because I have a ton to do tonight, but in order to preclude the issue rising and saying I knew it I figured I would throw out there what I found. It is very telling look at what I call the finger print of social media.
I have often been curious how one could categorize social media fingerprints. By fingerprints, I mean when a story hits how does it flow through the different channels of social media. The first time I noticed this was doing some work for our PR firm around an announcement about a changing of the guard in the wine critique world. Big whoop. When I looked more closely there wasn't a ton of data. Really it was just a few thousand soundbites.
In this study, a very well respected wine critique named Robert Parker retired and passed the baton to his protege Antonio Galloni. I am not a big wine guy, so my interest in telling this story is truly from a social media perspective. It was big news in the wine community. But when I went to study it (and there was lots of telling stuff in there), I noticed something very interesting about where they talked about both these wine aficionados. Below are the source breakdowns...they are fascinating (to a social media geek like me anyway).
Firstly, you will notice how little data comes up in the sub search on gas/gasoline. This already begins to tell us that this topic is only being discussed in the news and people have not started reacting. it makes up less than 2% of the total data. People are more worried about other things than gas/gasoline when talking about Iran. This is no surprise actually. They are more concerned about nuclear war one would suspect.
Next, Let's look at the buzz trend and the sentiment trend for the last year on Iran.
The net sentiment is about the same for both. But there is some difference. When looking at the normalized buzz for the Gas/Gasoline search we see a much greater climb in buzz 140% versus 60% very recently. Normalized buzz uses the NetBase index as a benchmark to account for changes in content and thus is an apples to apples comparison the change in buzz on any topic (since data is fluid we account for changes that can occur as we clean and add data from time to time). This suggests that the amount of chatter about Gas/Gasoline is rising faster lately versus all topics on Iran. So it is picking up steam.
I then looked at the naturally surfaced likes/dislikes on all Iran data to see if the terms around gas/gasoline rise to the top. At 2% we would suspect it wouldn't but that is the beauty of natural language processing. You get to just let it do its work neutrally. Below are the likes and dislikes charts for Iran total over the past 12 months.
As expected...nothing about the rising gas prices which I am reading about all the time now. I have noticed these articles blaming the tensions on Iran as a reason gas prices could go up.
Here is the dislikes pie chart for the gas/gasoline search. I didn't look at likes because that isn't the point. We want to see if this something negatively mentioned because nobody wants to see the prices go up...makes commuting expensive.
Now we are focused in on mentions of Gas/Gasoline with emotion towards Iran. You will see in this search that there is some mention of the gas prices, but it is not astounding as to how much. In addition, there isn't a ton of data with people expressing emotion towards Iran when mentioning gasoline. So I figured it was only fair to flip it right. So I then ran the following search
Topic: Gas, Gasoline
Time frame:1/1/12 to 2/23/12
Context: Iran
In this case, we are now looking at what people are saying how they feel about gas since the beginning of the year when mentioning Iran. Here we would expect to see something different no? We would expect greater discussion about the rising gas prices and how it essentially sucks (I commute a long ways). The chart below looks at the chatter since 1/1/12 AND removes the news from the data so it is mainstream consumer data (blogs, forums, social networks and microblogs...etc.)
Now we are talking...all the dislikes are fear about gas prices. People are worrying about gas when mentioning Iran. We see expensive by hour and expensive as the top two mentions. Now lets look at the same search with NEWS ONLY.
You will see it is a bit different...
It is a bit higher level now with U.S. economy being mentioned first and then expensive. It looks like news. They are talking about sanctions and government stuff.
So we have looked at the issue both ways. We have taken emotion towards Iran in the context of gas and gas in the context of Iran. People are talking about a lot of things...but on to my point.
Is this really a viral issue that is bothering the average consumer? Let's assume if it is, then Twitter is the benchmark for major social discussion. If they are discussing it in blogs it is opinionated idiots (like me) talking about subjects. If it is forums it is crazies debating the issue. If it is facebook we know they either like or dislike it. But if it is twitter, then it is on the mind of THE CROWD as I like to say.
Let's start with Iran overall. Where is the conversation or the social fingerprint of the discussion on this very current topic.
This post will be short, because I have a ton to do tonight, but in order to preclude the issue rising and saying I knew it I figured I would throw out there what I found. It is very telling look at what I call the finger print of social media.
I have often been curious how one could categorize social media fingerprints. By fingerprints, I mean when a story hits how does it flow through the different channels of social media. The first time I noticed this was doing some work for our PR firm around an announcement about a changing of the guard in the wine critique world. Big whoop. When I looked more closely there wasn't a ton of data. Really it was just a few thousand soundbites.
In this study, a very well respected wine critique named Robert Parker retired and passed the baton to his protege Antonio Galloni. I am not a big wine guy, so my interest in telling this story is truly from a social media perspective. It was big news in the wine community. But when I went to study it (and there was lots of telling stuff in there), I noticed something very interesting about where they talked about both these wine aficionados. Below are the source breakdowns...they are fascinating (to a social media geek like me anyway).
What jumped out at me immediately was the top sources differed so greatly. In addition, I was so used to seeing Twitter and Facebook dominate the social media sources that to see Blogs for Robert Parker and Forums for Antonio Galloni was astounding. It was the same area of focus, same job, but totally different breakdowns. This awakened me to the idea of a social media fingerprint. How does the data flow when announcements happen. In this case, it makes sense. The established wine critique is talked about in a bit more mainstream way on blogs. People sort of reporting the news about wines and what he says. Galloni, on the other hand, represents a more niche persona in niche industry. Only the very serious talked about him. They dialogued about the change and their opinion of him. On to the forums baby! On the most committed talk about a subject on a forum and Galloni was new. They were bantering about whether he could cut the mustard in the new job. Again different places for different conversations. I drag on because it is important to share the moments when a concept is born.
What does this have to do with Iran? Everything. I have started noticing the constant discussion BY THE NEWS AGENCIES about how we are in trouble because gas is rising on worries in Iran. I wanted to experiment with this fingerprint idea and figured I would see what it looked like in social media. My hypothesis was that the news is where things are "created" and as they move through social media they eventually end up on twitter where the average person takes it viral as an issue briskly stating their opinion on the subject.
First, I looked at Iran as a discussion over the last year. Again, to keep is short (too late I guess), I took a look two searches.
Search 1
Topic: Iran
Time frame: last 12 months
Context: All data
Search 2
Topic: Iran
Time Frame: Jan 1st to Feb 23rd
Context: Gas, Gasoline only
The goal was to see what Likes/Dislikes surfaced in the total data versus when focused on gas/gasoline. Below you will see the total counts of both searches.
Firstly, you will notice how little data comes up in the sub search on gas/gasoline. This already begins to tell us that this topic is only being discussed in the news and people have not started reacting. it makes up less than 2% of the total data. People are more worried about other things than gas/gasoline when talking about Iran. This is no surprise actually. They are more concerned about nuclear war one would suspect.
Next, Let's look at the buzz trend and the sentiment trend for the last year on Iran.
The net sentiment is about the same for both. But there is some difference. When looking at the normalized buzz for the Gas/Gasoline search we see a much greater climb in buzz 140% versus 60% very recently. Normalized buzz uses the NetBase index as a benchmark to account for changes in content and thus is an apples to apples comparison the change in buzz on any topic (since data is fluid we account for changes that can occur as we clean and add data from time to time). This suggests that the amount of chatter about Gas/Gasoline is rising faster lately versus all topics on Iran. So it is picking up steam.
I then looked at the naturally surfaced likes/dislikes on all Iran data to see if the terms around gas/gasoline rise to the top. At 2% we would suspect it wouldn't but that is the beauty of natural language processing. You get to just let it do its work neutrally. Below are the likes and dislikes charts for Iran total over the past 12 months.
As expected...nothing about the rising gas prices which I am reading about all the time now. I have noticed these articles blaming the tensions on Iran as a reason gas prices could go up.
Here is the dislikes pie chart for the gas/gasoline search. I didn't look at likes because that isn't the point. We want to see if this something negatively mentioned because nobody wants to see the prices go up...makes commuting expensive.
Now we are focused in on mentions of Gas/Gasoline with emotion towards Iran. You will see in this search that there is some mention of the gas prices, but it is not astounding as to how much. In addition, there isn't a ton of data with people expressing emotion towards Iran when mentioning gasoline. So I figured it was only fair to flip it right. So I then ran the following search
Topic: Gas, Gasoline
Time frame:1/1/12 to 2/23/12
Context: Iran
In this case, we are now looking at what people are saying how they feel about gas since the beginning of the year when mentioning Iran. Here we would expect to see something different no? We would expect greater discussion about the rising gas prices and how it essentially sucks (I commute a long ways). The chart below looks at the chatter since 1/1/12 AND removes the news from the data so it is mainstream consumer data (blogs, forums, social networks and microblogs...etc.)
Now we are talking...all the dislikes are fear about gas prices. People are worrying about gas when mentioning Iran. We see expensive by hour and expensive as the top two mentions. Now lets look at the same search with NEWS ONLY.
You will see it is a bit different...
It is a bit higher level now with U.S. economy being mentioned first and then expensive. It looks like news. They are talking about sanctions and government stuff.
So we have looked at the issue both ways. We have taken emotion towards Iran in the context of gas and gas in the context of Iran. People are talking about a lot of things...but on to my point.
Is this really a viral issue that is bothering the average consumer? Let's assume if it is, then Twitter is the benchmark for major social discussion. If they are discussing it in blogs it is opinionated idiots (like me) talking about subjects. If it is forums it is crazies debating the issue. If it is facebook we know they either like or dislike it. But if it is twitter, then it is on the mind of THE CROWD as I like to say.
Let's start with Iran overall. Where is the conversation or the social fingerprint of the discussion on this very current topic.
For the year...33% microblogs. This is percentage of people simply sharing their thoughts outwardly on the subject. The discussion about Iran is pretty mainstream. There are lots of conversations. In addition, there is a great amount of social "discussion" on forums and people stating their opinion on the subject to whoever will listen on blogs. News at about 10% is reasonably high (it can be about 5% so let's call it 2x). We see that Iran as a topic is mainstream.
Let's go to Iran context gas/gasoline next. We know when people share emotion towards Iran when mentioning gas it isn't really about the prices too much. Is the fingerprint different. Remember, I only looked at the period since the beginning of the year when the issue started.
I would call this a different fingerprint wouldn't you. Blogs or people sharing their opinions on the subject has very large volume. 40% of the traffic. And those blathering their opinion in special places at each other a solid 20%. Microblogs...a mere 12%. This is not a mainstream discussion. It is a call to arms maybe but not the populace feeling the effects of the problem.
So I thought...great we see a different fingerprint for Iran in general versus Iran context gas/gasoline. But what about gas/gasoline context Iran for the period from the beginning of the year. Surely, people are getting pissed about the prices going up. They should be screaming...let's take a look.
Remember I took this study on because it is current and I have been reading about it in the news a ton lately. If it is affecting people they should be talking about it on twitter where people share outwardly what they think about something to whom I have no idea...drum roll please on this experiment............................................................
I rest my case! 40% blogs, 20% forums, 13% microblogs. The source breakdown mirrors the other search. We see in the discussion around gas/gasoline context Iran that people are expressing their displeasure about the rising gas prices (and blaming Iran) BUT the discussion is still people talking to each other in special place or just talking about the issue AND NOT sharing their frustration.
So where is the proverbial slam dunk? Below is the source breakdown for another trending topic of late. Whitney Houston...for the past year (it proves my point so much that I didn't bother to narrow it by date range)
Yes...61% of the traffic is people lamenting her death among other things AND 22% of them are commenting on Facebook a whopping 83%.
There is not much else to say accept that social media fingerprints do exist and they need to be studied a whole bunch more...
By the way, I nearly freaked out when I went to buy gas last week and it was $3.85. On Sunday it was $4.07 and today...jeez da wheez $4.17. Needless to say I was pissed.
But sadly...I didn't tweet about it...I wrote about it on my blog...does that make me a rube???
And then I am going to tweet this to get people to read it.
Am I creating solutions or just a small voice fishing in the social ocean.
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