Visible Technologies plans to release social and search tools that allow marketers to support online campaigns. More than a year in the making at a cost of about a million dollars, Visible Intelligence organizes searches and analyzes massive amounts of data through what the company calls a "search-and-relevance engine" built on similar technology to Google. Counting hashtags and Facebook fans no longer works because businesses need to sift through the spam and elevenths signals to capture real, actionable information to support key initiatives. So, Kelly Pennock, who moved into the CEO role at Visible from chief technology officer earlier this year, spearheaded the project and built the vision for the new platform and company. Pennock says available technology has not kept pace with the opportunity to integrate social and search, so it requires a leap beyond existing social monitoring tools. Data and system integration tools allow users to integrate the platform with customer relationship management (CRM) tools and business intelligence (BI) systems to tap into social data across enterprise business applications. The platform also provides the ability to share data and easily engage among users and departments to create more meaningful and targeted customer experiences. Information is processed and returned to users in about 30 seconds, compared with about 20 minutes for other platforms, according to Debbie DeGabrielle, CMO at Visible Technologies. About a dozen Visible clients have been testing the platform since early September. The platform goes out and collects brand mentions in the form of data from a variety of social sites across the Web. It mines the data to look for specific mentions of a campaign or spokesperson. Wading through data that offers no value to the campaign can cost big bucks. So, aside from the ability to pull in data from a variety of social sites like publicly available information on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, Visible built in sorting capabilities, language support, and analytics to measure the campaign. It also provides sentiment score, media type and geography. There were plenty of challenges to building the platform because it identifies word order, proximity of two words to each other, type of media, and length of document. It also supports multiple languages and offers insight into sentiment. It sorts through an "overwhelming amount" of data to determine whether someone searching on the word "cruise" means Tom Cruise, cruise missiles or cruise ship.
Fashion victim, fashionista: these are words not easily applied to me. However, I have learned one valuable lesson over the years by observing an industry that's always on the lookout for the next big thing: if you wait long enough, past trends and patterns will make a comeback. This is exactly to the case with social media right now. As all things social start to mature, the same evolution that took place in the digital marketing industry only a few years ago is emerging: social is fast becoming less about experimentation, and more about regular production. In fact, production is the key word in many ways, which I'll come back to a bit later. In recent months, a noticeable shift has taken place among the clients and prospects we've talked with at our agency. They fall roughly into three categories: those still experimenting with social media, those using social media consistently as a tactical add-on to their marketing activities, and those trying to make social a more central, strategic component of their marketing efforts. As we approach 2011 budget deadlines, more and more marketers are trying to switch gears and move from using social as a tactical add-on to making it a core component in their overall efforts. Small, medium and large companies want to know how they can streamline, automate, budget, and measure social media and social marketing. How can it move from a series of handcrafted singular projects to a more consistent, more repeatable, more predictable undertaking? We have clear answers to that. The key challenge remains implementation. Marketing integration may have been the Holy Grail for advertisers over the last 15 years, yet the agency world became increasingly fragmented during that period of time. Many agencies that initially dismissed digital as a peripheral activity are now bent on not making the same mistake again with social. Agencies rightfully see social as central to the future of marketing and work to develop in this space as fast as they can. Yet each agency, each discipline, looks at social through a very narrow lens that only puts the emphasis on their original core competencies. And, this is what really spells trouble for marketers. Back to the issue of production, as mentioned earlier: It is tempting to draw parallels between social content production/earned media on one hand, and advertising production/paid media on the other hand. However, the comparison can be misleading in many ways. There are at least five key differences in social that every marketer should bear in mind: 1) Forget one-size-fits-all messages targeting "lowest common denominator" audience. Recognize that fragmentation is here to stay, and embrace it at every step. 2) Frequency and freshness of content matter more than production values. Increase your execution capability and move to rapid-fire, low-cost production cycles. 3) Campaigns have a limited shelf life, but quality content is a valuable and reusable asset. Build your library for the long term and ensure that you will be able to do "reruns." 4) Stop thinking (and budgeting around) campaign flights and push marketing. Start thinking about ongoing engagement. Audiences can no longer be turned on and off on demand. 5) In a genuine two-way, real-time conversation, it is hard to separate the production arm from the distribution arm. Your brain is connected to your mouth for a reason. Larger creative and media agencies have legacy economic models built around scale and size that make it difficult to adapt and operate profitably in a world of exponentially fragmented audiences and touch points. When it comes to social, the question is not whether "they get it," but whether they can evolve to become as fast and nimble as marketers need them to be. Even Web agencies, in spite of their digital DNA, can sometimes struggle with things like video production or labor-intensive, low-tech conversational engagement. The long-predicted new marketing paradigm is finally here. Marketers need to start thinking, behaving and organizing themselves as content producers who treat engage consumers as audiences, instead of fully outsourcing this function to external publishers. Content is still king, after all. A new species of agencies is emerging to deliver solutions that meet this new paradigm Built from the ground up to meet the new realities of turnkey content production and distribution, agencies with a studio mindset and roots in video program production and distribution can create a competitive edge from a creative, execution and dissemination standpoint. It's official: Social is now well beyond a passing marketing fad. Amid this environment, marketers find it increasingly challenging to differentiate brands, products and messages. The push for a constant flow of newness is becoming a key operational requirement -- just like in the fashion industry. One thing is certain:
I hope you agree that every now and then, it's actually time to revisit MySpace, the site about which Gawker said earlier this week: "MySpace shares user data with advertisers, too, if anyone cares." Ouch. But make that Myspace, not MySpace, because, as you may have read, yesterday was the official unveiling of the Myspace redesign, in which the "s" is lower case. Having done a little light reading on it, here's what I wonder: "Is the redesign too late - or too early?" Of course, your default answer to that question should be, "too late." In remaking itself as a "social entertainment" site - looks like I was right back in January when I predicted it would move off its social network positioning - it has surprised exactly no one. It's not just that this seemed the obvious direction for a site that was always closely wed to entertainment (particularly music), it's that Myspace execs, no matter who was in charge, have been saying the same thing for at least a year. Meanwhile, as it moved the tiles around to perfect its new, somewhat cleaner layout (allusions to deck chairs on the Titanic absolutely intended), revenue and traffic have been dropping - nay, plummeting. According to stats compiled by PC World, last month Facebook had 148.4 million domestic users, compared to Myspace's 57.5 million. Ad revenue is expected to drop by 14% in 2011. So, it's hard to have a problem with Myspace's new positioning, but why did it take so long? Making entertainment its glue has made sense ever since it lost not just its stickiness, but its mojo. (Yes, I still have only three Myspace friends, including co-founder Tom Anderson.) But now one has to ask the question: "What if they gave a social network (ahem, social entertainment site), and nobody came?" Something tells me they sweated the details on this a bit too much, losing more users in the process. That said, the new site does have some interesting features. It borrows the "badges" concept from Foursquare to reward people who curate a lot of content. It also allows visitor to incorporate Facebook and Twitter, which is a no-brainer, even if it creates only borrowed interest. Piggybacking on the "it" social services may be one of the most significant ways Myspace can re-enter the conversation - if it has any chance to. It's also a necessary, tacit admission that Myspace isn't the social kingpin it once was. But there's also a reason why the Myspace redesign may be too early. My reasoning is tongue-in-cheek: at some point, younger demographics are going to want to disassociate themselves from Facebook, or at least have another, separate space to call their own - because it's just too embarrassing to have your grandmother friend you. So, the best way for Myspace to reinvigorate itself might be to circle back to younger demos, which were never on it in the first place. Unfortunately, except for the youngest of the 13-to-35 demo the revamped site is going after, we're not there yet.
Visible Technologies plans to release social and search tools that allow marketers to support online campaigns. More than a year in the making at a cost of about a million dollars, Visible Intelligence organizes searches and analyzes massive amounts of data through what the company calls a "search-and-relevance engine" built on similar technology to Google. Counting hashtags and Facebook fans no longer works because businesses need to sift through the spam and elevenths signals to capture real, actionable information to support key initiatives. So, Kelly Pennock, who moved into the CEO role at Visible from chief technology officer earlier this year, spearheaded the project and built the vision for the new platform and company. Pennock says available technology has not kept pace with the opportunity to integrate social and search, so it requires a leap beyond existing social monitoring tools. Data and system integration tools allow users to integrate the platform with customer relationship management (CRM) tools and business intelligence (BI) systems to tap into social data across enterprise business applications. The platform also provides the ability to share data and easily engage among users and departments to create more meaningful and targeted customer experiences. Information is processed and returned to users in about 30 seconds, compared with about 20 minutes for other platforms, according to Debbie DeGabrielle, CMO at Visible Technologies. About a dozen Visible clients have been testing the platform since early September. The platform goes out and collects brand mentions in the form of data from a variety of social sites across the Web. It mines the data to look for specific mentions of a campaign or spokesperson. Wading through data that offers no value to the campaign can cost big bucks. So, aside from the ability to pull in data from a variety of social sites like publicly available information on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, Visible built in sorting capabilities, language support, and analytics to measure the campaign. It also provides sentiment score, media type and geography. There were plenty of challenges to building the platform because it identifies word order, proximity of two words to each other, type of media, and length of document. It also supports multiple languages and offers insight into sentiment. It sorts through an "overwhelming amount" of data to determine whether someone searching on the word "cruise" means Tom Cruise, cruise missiles or cruise ship.