I will publish the results of my research here.

NOTE: The research is limited to the Denver metro area EXCLUDING Boulder. Boulder, I still love you though

Today we have a lot of work to do so I will not say much, however, I will be blogging about social business software and social intelligence once the dust settles down.

And yes, this blog will still be called “Life in the startup lane”

You can find more details about the acquisition here

Given the fact that conversation venues, such as Twitter, democratize the notion of “reach”  by providing a venue where anyone can mention anything (including your brand) to an organic audience (original target audience+viral audience), it is imperative that  brand protecting companies,

1) Track mentions of the company’s brand (s)

2) Analyze the influence (“reach analysis”) of the people who mention a company’s brand(s)

As social media networks become entrenched conversation venues where participants discuss anything under the sun including company brands, “reach analysis” needs to be expanded beyond messages that originate from a company’s marketing department.  This is the first step in acknowledging that there are other messages that are emanating from places other than your marketing department.  Those messages you cannot control. However, you can manage the conversations that the messages produce. In order to manage messages that result in conversations about your brand, regardless of their origin, brand mentions need to be effectively monitored and the message reach effectively analyzed.

Consider the following example: Every brand protecting company’s nightmare is seeing the following brand mention (message) on Twitter (or any conversation venue e.g. Facebook, Blog comment, Online newspaper comment)

“(put your brand here) sucks!!”

The next time people Google your brand; you do not want this to be the first brand mention they see. It well can be, if you do not properly manage the conversation that emanates from this mention. Therefore, before you react to the mention, it is important that you perform a “reach analysis” of the mention (measure the “influence” of the “mentioner”) in order to understand the authority of the person who made the brand mention, the nature of the venue in which it was made and the number of people who potentially saw the mention.  Performing such a reach analysis gives you the ability to assess an appropriate entry into the conversation and gives you a basis for formulating an approach on how to manage the conversation going forward. Products like Filtrbox simplify the “reach analysis” determination through Twitter Influence scoring and FiltrRank scoring.

In closing, it is important that ALL companies pay attention to “influence” in social media conversation venues. Think of “influence” as good old “reach analysis”, except the message whose reach needs to be analyzed is not coming solely from your marketing department – its coming from anyone, its coming from everywhere and, in a real-time information environment, its coming fast.

Here is what Candice Breitz put together: In March 2005, 30 different people were filmed at the Gee Jam Studio in Port Antonio, Jamaica singing a capella (no instrumental accompaniment) of a compilation of Bob Marley songs.  All 30 shots are then played simultaneously on a 30 channel installation viewed through 30 different flat-screen TVs (one person per TV screen).  The coolest thing about this, is that even though it looks like one giant movie screen from afar,  you get a spatial effect of the sound (the sound comes directly from location of the person on the screen) . That is simply because there are 30 different TVs with speakers right next to the each screen, so the audio comes directly from the location of the TV screen.  I definitely sat there for more than 30 minutes (I could have watched all 62 minutes and 40 seconds of it) because, first I am a huge Marley fan and second it was fascinating watching these 30 individuals sing these legendary songs. They were not perfect singers, did not necessarily hold a tune and did not necessarily know the words to the songs.  However, I was captured by expressions; their facial expressions and their body expressions both when they knew the words and when they were clueless.  I loved the simplicity of the whole concept.  

This is a great exhibit to check out when you are in Denver, especially if you are a Marley fan. Be warned that this exhibit is pretty loud (which I think may annoy some people).  The voices of these 30 individuals echo through the whole museum.  If you are a Marley fan, it’s a great sound track while you check out the cool exhibits that they have at the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art.