Disqus - Latest Comments for tomob

Re: What The Wall Street Journal Has, Few Will Match

JasonFalls — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:49:05 -0000

Always a well-spend $.02, Tom. Thanks for that. The fact they are
niche (financial, or at least with a financial slant) further enhances
the wow-factor of their success. Your second point is the major one,
in my mind. Original reporting that you can only find there ... that's
a great content strategy if you can pull it off. Thanks again.

Re: The Future of the Social Web

tomob — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:00:48 -0000

Hi Brian:

Nice post - I agree that SRM is a great place to point to for the corporate ==> person relationship - and is consistent with the VRM thinking.

Would be great to see a few large organizations start to implement. I guess that is what Altimeter and Dachis are about.

TO'B

Re: What The Wall Street Journal Has, Few Will Match

tomob — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:55:46 -0000

Jason:

How can the WSJ be a niche publication and the biggest newspaper in the USA? Here are the three reasons I think they are so successful.

1. I would argue that the WSJ is a paper that stands for something. At their very best they stand for the American dream which is heroic, entrepreneurial success.

2. They do awesome original reporting - how many times have you seen WSJ stories re-cycled on NPR, your local paper or the magazine style TV shows?

3. They are on this side of the people instead of the government - and that is pretty rare these days.

My $0.02

TO'B

Re: The 5 Essential Pillars of a Social Media Campaign

tomob — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:55:47 -0000

Jason - I always tell big brands that they have to go where people are and act helpful, human and humble.

Happy to see all of that above.

Good Luck

TO'B

Re: MotiveQuest - Obama's Job Approval

tomob — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:08:58 -0000

Nice post - coincidence that the HC industry decided to take on Obama this week with this plummeting advocacy?

Re: Social media consultants: A call to action

facebook-616501588 — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:06:46 -0000

Tom, thanks for the well thought-out answer. I think you run into a lot of issues that other people run into -- most are afraid to talk about the nitty gritty of their programs publicly due to a) proprietary info or b) fear of competitors getting closer to what they are doing. Some might think that all social programs are public, but many are internal facing or channel facing and aren't as easily found just by searching the web.

Re: Social media consultants: A call to action

Rich Harris — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:54:09 -0000

Excellent as always Jen!

Re: Social media consultants: A call to action

tomob — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:13:52 -0000

Jennifer:

I like your call to action - and I am here to share our (not my) creds.

Company: MotiveQuest LLC http://motivequest.com

We have been in business for over 6 years and have completed hundreds of SM research projects for a who's who of F1000 brand and agencies. You can see some of our work on SlideShare here:

http://www.slideshare.net/motivequest

We are a marketing strategy research/consulting firm that uses SM as the raw material for the work. We gather and analyze millions of online conversations to understand core human motivations, drivers and issues in a category, across categories or around a brand. We provide clients not only with understanding, ideas and insight - but also specific actionable recommendations.

I wish we had more I could share publicly, but the output of our works feeds into business strategy, and is generally kept confidential. We have helped our clients understand some of the following questions - and also provided specific recommendations with how to leverage this understanding. A few examples

- How to position my brand vs. the category leader? SWOT analysis of us vs. competition.
- What matters most in digital entertainment, then by category, TV, MP3, etc.? How is my brand doing against what matters most?
- What is the meaning of value today? How are we doing on what matters vs. the competition?
- Where are the advocates for my brand? What to they care about? How can I increase advocacy?
- What is the relationship between advocacy and sales?
- Is our brand advocacy rising or falling and why? How about or competitors?
- What is the meaning of service? What should we do to improve on the Business Week service rankings?
- What new product opportunities are there in the dairy category? How can my brand take advantage of this?
- How have consumer food purchase behaviors changed since the recession? Hpw can we leverage this understanding?
- What motivational positioning does our truck own? what about our competitors
- What do methamphetamine users talk to each other about? How can we use this knowledge in our anti-methamphetamine use campaign?
- What are the choice drivers for Hospital choice? How can we incorporate into our marketing plans?

While many of the recommendations for our clients are not SM media specific, we do know that online brand advocacy is a metric that is strongly co-related with sales.

So there you have it. We (MotiveQuest) are experts in USMRTOB&CS (Using Social Media Research To Optimize Brand & Communication Strategy) but I would not call us Social Media Experts!

Tom O'Brien
MotiveQuest LLC
@tomob

Re: Is Seth Godin Holding Brands Hostage?

tomob — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:06:49 -0000

Jason:

Take a quick look at the Brands in Public page for UPS (the package shipping company) and you'll see that two of the top five stories include:

“Chile central bank UPS credit line . . .”
“Eminem, Public Enemy, Tom Morello Bring All-Star Team-UPS to . . .

It isn’t so easy to exclude the data you don’t want and include the data you do want using (apparently) simple keyword searches. (I guess this is Seth’s business partner’s responsibility – BzzAgent.)

You know what they say – GIGO!

TO'B

Re: Is Seth Godin Holding Brands Hostage?

JasonFalls — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:32:55 -0000

Thanks Tom. Good to see the perspective from a company that knows the ins and outs of parsing the information. If they've figured a reliable way to do it in a fair and balance way, they're onto something. Of course, I agree that there will be lots of questions about whether or not they have it. Thanks for the input!

Re: Is Seth Godin Holding Brands Hostage?

tomob — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:37:04 -0000

HI Jason:

Nice post - this is pretty interesting - and one of the reasons we (MotiveQuest) don't do dashboards - cause they are going to be free!

I am pretty surprised that Seth Godin is selling the Brands "presence" for $400/month. Guess we'll have to see how that works. For me that sets up some pretty strong cognitive dissonance with my prior understanding of the Seth Godin "Brand".

I'm interested to take a look at a few of the brands on here (where we have done projects) and compare what "Brands in Public" shows about them and what we see with our techniques.

My guess is that there are lots of issues underneath the "Brands in Public" presentation. I think this because if you asked me (or MotiveQuest) to do all the linguistic coding required to:

1 include all the relevant data about Ford + Models and exclude all the irrelevant data and

2. De-Dupe and De-Spam all of that,

It would be a pretty big project. To do this well for hundreds of brands?? Well, you get the difficulty.

Interesting nonetheless.

Tom O'Brien
MotiveQuest LLC

Re: 12 Top Social Media Agencies

tomob — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:40:21 -0000

Hi Jason:

We live in the research world - Online Anthropology - but have done more than 200 SM research and analysis projects for the world's biggest brands and agencies over the last 6 years. Self-funded, profitable and continuing to grow even in this recession.

MotiveQuest LLC http://motivequest.com

Tom O'Brien

Re: Sentiment Analysis

tomob — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:08:57 -0000

Eric:

Sentiment analysis is but one of many ways to characterize unstructured text data pulled from the web. We can also count mentions, calculate word associations, measure issues and drivers of sentiment, measure emotions and motivations, etc.

The key question is so what? We use all of these techniques to understand why people do what they do.

Brand tracking is about 10% of the value of social media monitoring and analysis. Most online conversation is not for or about brands, but what people care about. As a brand you need to figure out what people are passionate about and connect yourself to that in a compelling and authentic way.

Two personal rants about this here:

http://tinyurl.com/cgzts4 (Baking a Social Media Cake)

and here:

http://tinyurl.com/cyv4ns (Communities don't care about brands)

Finally, there is a lack of clarity about the use of social media monitoring & analysis. One clear beneficial use is very reactive and PR related - like @comcastcares.

Another is as a marketing research tool. Why is the world the way it is, and what threats and opportunities does that present for my brand/company? That's what we do - and sentiment is one of many inputs.

Tom O'Brien
MotiveQuest LLC

Re: Consumer Centric Health Care

tomob — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:06:29 -0000

@NotADoc My only point with this analogy is that it makes no sense to insure for known, manageable expenses - like routine physicals.

Having a system that pays for all the predictable + the unpredictable expenses (with an opaque, third party payor system) is a really bad way to deliver healthcare.

I'm for insurance for significant expenses - not for routine.

TO'B

Re: Consumer Centric Health Care

NotADoc — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:45:28 -0000

@tomob: the healthcare / haircut analogy is probably not appropriate. The consequences of not going to the doctor vs. not getting a haircut can be devastating to life at worst and at best, costly to society in the form of lost productivity.

I know lots of people who have not seen a doctor for a physical checkup in several years. These ppl make a livable wage, have insurance to defray the cost of a checkup, and STILL don't do it. Ludicrous, I know, but it happens more than we'd like to admit. And common sense says even fewer people would obtain a checkup if it came out of their own pocket.

The impact on society: sickness and disease go unchecked for years. Preventative care goes out the window, and costs skyrocket because the healthcare system is firefighting disease rather than helping people live healthy, productive lives.

I admire the author's "consumer driven" philosophy, and many of his points seem to hit the nail on the head. But focus should be on further incentives for preventative care and healthy lifestyles rather than rolling back the few incentives we have to maintain our relationships with our doctors.

Re: Consumer Centric Health Care

fredwilson — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:25:43 -0000

haircut insurance!

that's a great analogy

thanks

Re: Consumer Centric Health Care

tomob — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:20:17 -0000

Fred:

Thanks for sharing this excellent article and commentary. I think it is spot on. Why do we need insurance for an annual physical checkup? That is like having haircut insurance.

TO'B

Re: Influencers vs. Fans: Allocating Your Resources : Never Stop Marketing

tomob — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:36:49 -0000

I think we are in agreement - here is a prime example of what I call influencer marketing:

http://tinyurl.com/lkgxdd

Sony program for (prominent) Daddy Bloggers to use & review Sony gear fun by Chris Brogan and Justin Levy.

TO'B

Re: Influencers vs. Fans: Allocating Your Resources : Never Stop Marketing

jer979 — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 04:33:30 -0000

It is nuance. I think we are in agreement....

Love the discussion

Re: Influencers vs. Fans: Allocating Your Resources : Never Stop Marketing

tomob — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:41:30 -0000

Jeremy:

Been thinking about this post and went ahead and put up my own thoughts. In general I agree with you - but have one quibble. I think advocates are much more important than fans. Fans like you. Advocates love you and are willing to actively spread the word.

http://tinyurl.com/r5molx

Thanks -

TO'B

Re: Influencers vs. Fans: Allocating Your Resources : Never Stop Marketing

jer979 — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 12:02:18 -0000

That’s one of the best analogies I've seen thus far. I may borrow it ;-)

I'll check out the post. Thanks.

Re: Influencers vs. Fans: Allocating Your Resources : Never Stop Marketing

tomob — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:50:02 -0000

I saw Duncan Watts talk about this at at a conference - and I agree mostly with him. Huge forest fires are not started by magical special trees, but by a confluence of favorable variables coming together at a particular place and time. My blog post about this here:

http://tinyurl.com/6j2cy4

I think what you need to pay attention to in marketing 2.0 is not influencers, but instead advocates. Figure out who your advocates are, what they love about you and then 1. Give your advocates a megaphone 2. Export what your advocates love about you to more people.

TO'B

Re: A Year @Ford - Part 1

tomob — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 18:07:36 -0000

Hi Scott:

I have read this post about 4 times. All I can say is great work. I don't think I would have been brave enough to take on this job - much less accomplish as much as you did in the last year.

My takeaway? 1. Sr. Mgmt Buy In 2. Stakeholder Buy In 3. Strategy 4. Get GREAT help 5. Execute.

Looking forward to part II - and it would be great to hear about the ideas/things that didn't work so well.

Thanks -

TO'B

Re: Five Research Ecosystems

tomob — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:45:27 -0000

Tom:

Nice post - we do deep market research using online conversations as the raw material. We are using the WWW as a research ecosystem. For example we just did a project for a global client on "the meaning of entertainment". The scope of this project included 40 million conversations about entertainment over the last year.

Our strategists then use a set of sophisticated text analytics tools to pull apart this huge data set to uncover why people do what they do. We identify core motivations drivers and issues around brands, concepts and categories.

Fascinating work - and we are just at the beginning.

Thanks -

TO'B

Re: My Week With Bing

karen_e — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:07:05 -0000

This will be interesting ... b2b search ... would like to hear more.