GNTV: How BuzzLogic Calculates Influence

In our first segment of what will be at least a four-part GNTV series, Sea World San Antonio explained how they measured the ROI of a social media campaign designed to get roller coaster enthusiasts to try a new ride over a two week end period. What I liked was that this was a simple, straightforward measurement designed to see a monetary return on a hard dollar investment.

But, much of social media's goals is less tangible. A great many programs are designed to get closer to people who influence their markets. But measuring influence is more complex and less tangible than measuring dollars. No one has yet figured out how exactly to do that.

A company that seems closer than most is BuzzLogic, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company. In this segment, co-founder Todd Parsons explains how his company's software can measure influence by topic at any point in time.

       

                             

                               

Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

                

Comments

[Justin Kistner]

I was able to demo a range of buzz monitoring tools while at Jive, including Buzz Logic. Their influencer algorithm is helpful, especially the social graph that maps engagement for an individual post. Buzz Logic falls short in their "CRM-like" functionality to help me track my ongoing engagement with a contact.

The truth is, every provider falls short in one or more areas. There is so much room for innovation in the social monitoring space that all of the major players, Buzz Logic included, have built functionality that doesn't compete with the others. Buzz Logic has their influencer algorithm. Radian6 has dynamic reports that make it easy to drill down on why a post was influential. TruCast has delegation and supervision that enables enterprises to engage on multiple fronts with a unified agenda. The only way to get all of the features is to buy all of the software titles. I expect to see these providers consolidate in the not too distant future.

I'm excited to see how the social web will evolve once these tools filter more into the mainstream.

[Aaron Newman]

Influence is very important, but there are many other factors in properly monitoring social media. For every influencers, there are hundreds of consumers loving and hating your brands, so it's important influence isn't the only factor in your social media marketing plan.

Influence, sentiment, demographics, geographics, theme detection. Knowing what the other 99% of the people are saying about your brand can give you visibility into the true consumer.

I'd recommend checking out a FREEMIUM account at http://sm2.techrigy.com to see some of this visibility.

Regards,
Aaron
_______________________________
Aaron C. Newman
President/Founder
Techrigy, Inc.
cell: 646-280-5168
http://www.techrigy.com

- Providing visibility into Social Media -