Incorporating social media into your measurement program

A critical success factor for best-in-class analyst relations (AR) programs is an appropriate measurement program. A measurement program can help AR managers demonstrate the business value of AR, generate information to improve day-to-day operations, and harvest intelligence valuable to the Sales organization. As social media matures into a regular part of the business communications environment [...]

Random notes on Twitter

The Analyst Twitter Directory is now up to 60 entries with more analysts added every week. It is interesting that this is one of the most visited pages on the SageCircle blog.
Edelman’s Jonny Bentwood (Twitter) has done another crackerjack piece of research with Top analyst twitters / micro-bloggers. He has come up with an interesting framework [...]

Social media should not be a “special” activity for AR, just part of the overall AR plan

You do have an AR plan, don’t you?
Your strategic AR plan, the one with the charter and objectives, lists of all interactions types to be used for each purpose, service levels by analyst tier, calendar and priorities?
Ok, unfair question as many AR teams are so under the gun that a plan is often considered a [...]

Social media is a multi-facet opportunity for major industry analyst firms

Major analyst firms like AMR Research, Gartner, IDC and Ovum are rightly criticized for being slow out the gate when it comes to addressing and using social media. The one major firm that has done the most to leverage the potential of social media is Forrester, but even Forrester has not been as aggressive as [...]

Influence is not a zero-sum game so analyst influence is not necessarily diminished by the rise of bloggers

A common thread in blog postings is that because bloggers are becoming more influential, analysts have to becoming less influential. Also, not a week goes by where we hear that some vendor executives - who often loathe the communications and tech industry analysts - have said that analysts and AR are less relevant due to [...]

Social media inputs need to be added to analyst opinion monitoring programs

Analyst opinion monitoring is a critical AR task because it contributes to AR planning, rapid response to sales impact, relationship management, message management, internal politics, and overall metrics programs. In the past, savvy AR means focused on the spoken word - using the SageCircle spoken word audit technique - in addition to the usual written [...]

SageCircle Survey — The tech industry analysts on Twitter

Twitter is an interesting example of micro-blogging, i.e., broadcasting very short messages to a set of “followers.” Tweets can be very personal and trivial in nature (e.g., what the person is having for lunch) or can be used for business purposes (e.g., snap polls). In Adding Twitter or other micro blogging tools to the AR [...]

Analysts should let vendor AR teams know that they want AR blogs

It’s a classic chicken-and-egg situation: AR is not using blogs until analysts say they will read AR blogs, but analysts are wanting AR to start blogs but not asking them to which means AR postpones launching a blog… You get the idea.
Last week at IDC Directions in San Jose, analyst Rachel Happe (bio, blog, Twitter) [...]

Doing unto analysts what they do unto vendors

In an example of how social media can turn the tables in the analyst ecosystem, Sam Lawrence (bio, Jive blog, Twitter), the esteemed Chief Marketing Officer for Jive Software (enterprise collaboration software), in his personal blog Go Big Always gives Forrester a B and Gartner a C- in Gartner and Forrester’s Report Card (so far). [...]

New feature - SageCircle’s Analyst Twitter Directory

Because analyst Twitter handles are not always obvious, SageCircle has created a directory of analyst Twitter addresses. You can find it in the left nav bar under “Pages.”
If you know of other analysts that are Twittering, please send their addresses to carter [at] sagecircle dot com.
Related posts:

Newbie’s Guide to Twitter

Adding Twitter or other micro blogging tools to [...]

AR managers do not like surprises, which mean they are a little annoyed at blogging analysts

Obviously SageCircle is a big proponent of social media and the potential for positive impact on the analyst ecosystem. However, that view is not shared by all AR professionals. I recently had an interesting conversation with an AR manager who was more than a little irritated with major firm analysts who blog. Are these normal [...]

Because analysts are increasingly using blogs as development platforms, AR has to participate to be part of the conversation

Over the weekend in a Twitter exchange, AMR Research’s Phil Fersht (Twitter, blog) told me he “uses blogging to cultivate ideas for research.” In addition, Phil said that he uses “it as a networking tool to attract and influence users.”
For AR managers who have Phil on their analyst lists - and any outsourcing vendor should [...]

Blogs as part of the AR tool box — Is there a chicken-or-egg issue?

While blogs have been around for a number of years, they are seldom used by communications and IT vendor analyst relations (AR) teams*. I have found only Adobe, Cisco, HP, IBM** and Sun. This is too bad because blogs can be a valuable tool for communicating certain types of information in a less formal manner.
Now [...]

Challenges for Analyst Relations in 2008 – part two

Last week in Part One we summarized some of the issues noted in our survey on LinkedIn asking what people felt were the biggest challenges that AR will have in 2008?  Last week’s list focused on the traditional problems that AR teams always face.  Today we look at some new areas of concern.
Return on AR Investment
While [...]

Adding Twitter or other micro blogging tools to the AR tool box

Analyst relations (AR) has a number of tools available for interacting with the IT industry analysts ranging from prehistoric-based face-to-face meetings to the 19th century telephone to the 21st century TelePresence by Cisco. Social media (e.g., blogs, communities, wikis and so on) represents just the latest technology to come along to enhance the AR interaction [...]

Introducing SageCircle’s Fog of Influence

(Editor’s Note: A draft of the Fog of Influence graphic has been replaced with the final version. 2/4/08 12:50 pm PT)
It used to be so simple to identify the influencers of technology deals in those idyllic days of yore. IT managers would talk to the IT advisory analysts, read the IT trade press, listen to [...]

Speed versus silence on the Microsoft-Yahoo announcement and the implications for Analyst Relations and the Press

It has been interesting seeing the different responses to the Microsoft-Yahoo announcement. For example, as of 10:15 US Pacific Time:

Redmonk’s James Governor on his Monkchips has an interesting post, plus James has been Twittering
Forrester has commentary from three analysts (Rob, Charlene and Shar) on three blogs, each with a unique point-of-view
Rob Enderle has weighed in on the [...]

Kudos to Forrester for having bloggers that post frequently and share the “good stuff”

Seeing how I threw brickbats at Forrester in Will established analyst firms become dinosaurs to the new media-oriented analysts? it is only fair that I throw a bouquet as well.
All of the Forrester blogs (see the “Firm or Analyst Blogs I Read” list on the right) are consistently active with good content. These are not teases [...]

Jeremiah Owyang interviews SageCircle’s Carter Lusher

Forrester analyst and Web Strategy blogger extraordinaire Jeremiah Owyang interviewed your humble correspondent at Buck’s of Woodside on the topic of the industry analysts and social media. Here is the video, but you should also visit the post for the commentary and comments.
 Video: Why Social Media scares the Analyst Industry (3 min with Carter Lusher) [...]

AR teams should ask their analysts about their uses of social media

In Why social media scares the analyst firms and vendor AR teams, we pointed out that social media was here to stay and that analysts and AR can’t hope for it fade away as a fad. In fact, AR teams that have yet to start experimenting with social media (e.g., blogs, social networks, microblogging, et cetera) [...]

New Newbie’s Guide to Twitter

Tip o’ hat to Forrester analyst and prolific blogger Jeremiah Owyang for the tip about The Newbie’s Guide to Twitter. Of course, he tweeted it and because I follow him I saw it.
 
If you have not checked into microblogging yet, playing with Twitter is not a bad idea.  I’m starting to use it as a research tool and [...]

Why social media scares the analyst firms and vendor AR teams

Isn’t it ironic that the CIT (communications and IT) analyst firms and the vendor AR teams are often lagging adopters of new technology and techniques when it comes to doing their jobs? Social media, aka Web 2.0, like blogs, social networks, microblogging and the like offer great opportunities for the CIT analyst firms and the [...]