With industry analysts continuing to sign up for Twitter handles – we have added 67 names in last two weeks – we thought it was time to do a quick refresher on how analysts are using Twitter.
A significant example you should read is Gartner analyst Jeffrey Mann discussing why he uses Twitter in his blog post Why I Tweet. In a very short post, Jeff covers a lot of ground in terms of the value he gets from Twitter. Here is a killer extract from that post: “I have used it to test out ideas that eventually make their way into this blog or my more formal research notes.” Hmm, that says to me that any AR team that deals with Jeffrey needs to part of that conversation. How many other analysts are doing the same thing? Have you done an inquiry with your key analysts?
Listed below are some tweets that we believe illustrate well the different uses of Twitter by the analysts. Each shows the value of AR teams being on Twitter and following analysts.
EXAMPLE: Analyst discussing customer information after I tweeted a question to his comment about the customer presentations at a vendor event. This shows a quick and easy dialog finding out what sort of information the analyst prefers
rwang0 Hearing some very industry specific and solution focused customer presentations at the Progress Software event
rwang0 @carterlusher customers who present their problem, how the tech addressed the solution, & what was the business and tech benefits are best
EXAMPLE: Journalist asking analyst about a vendor announcement. This could signal that the journalist might have a formal interview with the analyst later.
charlesarthur @monkchips ask them if they have a mezzanine solution going forward
EXAMPLE: Analyst noting an AR tactic during a competitor’s announcement and a few follow up tweets.
monkchips interesting use of twitter by HP AR. trying to injecting HP messaging into an IBM event- http://tinyurl.com/amujat http://tinyurl.com/as7lk2
monkchips i found it cheeky and funny, and fair enough. if i want to use twitter to open up events, it has to be to AR too. More vectors
Here is the HP AR professional commenting on the competitor’s reaction
EdGemmell COOL – IBM PR is now following me after my one-man guerilla-twitter campaign to hi-jack their labs day yesterday – hello big blue
EXAMPLE: Analyst noting an end-user client event or inquiry. Each of these should be the trigger for a vendor’s inquiry to get more information.
MarkRaskino CIO Forum in Palm Springs coming to an end. Lots of interesting conversations about business, restructuring and what IT leaders do next. 2:26 PM Jan 27th from web
vendorprisey client call coming up on mid-market UK HR systems.
jowyang Listening to a client at a large media firm RANT about Sharpoint’s user interface. Sometimes my job is just to listen and understand.
rwang0 Assisting a public sector city with their ERP vendor project progress. Who should they use for EAM, MDM, and integration?… stay tuned.
EXAMPLE: Analyst talking about their work, vendor briefing, or research agenda. Each of these could be calls to action for AR. The MQ ones could be critical for a company not on the Gartner radar.
vendorprisey: planning the e-recruitment magic quadrant next week.
cote Taking a briefing from these guys: http://www.sqlstream.com/
bitterer: Kicked off update process for the Gartner Data Quality Tools Magic Quadrant. If we have missed your company in the past, let me know.
jeffmann About to hear from one of my favourite UCC vendors
mfauscette working on a presentation for next week’s predictions breakfast briefing
jowyang Anyone here work in PR or AR at McKinsey, Bain, or Accenture? I’d like to request a interview for research report jowyang @ forrester.com
bitterer BI folks: Who can tell me anything about this BI company: SeQueL BI Solutions Inc., http://sequelbi.com/ 🙂
SageCircle Technique:
- Because of Twitter’s zero startup cost, reasonable learning curve, and nearly zero switching costs, AR teams should jump in and start a pilot project to experiment as described in Adding Twitter or other micro blogging tools to the AR toolbox.
- Because every analyst is a unique individual, the most important task is to Ask your analysts about their current and potential uses of social media to build an understanding of how they might like Twitter used to interact with them
Bottom Line: Social media continues to grow and evolve and so has how it might be used in the context of the analyst ecosystem. The best way to learn is to just start playing with the various forms to see how they might fit into your daily routine.
Question: Do you Twitter? If no, why not? If yes, how does it fit into your job?
Do you need to create an AR strategic and tactical plan that incorporates social media? Are you thinking about experimenting with social media? SageCircle can Help – Social media represents new opportunities and challenges to AR teams. SageCircle can help AR teams by:
- Saving time – while you can learn about Twitter through trial-and-error and reading articles, SageCircle’s AR Briefing: Twitter for AR can get you up-to-speed in a fraction of the time
- Providing on-site or distance learning sessions to get AR teams up to speed on social media and how it might be adopted
- Acting as a sounding board as you brainstorm how to add social media to the AR tool box
- Advising on how to develop a pilot program to experiment with social media
- Playing the role of analyst in social media experiments and providing critiques of how the experiment went
- Through our AR Plan Builder workshop, strategists can help create AR plans that incorporate social media
Call 503-636-1500 or e-mail info (at) sagecircle dot com for more information. Also follow Carter’s commentary www.twitter.com/carterlusher and Dave’s at www.twitter.com/daveeckert to get a feel for how information is now being transmitted using micro-blogging.
Building a Community 