Today at the 2010 KC/IABC Business Communicators Summit, Spiral16’s Phil Ocampo and Alex Midgley presented a breakout session on the value of social network visualizations to businesses.

Thanks to the KC/IABC for inviting us–it was a lively session and Phil and Alex walked everyone through a 3D visual map of the Conan vs. Leno insight we ran just recently. If you were there, you got to see a 3D social media visualization in action. (If you go to the Conan/Leno blog, you can get interactive with it on the website as well.)

Phil and Alex also demonstrated how social network visualizations can be applied to offline data sets by delving into a 3D visualization of quick service restaurant (QSR) customer surveys from different store locations.

Here’s the session description and the PowerPoint from the presentation below:

You’ve seen the graphics—a cluster of colored spheres with seemingly random connections between them, spread out in empty space like a spider’s web. In actuality, it’s not random at all, but a 3D visual map of the links between the key influencers on the Internet talking about your brand. This session will help you understand how to identify the most influential conversations, measure the brand reach of a message, and understand where positive and negative “hot spots” are within your ecosystem. Before you engage with key influencers, you have to first determine how to prioritize your engagement opportunities, and visual mapping is a great place to start.