Archive for the 'Resources' Category

Monday, December 15

Bookmark and Share
Case Study: The Ugly Sweater Party

Photos by Zachary Cobb

Often times I hear “so your software is just for big businesses, right?” And then my brain explodes.

No! Spark’s capabilities are very diverse. It can work many different ways for many different purposes, from the largest corporation to… let’s say… small local charity benefits.

Oh wow - I just planned a small local charity benefit in Kansas City. Weird coincidence.

The Ugly Christmas Sweater Party began as a keg party amongst friends at the University of Kansas four years ago, and this year we turned it into a benefit for Operation Breakthrough. Because we wanted the money to stay in KC, nearly everything at the party was from a local business (venue, beer, auction items… even the ice luge).

For this case study, I used Spark to point out our strengths and weaknesses in marketing the Ugly Christmas Sweater Party. I want to show the benefits of using Spark on a smaller scale.

Node Categories

More than 77 percent of the Ecosystem consists of blogs and social networks.

More than 77 percent of the Ecosystem consists of blogs and social networks.

Knowing that KC has a strong social media community, Ramsey and I used our online influence to spread word about the benefit.

We focused on sites like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and our personal blogs, which is why the Blog and Social Network categories make up over 77 percent of this Ecosystem.

Next year, we should expand the “News” area. The benefit was a hit, but we could create more demand if we had put together an official media release package. I noticed that one of the news organizations that mentioned the party didn’t even know our Web site… which was the only place to purchase tickets. That’s a big weakness I discovered through Spark.

Semantic Cloud

The Semantic Cloud lists the most popular words on all of the Nodes in an Ecosystem. The words in large font are used most frequently.

The 100 most frequently used words in the Ecosystem.

The 100 most frequently used words in the Ecosystem.

According to the Semantic Cloud, we didn’t mention our beneficiary enough. Operation Breakthrough doesn’t appear anywhere on the list of the top 100 words. Neither does our venue, Tower Tavern.

Some words I do like are:

  • Benefit
  • Community
  • Donation
  • Giving
  • Helping
  • KU (go Jayhawks!)
  • Poverty

Next year we should reword every Tweet and blog post. The data shows me we didn’t effectively communicate the purpose behind the benefit.

Sentiment

Only a few people have posted reviews of the party, but they were all “Very Positive.” I remembered running into one local blogger who wrote about the party:

“If I knew the date for KC Sweater Party, I would mark it on my calendar right now. It was such a blast, and awesome knowing that all the money went to Operation Breakthrough - I think it was over $5k that was raised. Incredible.”

Virtualization

Since October 1, 2008, there have been over 180 mentions of the party online. Of those 180 Nodes, 56 are linking directly to the Web site for the party (created by Digital Evolution Group).

Watch the video below to watch Spark visualize these connections.

This was the first year for this party as a benefit, and it was a smashing success. Tickets were beyond sold out and we raised thousands of dollars for Operation Breakthrough. Next year, we can use this information to improve our planning and marketing strategies and raise more money for the organization.

Engage with us to learn about getting this type of data for your company.

Published
by  
whitney
 
on December 15, 2008
in Case Studies, Content Of Interest, Resources and Shared Content
. 0 Comments
Wednesday, December 10

Bookmark and Share
Case Study: Ohhh sweet blog of miiiine

Disclaimer: The following blog post contains some language that may be offensive to some readers. Because our software does not filter profanity… and this case study is on Guns N’ Roses… a few four-letter words are part of the research.

******

When Guns N’ Roses began working on their latest album, Chinese Democracy, I was 10 years old.

It was also the year that Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were murdered, Tony Blair became Prime Minister of Great Britain and the Buffalo Bills were in the Super Bowl (whaa?)

It was 1994.

Their fans have been waiting over half of my life for this CD, so it seemed like an obvious choice for a case study. The hardest-rocking-turned-up-to-11 case study ever. I wanted to see what fans were actually saying about an album that was practically an urban myth until Nov. 23, 2008.

I’m also going to try and use as many bad GNR puns as possible… so have a little paaayyyshunce… yeaaaah (cue whistling). That’s one.

Keep in mind that this case study is a sampling of information. I pulled in 137 Nodes (separate Web pages) mentioning Chinese Democracy using a few different queries. While not scientific, I feel it’s an accurate representation of what’s out there.

Live and Let Pie

To the right is our Relative Insight Scenario Spread chart. It breaks down the types of Nodes in the Ecosystem into categories. In this case, a wide variety of categories are represented with various percentages.

Everyone is talking about Chinese Democracy. From legit news organizations and music magazines to random forums, blogs and social networks.

If Axl wanted plenty of attention for waiting Dakota Fanning’s lifespan to release this project - he got it.

The two largest categories - Reviews and Social Networks - contain the bulk of the sentiment, or positive or negative reactions to the album (we’ll get to that in a minute). Nodes in these categories represent sites like Twitter, MySpace, personal blog reviews and professional critics.

P.S. Live and Let Pie! Get it? Like Live and Let Die but it’s a pie chart! No? Mmmk…

Tagxl Rose

The Semantic Cloud lets you see the language that people are using to talk about your company or product. The cloud consists of the most popular words found on the Nodes in an Ecosystem.

The most frequently used words have largest font. It’s basically a giant tag cloud (hence Tagxl Rose - props to my friend Ryan for coming up with that one.)

Our software does not censor or filter out profanity. Though it can be offensive, it can also be valuable - especially when you’re talking rock. Judging by this cloud, there are some pretty strong feelings about Chinese Democracy.

It’s worth noting that former GNR guitarists Slash (1985-1996) and Buckethead (2000-2004) are mentioned on 61 of the 137 Nodes. What’s interesting to me is that Slash is mentioned more frequently than Buckethead, yet he doesn’t play on the album.

Where the Nodes are green and the girls are pretty

What is a rock album without reviews? That’s where Spark could be invaluable to recording artists.

Spark brought back relevant reviews from professional critics, but also from personal blogs, forum comments and Twitter “reviews.”

While Chinese Democracy had a reputation for being a monumental disappointment, the Nodes that Spark found showed an equal number of people either really loved or really hated the album. Maybe the positive reviews weren’t reaching the right people?

I have to admit some of the negative reviews were creative. One of my favorites:

The idea that “Chinese Democracy” had actually been released was like finding a unicorn in the middle of the woods. But upon closer inspection, the unicorn was nothing more then a donkey with a pine cone atop its head.

Another fav:

This is the mythical burrito microwaved by God that’s so hot, God Himself cannot eat it.

Virtualization

Finally, take a look at how the Chinese Democracy Ecosystem grows in Spark’s Virtualization engine. This is a 3D, interactive map of the Ecosystem. Here are a few guidelines:

  • Each dot represents a single Node in the Ecosystem.
  • Red and green dots are negative and positive sentiment, respectively.
  • Lines connecting the Nodes are pages that link to each other. Most of the connections you see are to the GNR MySpace and fan pages.

Chinese Democracy was easily one of the most anticipated rock albums ever, but judging by this data, GNR didn’t take advantage of social media to expand their fan base. After all, teens with buying power weren’t even born when they released their last album.

Want this type of data for your company? Engage with Spiral16.

Published
by  
whitney
 
on December 10, 2008
in Case Studies, Content Of Interest, Resources and Shared Content
. 0 Comments
Wednesday, November 5

Bookmark and Share
What did you Google yesterday?

If you’re sick of election posts… sorry. It’s all anyone is talking about today (other than Kansas State coach Ron Prince ain’t welcome no mo after Kansas destroyed his team last weekend).

Chances are you Googled something on Tuesday’s Hot Trends list. Google put together three blog posts (one, two, three) on the top searches for election day. Trends shifted throughout the day (from polling locations to exit poll results).

Here are some interesting trends, according to Whitney:

  • The Huffington Post and FiveThirtyEight.com were two of the top political news outlets of the day. I wonder what will happen to the Huff’s traffic now that the election is ovah.
  • Chuck Norris and Tina Fey were in the top names searched (including Obama, McCain, Palin, Bristol Palin and Colin Powell)
  • Comedy Central’s Indecision 2008 was ranked among the major news networks.
  • Chicago-area residents searched for Metra Schedule information - maybe to get to that ginormous party in Grant Park. I know from experience that you always want to check the train schedule before you leave the house…
  • Toward midnight President Obama, Proposition 8 and CNN’s hologram technology were popular searches - as well as Obama jokes. :)
Published
by  
whitney
 
on November 5, 2008
in Industry Buzz, Resources and Shared Content
. 1 Comment
Tuesday, November 4

Bookmark and Share
Online Election Resources

Plenty of sites have some cool resources for today’s election. There are a LOT of goodies out there, but I’m going to keep my list short:

FiveThirtyEight.com - Named after the amount of electors in the electoral college, this Web site’s mission is to bring users accurate election projections based on weighted poll data. Read more about them and what they do in their FAQ section.

Twitter Vote Report - The idea behind this is to use Twitter’s technology to amass a real-time report of all things election (wait times, poll problems, etc.) It includes an interactive map of Tweets across the country. Learn more about it and watch their YouTube video.

Nuts and Bolts of Election Results (MSNBC) - Learn what it takes to call a state, why it takes so long and how the news organization gets their information.

CNN, Current TV and NPR have great, interactive election centers. Check out all three.

MyFoxKC.com - If you’re local (meaning in Kansas City) check out the FOX 4 Web site. They have a lot of information, video and linkage. Downside? The site takes awhile to load. Slow connections beware.

Ellyn’s Delicious List - My friend Ellyn works at the Poynter Institute in Florida. She is building a great list of election resources.

If I missed one you think is worthy, leave it in the comments!

Published
by  
whitney
 
on November 4, 2008
in Resources
. 0 Comments

Bookmark and Share
Best Practice: Video Your Vote

I got my free cup of coffee for wearing my sticker. :)

I got my free cup of coffee for wearing my sticker. :)

Happy election day, America! The office is quiet this morning - I hope everyone is out voting. I voted early last week. You can watch my video blog here.

Speaking of video blogs… today’s best practice comes to us from PBS and YouTube.

VideoYourVote lets users upload v-blogs of their voting experience. They even provide basic guidelines for amateur v-bloggers.

Entries must include the following information:

  • Name
  • Location (City, State, County and Precinct)
  • Date, City (in map options)
  • “videoyourvote” tag included
  • “pollproblem” tag included (if you experienced poll problems)

If you’re wearing your “I Voted” sticker, you can get rake in some swag at a few national/local food/bev chains:

  • Starbucks - free tall brew
  • Ben & Jerry’s - free scoop from 5-8 p.m.
  • Chick-fil-A - free chikn sandwich
  • Krispy Kreme - free “patriotic” donut
  • McCoy’s - free McCoy’s beer (in Westport)
  • The Roasterie - free cup of coffee (in Brookside) Hat tip to kcsponge

Learn more about voting sticker swag on MyFoxKC.com

Published
by  
whitney
 
on November 4, 2008
in Industry Buzz, Outside the Office and Resources
. 0 Comments
Monday, November 3

Bookmark and Share
Case Study: AMC Fork & Screen

Recently Kansas City-based company AMC Theatres invited a group of local bloggers to experience their brand new Fork & Screen concept in Olathe, Kan.

AMC’s social media man, Justin Gardner, sent out preliminary invitations to bloggers via Twitter. Those who responded received invites to the event. Shooting video and pictures was encouraged as the bloggers were given a VIP tour of the new facilities.

The obvious goal was to generate local buzz a few days before the theater’s grand opening on Halloween.

I began an Insight on the Fork & Screen the day after the event. Since Spark can look back in time, I was able to pull in Nodes dating back to early summer 2008. The queries (search terms) I used looked for Nodes that specifically mentioned the Olathe Fork & Screen.

The day before the event, only 34 Nodes (Web sites) mentioned Fork & Screen. Daily growth in the few days following the event was staggering. This data comes from the Node Aggregation chart:

•    24 hours: 54 percent, 73 Nodes
•    48 hours: 61 percent, 93 Nodes
•    72 hours: 76 percent, 155 Nodes

From October 28 to November 2, the Ecosystem grew 80 percent to 168 Nodes.

Using the Relative Insight Scenario Spread, you can see the bulk of the Ecosystem’s growth comes from social technology Web sites:

These categories combined make up 66.67 percent of the Ecosystem – and they are all sites where users can have conversations and exchange and share user-generated content.

It’s worth mentioning that 26.1 percent of the Ecosystem is made up of News Web sites. After drilling down into the results, I discovered most of these sites use a set of AP articles (most likely taken directly off the wire).

Compare the blog and social network activity the day before the event to 48 hours after. UGC exploded as soon as the bloggers could get home to their computers. Some didn’t even wait that long, sending out Tweets right from the theater.

On the left is the AMC Ecosystem the day before their blog....

On the left are the blog and social network Web sites mentioning "Fork & Screen" the day before their blogger event. On the right are the blogs and social networks 48 hours after the event. Click the image to get a larger view.

Watch the embedded video to see the Ecosystem grow using our Virtualization tool. The large bursts of Node activity come in the few days following the blogger tour.

Two other pieces of information tell me that AMC’s attempt at combining a “real world” activity with the digital world was successful.

First, AMC Web sites and press releases only make up 8.91 percent of the total Ecosystem. Second, the overall sentiment in the Ecosystem is overwhelmingly positive.

If you look at the Conversation Sentiment Spread graph, it shows that only 7.7 percent of the conversations that registered sentiment were neutral or negative.

Based on these percentages (company sites and press releases vs. social technology sites), AMC’s one-night investment was returned with a 750 percent growth in positive online buzz.

Only 7.7 percent of the comments for AMC Fork & Screen were neutral or negative.

Only 7.7 percent of the comments for AMC Fork & Screen were neutral or negative.

If AMC wants to keep up the good WOM, I would suggest reaching out to the bloggers once in awhile. Keep the relationships friendly, and they’ll see more positive return on influence.

Want this type of data for your company? Contact us for a demo.

Published
by  
whitney
 
on November 3, 2008
in Case Studies, Content Of Interest, Industry Buzz, Resources and Shared Content
. 2 Comments

Bookmark and Share
Justify interactive marketing (during tough times)

According to Forrester research, marketers expect to cut 3 percent from their marketing budgets while the economy is in the trash.

Forrester recently sent out an e-mail with reports on how to justify online reasearch and marketing initiatives during budget cuts. Check any of these links to get information on metrics measurement, channels, B2B, etc.

Picking the right metrics:

Channel-specific measurements:

Putting interactive marketing in a business context:

Published
by  
whitney
 
on November 3, 2008
in Industry Buzz and Resources
. 1 Comment
Wednesday, October 22

Bookmark and Share
Introduction to data: What is database marketing?

Here is an interesting POV from one of the big ad agencies, Wunderman. I have met many of the people in this video so it’s nice to see the faces again. They could certainly benefit from our Spark platform, because of its versatility and convenience (a data agnostic SaaS).

This makes our software flexible, dynamic and an easy up-sell to agencies that understand the value data can provide for brand and creative briefs and mass intelligence.

It makes sense that many interested parties come from the advertising sector.

Client-facing, data-flexible business intelligence in near-real time will enhance any agency’s marketing.

Engage with Spiral16 to see Spark’s usability.

Published
by  
stuart
 
on October 22, 2008
in Industry Buzz and Resources
. 0 Comments
Monday, October 20

Bookmark and Share
Social technology activity skyrockets in ‘08

Forrester’s 2008 Social Technologies Data shows something alarming: 75 percent of U.S. Internet users participate in social technology. This up from 56 percent in 2007.

Another interesting note is that actual amount of creators (people creating original content on the Web) grew slightly from 18-21 percent. So while there aren’t as many people making noise, there are more people listening.

Where is this growth coming from? Not the college-aged or 20-something crowd you’d expect. It’s the 35-44 year-old group. Activity is even up among the 45-54 year-olds.

If you’re not seriously investing in social media… this proves you should be.

UPDATE: Adweek caught on to this research, too. More proof that social media isn’t going away.

Forrester Social Technologies Data 2008

Forrester Social Technologies Data 2008

Published
by  
whitney
 
on October 20, 2008
in Content Of Interest, Industry Buzz and Resources
. 0 Comments

Bookmark and Share
Viral video tracking made easier

See viral video views by date on the site details page.

See viral video views by date on the site details page.

A new study from The Feed Company out of Hollywood concludes that 70 percent of agencies will increase spending on viral videos, but benchmarks of their success remain vague.

Different companies have different ways for defining success for separate campaigns.

For example, 250,000 views may be a success for one campaign while a million is the goal for another.

This is a good real-world example of another theme of the CMSummit I recently attended - does the industry need standardized metrics?

Dashboards can be too complicated and give analysts too much information. Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester, compared it to looking at your car dashboard for directions, when all you need is a GPS system to get you to your destination.

Spark makes tracking viral video much easier by pulling in viral video statistics right into the software - you don’t have to search for them.

Spark makes tracking viral videos visual and relatively click-free.

Spark makes tracking viral videos visual and relatively click-free.

We pull in info like views by date, comments, screen shots and all of the sites linking to your video.

Measuring viral success isn’t always about clicks. Think about things like engagement and influence.

Using the information that Spark pulls in to your advantage can extend the life of a viral video, or show you new opportunities to begin conversations and relationships with your audience.

Published
by  
whitney
 
on October 20, 2008
in Industry Buzz and Resources
. 0 Comments