Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, Intelegia develops and implements marketing and communication strategies leveraging social media in support of economic development, tourism, industry and finance. Intelegia also develops strategies to attract and retain talent and capital investment. With its key expertise in social media, it successfully contributed to communities winning top prizes at the Economic Developers Association of Canada (EDAC) annual awards. Intelegia provides training in North America and in Europe on online marketing research, strategic analysis techniques and the use of social media in marketing and communications. Contact Intelegia
TODAY
I agree Ian the stats don’t look good – and remember that in Bee colony – about 75% of the bees operate as ‘conformity enforcers’ that is they go where the honey is known to be(if you will pardon the pun) while a measly 3-4% operate as ‘diversity generators’ – they explore the environment for new honey sites with no garentee of success. However they still get fed by the hive, because the collaborative intelligence that exists within the colony, knows that eventually they will discover new honey sources before the present patchs are exhausted. Clever eh? This research is related in Howard Bloom’s ‘The Global Brain’ which I would recommend highly to anyone intersted in how ‘Group IQ’ operates.
Wich “simple web monitoring applications” are you refering to ? Can you give some samples of professionnal price monitoring tools ?
I think you’re right. And as an example, I received an offer by the Energy Industry Today group that offers : “one daily e-mail that contains an unmatched selection of human-edited top stories”. That is, in my opinion, a strong selling argument.
True enough. I think what I failed to stressed in the post is the value added analysis process included in the collection phase. The results from the analysis process should be correspond to the established KITs. I somewhat doubt that any applications will have the capabilities to understand a company’s KITs in the near future.
Excellent post Isabelle,
I couldn’t agree more with your point and your example.
First the point:
The advent of web 2.0 is no smaller (or threatening to other media) than the advent TV. Politicians, companies and interest groups that adapted well to the new media excelled, others lost out. The televised debate between Kennedy and Nixon in 1960, where Nixon chose not to apply makeup and adapt to the new medium is a prime example.
The example:
LNG terminals are an excellent example of how web 2.0 tools and thinking could help mediate controversy around these strategic, but very controversial installations. I spent the better part of the lunch hour speaking with Gaz Metro people about this very subject.
We have an LNG study around the LNG industry in Québec and see exactly some of the issues you mention here.
Looking forward to discussing this further.
On blogs an locks. First, cheers when blogs help mediate controversy. Better late than never. And better still. They can (and should) help build open public debates. In conjunction with other tools, they DO help build consensus and prevent acrimonious controversy. It happened in Baja California about what… A LNG terminal!
Second about “a natural”. Let’s be positive. Sustainability is a young work in progress which has a long, long way to go. May blogs help unlock its doors!
This is really a super post. So much of the real success of sustainability – at least from a business perspective – is listening. As information and transparency reach every corner of the planet, business’s ignore web 2.0 at their peril.
This Northern Lights Mining Network certainly is the ‘buzz’ word in Labrador West and, we anticipate, for Northern Canada. As isolated communities, leaders in cold climate industry, and the challenges of remote living and working it is vital for the success of rural economic development that social media platforms such as this network be put in place and used. It is the way of the future. It is a way that rural Newfoundland and Labrador and rural Canada will be able to successfully compete on the world market!
Thank you to E & B Data, and subsequently Intelegia for their efforts on creating this opportunity for Labrador West!
Great article Ian !
really interesting post !
Ian, the link to your Twitter ID is not working. Isabel’s takes me right to her, but your link just takes me to my own homepage… Just http://twitter.com
You might want to repost it, because I’d LOVE to follow you. I’ve been reading your articles since Competia days.
Mark Johnson
Hi Isabelle,
Read your article, signed up with Ping.fm. What a great idea and thanks for sharing this information! It will make life alot easier for everyone with so many social media sites to manage.
Linda
Congratulations on this research! Love the report and findings! I will certainly be sharing this with my clients.
Thank you for your review.
Darren Culbreath
CTO, Samepoint.com
Try guiGoog — A simple Graphical User Interface for Google Advanced Search. Enjoy!
stay tuned for a new release and new URL in November 2009.
GG
-
Isabelle, I had read the report and written about when it first came out.
My concern is that 1] there can be a misalignment of goals between companies and venture capital investors – growth and sustainability vs. exit at a profit and 2] if many of the most successful investments are being sold off to foreign investors then we are simply growing guppies to feed the sharks; of the “best deal” awards each year for the past 5 years by the CVCA, four resulted in foreign takeovers of Canadian companies.
We do need to build more Canadian-headquartered companies that go on to become major players in their fields.
Thanks Isabelle for the reminder!
Regards,
Dean Whittaker
i do Social Media Marketing specially when promoting a new website or an affiliate product. Social media is more effective than offline advertising in my opinion.
We do see this marketing strategy more and more. In my case I don’t promote anything but I do google everything I’m about to buy and I love it when people leave comment on the product or store itself, it’s a great insight.
Here’s one from Rochester, NY
neat! I heard about the University of Rochester, their economic department is well known among econ students from Concordia University.
Thanks Thomas. The video is very well done. I am amazed how they were able to fit everything in.
To a great extent I have been ignoring Web 2 but having read your very interesting Blog I think that is definitely about to change. Thanks for sharing this with us. I plan to start practicing defensive competitive intelligence.
Thanks for the comment Carl. Always be aware of what is available on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. It is not about controlling what is being said but knowing what is posted. about
Thanks for the great article. Here’s another from Nova Scotia, Canada
http://www.youtube.com/user/novascotiabusiness
Thank you Heather. I am looking forward to sharing the clip with the readers of Tools For Thought.
You can also see Mexico City twitter applications at http://twitter.com/GobiernoDF
And of couse is linked with a Facebook profile:
http://www.facebook.com/GobiernoDF
Thanks for the article Ian. In terms of how well Youtube does for us, at NSBI we don’t rely on it exclusively to reach site selectors, but push relevant traffic to it through other social media and online marketing activity. Our Youtube stats confirm that the majority of views are coming from links, emails and embedded players. We are seeing returns in terms of awareness and connections. Can’t beat the ROI.
Thanks for promoting this idea. I think that the shorter videos are better suited to site selectors, think “elevator” speech. Say in under a minute and drive them to your website for more information.
Thanks for the comment. Some videos are longer because matching words with dynamic images is more “sexy” than having individuals downloading a dry brochure in .pdf.
I bookmarked your site, this is very useful, thank you. Please check mine : crm – customer resource management
hello. I’m french so i don’t understand all the sentences but in french i can say “yep ! votre blog est tres cool”
I hope that french people become like you !
Nice article found your site searching in aol I think you could have taken a more neutral view.
Some great ideas here — thanks so much! We’ll start sprucing up our page http://www.facebook.com/thrivenc.
Sarah, you have a nice Facebook Fan page. It is stocked with tons of information. Keep up the good work.
Bobby,
Tu peux lire, “Des Outils et Des Hommes” le blogue de mes collègues.
http://intelegia.com/centremedia/des_outils_et_des_hommes/
Calum, Thank you for your comments. Please under that the post was written from a “best practices” perspective.
Great story! Being a marketing specialist for our local economic development organization, and utilizing social media to supplement marketing efforts, it is sometimes a challenge to communicate the benefits of social media to our industry. It is very interesting that there were 396 searches for economic development! It proves that there is a demand, and that I am on the right track. Thanks for sharing this story
Nice article. As a firm who assists economic development organizations with social media strategies, I would add to the list of Strategic intelligence items-
1. Capabilities of the economic development organization itself
2. News/events specific to the intended audience
Thanks,
Mark J. James, CEcD
mark.james@solutionsED.com
@Lindsey,
It is always difficult to the “buy-in” for something relatively new such as using social networks for economic development. The practical thing to do is to present real life cases from around the world. It is our goal to showcase the best practices of economic development 2.0 strategies on this blogé
@Mark,
Thank you for your feedback and recommendations.
Ian
Hey Ian!
Thanks for the great write up about Thoora.com
if you have any questions or ever want to chat with someone here please feel free to drop me a line!
All the best,
Saul Colt
Head of Magic
Thoora.com
Happy to find out the great visibility that will be given to the Mauricie region with our combined presence over the Internet ! Congratulations to you all for taking the Web 2.0 turn. Hoping for further collaboration !
Gabriel,
I completely agree with your comments. No doubt that social media will put Mauricie on the map for great things ahead.
Definitely!
I was wondering about what is best in this case. I know for a fact that seeing french posts in a tweet stream will scare away Americans…even spanish can be a little iffy…
So if the American market is of interest, shouldn’t one really create one account per language…this way streams are not polluted and made difficult to search…Search is another issue with multi-language streams…
Only in Quebec do we ponder about those things…
Serge,
Thank you for your comments. The Twitter feed should be considered best in class due to the multilingual aspect. We have seen through website benchmark studies that economic development agencies simply ignore that fact the investors need to have information in their own language.
You make a very good point about the multi-account approach however; it may prove to be a heavy task to manage three acounts at once.
Thank you for this great write-up on TipTop. We want to make the product better and better for all of its thousands of users. Please give us feedback as to how we can make it work even better for you. Thanks.
I’ve only been using Hootsuite for a week and I LOVE IT. The most convenient features include:
The ability to post medium-relevant updates across multiple sites. There’s nothing worse than seeing RTs and #hashtags in Facebook statuses. With Hootsuite, I can easily modify the message for the medium; setting up Twitter searches for micro social media monitoring on Twitter; scheduling updates…very convenient; the RT functionality and the stats.
Wish I could manage our Youtube account and LinkedIn Group…Hootsuite?
I came across your website 3 or 4 times, and I have got to say that I like it. Bookmarked it now, keep up the good work.
Olivia,
Thank you for your feedback. Let us know if there are any topics that you like us to cover.
Heather,
I’ll ask my colleague Aicha if there are any solutions to handle YouTube and LinkedIn.
This is the first article that I have seen get the nail on the head. This exactly the thing that “Squared” is (or should be) great at. I have been working on this problem for almost 14 years.
I am now on my second version of a tool to facilitate this activity. We need this not only in competitive Intelligence Research but life in general.
“Squared” is just getting started. There are many things that they can do to enhance this product. Like a better model for learning. It also needs a better method for identifying the best sites for the information.
I think slideshare is an absolutely incredible tool for businesses, and they simply are not utilizing it. It is a real cost savor because you can establish a web presence without knowing any HTML, with a little design-sense you can easily create a powerpoint presentation. I actually have a presentation up on my SlideShare about how small businesses can utilize the platform. If you are interested please check it out at:
http://www.slideshare.net/Webdesignhero/localized-small-business-marketing-with-slideshare
You can find more of my presentations and useful lessons at:
http://www.EricGoldman.name and http://www.WebDesignHero.com
Keep up the good posts, look forward to reading more.
Just wanted to write you a quick message saying thanks for the postings you’ve been putting up on Intelegia that offer new ways of collecting secondary intelligence. I’m a CI professional that conducts secondary research daily and the items you’ve been posting are mostly things I’ve never heard of or seen. I’ve always wondered where/how you find these tools before I get my hands on them. Either way, please continue to post because I know at least a dozen individuals that read and find use in your blog.
Congratulations Ian! I hope yo take the time to celebrate your 300th post. I am looking forward to reading the next 300!
If you couple google timeline with google maps you can have a very nice analysis of competitors.
A great strategic tip.
thank you for all the useful posts you’ve shared with us. One in particular, “google news timeline: helping to connect the dots”, help me a lot on a search I was doing…it’s as if you read my mind! Keep up the good work!
Nice looking blog. Thanks for the info.
I love your take on this, could not agree more.
Hello Ian,
I enjoy reading your posts.
What about adding SCIP’s LinkedIn group to your list? It has 3,770 members and is affiliated with SCIP, a non-profit association (Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals).
SCIP was established in 1986, and has chapters around the world, with individual members in nations around the globe. In addition, SCIP has alliance partnerships with independent affiliate organizations in many countries.
This LinkedIn group’s goal is to provide an open forum for the discussion of issues and questions concerning the practice of competitive intelligence and its related areas: technical intelligence, market intelligence, financial intelligence, economic intelligence, early warning, risk management, sales intelligence, strategic intelligence, environmental scanning, environmental scanning, and scientific intelligence.
Happy Monday,
Ellen
FYI there is also the groups “Market Intelligence Group” (Internationla), the “CPCI” (Portuguese Community of Competitive Intelligence), the “SCIP” (Society of Competitive Intelligence) as well as some other.
Hi Ellen,
Thank you for your suggestion. I will be doing a follow up at the end of this month and I will be sure to add it then.
Luis.
Thank you for the link to Portuguese Community of Competitive Intelligence.
Ian
I’d be interested in understanding Ontario’s objectives for this tool and if it also serves as an internal tool for Ontario businesses to grow and expand within the province.
How granular do site selectors get with data sets? Does showing uninterpreted individual community stats help site selectors or does it help to discount a location based solely on numbers? There seems to be a trend to move to GIS systems, but do they provide the most value for larger centres and do more harm than good for less dense jurisdictions?
Thank you for this great collection of interesting CI profiles! You might want to add @Nobicon to this Twitter list. We deliever CI solutions to Scandinavia.
Excellent post Ian, very useful, thanks. I have been looking for CI-only Twitter accounts for my CI list…
My Twitter page is also solely on CI:
@jeroenvanluik / http://twitter.com/jeroenvanluik
I post at http://twitter.com/Competia
Great initiative, Ian
I would also add @arikjohnson who is the leader behind @CI2020, @8of12, @ericgarland, @vectorgrpsvcs,@abeurschgens,@aponcier to name a few of my favorites.
Thanks for including me @EllenNaylor Cheers!
Ian,
Very interesting article on competitive intelligence through Microsoft AdLabs. I’ll have to check this out. It appears to be a very powerful tool based on your examples. Your blog has some really insightful posts. I’m going to bookmark your blog.
Dianne
Dianne,
Thank you for your feedback on the post and the blog. We plan to take a look other tools like Microsoft AdLabs in the future.
Cheers,
Ian
I always enjoy reading quality articles by an individual who is obviously up to snuff on their chosen subject. I’ll be watching this thread with great interest. Keep up the great work, I will be back
Interesting – the challenge with using these is always finding a way to have people engage each other. We built a community site at CREOpoint – and finally – post 2500 members started seeing people get interactive.
Thanks Brian for sharing this insight on CREOpoint. This community looks very dynamic.
Brian, Engaging members in an online community is always a challenge. I believe finding common ground on challenges is a good way to begin the engagement process with others.
I kind of agree with Heather. Any time that data are presented in a table – they need to be verified which is just more work.
The biggest challenge to a site like this is having and maintaining a living database of dynamic information. Census things are easy but not some others.
In the case of Ontario, the real estate database is provided by local real estate service providers. This is potentially a huge pitfall for a community because of the lack of integrity of this list. Is it complete? No.
if a search includes a desire for, say, a list of all available industrial facilities to certain specifications, and a property is not listed or it’s listing agent has not recorded the property, then a site selector will assume nothing is available and will move along.
I know that there are somewhere arounf 300 large vacant manufacturing plants in Southern Ontario. But only a very small number of these show up in a sarch of the site.
Thanks a lot for a pleasent read.
Good recap Ian. Lots of B2B marketers are facing this type of question, though it seems few are taking such the step to segment like this. And most of us don’t have the budgets of Dell. Other factors often complicate the question.
Would love to see more like this.
My quick reaction to this is that “social intelligence” is more of an understanding of what tools track the conversation about your relevant topic rather than a process to provide substantive analysis. “Listening to the conversation” may add some insight into your particular research topic, but competitive intelligence includes social intelligence in a multifaceted and comprehensive answer to research queries. I can’t, for instance, forsee a report that would be widely accepted as authoritative research on the topic that was produced soley from ‘social intelligence’ (except for retail and marketing areas).
As for the concept of social intelligence being the newest addition to the info pro’s toolkit, tracking op-eds and letters in small community newspapers has been a way to “listen to the conversation” for many years, the internet has simply opened up the conversation to anyone as it has for many other disciplines.
Just my .02 cents
Michelle Davidson
Finally, I located the information I was looking for. I have been doing research on this subject, and for two days I keep finding web-sites that are supposed to have what I am looking for, only to be discouraged with the lack of what I wanted. I wish I could have located your website sooner! I had about 25% of what I was looking for and your website has that, and the rest of what I need to finish my research. Thank you and keep up the good work!
I am from Centre-du-Quebec and it sure will put the mauricie on the map. The social media in the mauricie seem to be positive!
We are a very small (25,000) but fast growing community in southern Arizona. While residential growth has been significant, we know that we need to develop a local, diversified, and sustainable economy going forward and begin the creation of wealth with the recruitment of higher wage jobs and base industries. Since we are close to the Mexican border (40 miles) we also believe that having a Spanish translation for our website is important, in addition to other languages. Our challenge is accurate translation. What source for translation did you use for Virginia and are you happy with its accuracy?
Wow I am honored. When I began using twitter as a tool for Levelland Economic Development in 2008, I had no idea where it would lead. Today, I use it in a variety of ways.
1. Locally as more and more Levelland citizens begin using twitter I can connect them to the EDC and our mission. They get a real time feed that allows them to begin to see the big picture of what economic development is and everything it encompasses. They become a vested partner in making Levelland grow. This allows me to get buy in for various projects or activities the EDC is working on.
2. Twitter also allows me to track areas that Levelland as a community is succeeding or failing. By watching for negative and positive comments from visitors or citizens I can help local businesses respond and make changes that will create a better experience for people while in Levelland. People must first love Levelland before they will decide to invest in Levelland. Through our twitter feed I can help manage our brands image on a much broader scale.
3. Then of course twitter allows me to watch industry conversations taking place about our target industries. Once I find these conversations taking place I can join those conversations by offering insights and comments via twitter all the while building brand awareness about Levelland. Basically I treat twitter as one big cocktail social event. I would never walk into a networking event and try to begin relationships by yelling about what Levelland has to offer. No, I simply begin listening to various conversations and when the time was right introduce myself and make comments or observations. By not worrying what results I am going to get from the time and effort I believe Levelland can benefit from becoming known as a place where we care more about others than we do ourselves. And, in the end I believe companies will reward this approach. If not by investing in our community than by telling their friends and colleagues about us and suggesting they give us a look.
This may all seem a little simple minded but I believe if you truly care about making a positive difference in the world without regard to who gets credit or who benefits, then as a person and as an organization you will be successful. It may not happen overnight, but it will happen. Thanks Intelegia for taking the time to recognize Levelland Economic Development Corp’s efforts in social media. The Levelland EDC is always looking for Partners in Progress and Intelegia fits the bill. As an industry, the more awareness and understanding of social media we can raise and the roll it will play in shaping the future of economic development the more valuable our investment in using social media becomes.
That is a great article, i enjoy reading the information on this blog.
Hi Ian, NSBI uses Twitter lists to segment our verticals and then create streams in Hootsuite to track activity in these lists. We also use keyword searches in Hootsuite to find new people to follow and RT within industry sectors. I’m actually looking for more ways to use Twitter lists. Any other ideas out there?
Dave, I love your way of thinking. Great approach. I’m going to follow you for inspiration.
Thank you so much for featuring our social media efforts. It’s an honour to be recognized.
These are exciting times for economic development marketers. Part of our strategy is to grow slowly (quality over quantity) and be consistent and approachable both domestically and internationally.
Social media is opening doors for us. Over the past year, we’ve been working from the inside out, training staff and creating guidelines and best practices. Now, the medium and our channels are beginning to mature, and social media is fully integrated into our marketing & communications plans. It kind of feels like we are entering stage 2…time to get serious with this…see what it can really do!
Recently, a social media campaign was picked up by traditional media: print, radio and tv. It was cool to watch the “backward traction”.
How are others using it? I’d love to share ideas on place branding with social media.
Thanks again Intelegia!
How does this actually work ? ! …
Michelle,
Individuals can hold up smartphones to the QR code to access the hyperlink or file with further information.
I had the pleasure of having breakfast with Isabelle in Columbus before she gave her presentation. It was the first time we had met in person, but I felt as though we were old friends because of our exchanges via twitter and facebook over the last several months.
Her passion and energy for economic development and the use of social media as a way to amplify your message and the impact of economic developers was contagious. I left the meeting with a renewed sense of determination for making Levelland the best known rural community in Texas.
She gave me a sneak peak at her presentation and I was pleased that she could use Levelland as example of using social media to leverage economic development efforts. Thank you for sharing the presentations with us and please tell Isabelle I said “Howdy” from West Texas.
How’s it going eh? from Montreal
We are just starting to have some fun here. Social media and economic development have just found a fit. Innovative EDOs such as you will discover pretty soon that adopting new practices to promote their region will pay off without having tremendous overhead to consider.
Cheers,
Isabelle
Greater Halifax Partnership’s “SmartCityBlog” uses a multi-blogger approach in the way that the internal team at the partnership is encouraged to write blog posts. We are also excited about opening this up to community bloggers who have an interest in economic and community development.
Great article, it’s good to be resourceful when getting content for your blog.
Maria,
Thank you for your comment. Blogging should be a shared role in an economic development agency. By putting the expertise of colleagues in the spotlight via a blog, the whole agency can become “knowable” in the eyes of potential investors.
I also have found Buzzdock to be very useful. This is a realtime search engine that neatly sits in your browser and allows you to get the results for whatever you are looking for at the moment they are being released. It’s really great. I have been able to find videos and images that usually take a while to find. I would highly recommend it. It scans through social media sites and makes the results really easy to view. It’s free too which is awesome. Check it out for yourself here: http://bit.ly/brBEW8
Superior post. How long have you been blogging for? It makes me realise that I want to improve mine a lot! Strolling Holidays in Europe
Undoubtedly agree with what you stated. Your clarification was definitely the best to understand. I let you know, I usually get irked when folks discuss points that they plainly do not know about. You managed to hit the nail right on the head and defined out all the pieces without complication. Maybe, individuals can take a signal. Will seemingly be again to get more. Thanks
Great set of advice, based on common `networking` sense.
Looking forward to being there, seeing the tweet stream and sharing some insights in to personal branding both off line and on line – just my toonies worth!
Here is an excerpt from an article that appeared in our Research-Technology Management Journal (RTM) – published by the Industrial Research Institute (IRI) “Using technology foresight to create business value has become an ongoing process in a number of companies. As open innovation and crowd sourcing are more widely used, firms are able to leverage technology from many sources, thereby helping them to maintain their lead.” Open Innovation, crowd sourcing, collaborative relationships, sustainability,accessing internal knowledge are ongoing topics of conversation between 200 industrial members of our Association and I welcome all with interest in learning more about our value proposition to contact me or look at http://www.iriweb.org
Gary Schiffres – schiffres@iriweb.org
It’s great to see people using the creative potential of crowds to develop their business. Providing you have the right people in your crowd, you can meet any brief you set them. I think the point about having monitors and a jury of experts is really important. It’s always possible that you’ll get a huge response, and you’ll need to manage that.
Check out http://www.blurGroup.com to see some innovative uses for crowdsourcing
I think it’s a natural offshoot from a website that specializes in networking – I just hope it doesn’t become a subscription service.
I agree that curation is the key to taking things that interest you and sharing them out with your various business and personal social networks. I’ve actually been working on an application:
http://statuscurator.com
And would love everyone’s feeback on it. It’s a bit rough right now but the idea is to take content from various news sources (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Reader and Instapaper) and then curate that content and share it out to your social networks (Facebook, Twitter and Linked in for now).
Any and all feedback would be much appreciated!
Bryan,
Thanks for the tip. The application looks very interesting. Please allow me to take closer look at it and I will post a writeup on it next Friday.
Best,
Ian
Thanks Ian. Please let me know if you have any questions or need any help.
Just discovered your blog and found lots of great articles: thanks!
There’s a 5th skill I’d add to your list:
Give your opinion!
If you’re just going to be a filter, then a robot will eventually do it. Giving your opinion to enrich or nuance a post is what makes curation interesting to readers, isn’t it?
And this is what makes the Web human…
So this is how I curated your post: http://www.scoop.it/t/web-content-digital-curation/p/105522995/4-soft-skills-for-content-curation
Thank you so much for the writeup! I hope people enjoy clutter-free feeds, and I wanted to let you know that soon I’ll be adding a feature that allows you to apply the Refynr filters to Twitter Searches. This will be great for targetting certain information, but avoiding all the spam that accompanies many Twitter searches.
Let me know if you have feedback or questions… I’m happy to help.
- Aaron: Founder & CTO
Aaron,
Refynr is a nifty tool. I look forward to taking advantage of the new functionalities.
Cheers,
Ian
To echo some of your sentiments… a content curator must not only own the content, but must also have the online social skills necessary in order to properly engage in the social media network. Being proactive, listening and staying on top of what is going on in your industry is critical for any content curator; engaging with the community is communicating, after all.
“Listening” to hear what is being discussed out there is imperative to making sure you are seizing opportunities to engage with your audiences. And those good listening skills will also lend themselves nicely to good “speaking” skills, so when you do find those opportunities, you will know just what your audiences want to hear.
Pawan Deshpande
CEO, HiveFire (creators of content curation solution Curata)
Actually, the SCIP LinkedIn group has 7902 members, and growing by about 150 every week.
Competitive intelligence professionals has 2309; Competitive/Market Intelligence professionals has 2982; Corporate Planning I’m not a member of; Strategic Business and Competitive Intelligence Professionals has 8779.
Thanks for the update Bonnie. It is nice to see the numbers growing. A good sign for the profession.
It’s funny, isn’t it? Every other aspect of business, right down to traditional marketing, is driven by strategy. And getting people aligned around that strategy is business gold.
Why then is content and social marketing treated differently?
Thanks for this review, Ian!
As always, feel free to reach out with any additional questions.
Ashley (@shley_g)
Viralheat Community Manager
I think that it should be mentioned that this works if the company has set-up its LinkedIn presence in a logical or strategic way. I tried with another large Canadian company, searching through Google “cae” site:www.linkedin.com, and the results were a bit all over the place.
Very good point Claudio. This could be done on purpose (making it difficult for competitors to gather business information) or like you said, the company may not be that structured when it comes to social media marketing.
I think it is definitely essential to have a structure to a social media campaign. Firms and businesses are spending a huge amount of money on social media, it makes it important to have a Social Media strategy to make the most of it. I believe social platforms should be considered consciously considered in the overall media planning of any marketing plan.
I don’t think people realise the actual time investment a company needs to give to successfully put together a coherent social media strategy. Content writing is usually the hardest thing to produce for most companies as they are to busy being caught up in the day to day running of the business – having a ‘multi-blogger’ approach is spot on and will give rise to lots of unique useful content.
Bob,
You are completely right about the efforts needed to create engaging content for social media. A content strategy is a must for companies that seek to have sustainable presence.
Great ideas in your post! I recently offered up some tips for setting up a social media editorial calendar that may help your readers http://venpop.com/2011/5-tips-for-setting-up-a-social-media-editorial-calendar/
Empire Avenue has become a must have tool in my social media efforts. Not only for the tracking of my online efforts, but for the many new contacts that I have met and the general attitude of helping each other through connecting on other sites, and other social activities that investors do for each other.
Great article!
Many of our clients learn a lot about their competitors by aggregating exactly this sort of intelligence. Occasionally one change my itself can provide value, but more often than not it is the trends that emerge from continuous monitoring that can provide real strategic insight.
Thanks for the Mashable article mention. I also believe EA is a watershed social network paving the way for influence based on long-term reputation versus more fleeting and general notoriety. Now I just have to get more active with my account! Enjoyed the article, and thanks for te insights.
Interesting perspective, Ian. Makes you wonder whether or not folks are actually pausing to think before they hit the “submit” button on their personal profiles.
This is a great example and they also have an excellent Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/scottishenterprise
Thanks for the tip Louise. We will look into it.
Good examples used here, Ian.
There are examples of pharma companies making use of social media platforms. I’ll steer you towards Jonathan Richman’s site at Dose of Digital. http://www.doseofdigital.com/healthcare-pharma-social-media-wiki/
That’s a really great collection of online initiatives undertaken by pharma companies, many are patient communities.
Merck, Pfizer as well as Boehringer and J&J are all making good use of social platforms as well with the latter two really standing out for their use Twitter to actively engage people and not simply broadcast company messages.
Cheers
Jason Boies
Radian6 Community Engagement Team
http://www.radian6.com/
Jason,
Thanks for the comment and the link to the examples. I will take a look at the use of Twitter by pharma companies in a future post. Stay tuned.
Ian
Another nice post here, Ian. Great look at one particular company’s use of social.
J&J have clearly made the decision that staying active on popular platforms like FB and Twitter is simply worth dealing with the negative comments that may crop up. I have to commend them on leaving those comments on the page (I’m assuming they never DID delete them?) as I’ve seen other instances of brands ( I won’t name names) deleting negative comments thus making them look even worse in the eyes of their followers.
Good post
Jason Boies
Radian6 Community Engagement Team
@Radian6
learn something new today and many thanks to you…..Google Insight….. have to use & try to learn more about the same …..thanks once again!
SWOT is a good thing to share with Sales as well. Sales can do a SWOT of how a customer perceives your company versus the competition. It is a very tactical and practical exercise, which is usually done around the table/SKYPE versus on-line research.
There are various times when this can be done to think through the best action to take in a Sales situation: during account planning and also before responding to an RFP. Industry segment SWOT is also useful. For example how are we and our products/services perceived in the banking industry? This exercise can really sharpen Sales’ focus, and ideally should be done with someone outside of Sales such as competitive intelligence, marketing or even a consultant so Sales can’t be myopic and perform a “wishful thinking” SWOT.
Ellen,
Thanks for your comments, especially with the angle coming from the sales perspective.
I’d redefine the first two of the 4 questions into
• What does the company do better than competitors and the overall industry? What has improved on prior year? What do customers and other stakeholders say the company does well?
• What has got worse compared to prior year? Where do competitors and the industry outperform the company? What do customers / other stakeholders complain about or say the company does badly? What leads to customers leaving / switching?
The reason that SWOT often fails is that it becomes a subjective analysis where people pat themselves on the back and say “look at how well we’ve done” without comparing their blinkered perspective to reality. As a result what they view as a strength could actually be a weakness – hubris is NOT a strength.
Also, weaknesses lead to opportunities. Understand what led to the weakness and you can often spot an opportunity to reverse it and move into something new. Similarly a strength is ripe of attack – and so for every strength there is also a matching threat.
SWOT analysis takes a lot of thought to do well – and in fact one company’s strengths could be another company’s weakness. For example, BodyShop is famous for NOT using celebrities for endorsing their products. That’s its strength (or one of them). Conversely most competitors do use celebrities. If they copied Bodyshop’s strength and junked the celebrity endorsements they’d be creating a weakness as celebrity endorsement is part of their brand image. Without it, they’d find it tougher to compete. So SWOT analysis is not easy.
One approach I advocate is to ask 5 questions. The answer to each moves to the next question and a decision on what to do next.
1) Where do we want to compete? (i.e. which market, segment, country….)
2) What do we need to do to gain competitive advantage? (If you don’t know or can’t gain competitive advantage should be be in the market – so go back to question 1)
3) What resources do we need to gain competitive advantage?
4) What resources do we have? (If you don’t have the resources you need, what do you have to do to get them. If you can’t get them, you can’t compete so go back to question 1 again).
5) How do we change? (i.e. the ultimate question – what do we have to do next?)
Answering these 5 questions should enable companies to compete and requires a really objective look at the SWOT parameters.
Arthur,
Many thanks for adding depth to the post. Good elements to keep in mind when the next SWOT analysis is needed.
Hi Ian
As I have tweeted on this, I thought I might comment – hope that is OK?
SWOT is such a misused technique and yet when done as it was developed to do provides truly great insights. So for brevity, some key points about SWOT:
1. Strengths and Weaknesses are your UNIQUE strengths and weaknesses compared to your competitors. They are not a wish list! If they are not unique to your company, they don’t go on the list. It certainly makes these two lists quite short!! If you don’t have any unique strengths, it tells you something very loud and clear about your business and its future.
2. Opportunities and Threats are valid for the entire competitive environment and your competitors. They are not your company’s opportunities and threats! They are there for any player in your industry.
3. Your objective in the SWOT is to match your UNIQUE strengths and weaknesses to the competitive environment’s opportunities and threats in such a way as to identify key strategies that are available to your company only and identify a competitive advantage. There should be four boxes of strategies – SO, WO, ST, WT.
4. You can group these strategies together if they fit under an overarching theme.
Result of doing it the right way, key strategic themes that will enable you to compete in a smarter way and leverage your competitive advantage.
If you or anyone else would like further details, don’t hesitate to let me know.
Can’t tell you many times the light has come on for clients, executives and students… try it this way and let me know what you think.
Hi Babette,
Thanks for you feedback and insights. I will be the first to admit that my initial post above lacks depth. I could have gone further; however, I have learned over the years that some pure information gatherers are in need of “hand holding” when it comes to finding the right details for a SWOT and then after TOWS analysis. It was my intention to give a superficial approach of culling intelligence that can be used by decision-makers.
Thank you for the mention. I enjoyed your Pinterest site–especially the bookshelf pin. I’m a sucker for a sexy bookshelf. You can find me: http://pinterest.com/theslynch. Cheers!
Hi Stephanie,
Great blog post on the same subject. I’ll pass on the note to my colleague, Isabelle, about the bookshelf pins. Something tells me that you two will be pinning stuff on each other boards. Cheers.
Hey Ian,
Thanks for the mention and the link, greatly appreciated.
Solid post on Pinterest. And yes, the new social darling is certainly interesting to those in destination marketing. While the traffic and ‘viral’ benefits are clear, Pinterest (overall) feels like a more compatible piece of a DMO / CVB social media strategy.
- Troy
Hi Troy,
Thanks for the feedback and your post serves up great arguments of why Pinterest should be apart of an economic development agency’s social media marketing toolbox. Although the benefits are clear, some agencies may struggle with getting the buy-in from decision makers.
Best,
Ian
Good post Ian, thanks. When you have a moment, please check out what we are doing here at Visit Savannah on Pinterest. Thanks!
Hi Joe,
Thanks for the heads up. Great job. Look for a mention of your boards in our post on Wednesday.
Cheers,
Ian
Well said – and needs to be said. Here’s another one.
Case #4: LinkedIn profiles
================
While searching for potential experts in a particular field, you come across the name of one of your staff who has been contributing to LinkedIn discussion forums. You don’t know him but are impressed with his contributions – especially as he doesn’t appear to give anything confidential away about the company or its plans. Although he works for the same company as you, you decide to LinkIn to him – and then check his contacts for other experts. You quickly find out that most of his department are also connected to him.
What should you do?
a) Nothing – his network is his own business.
b) Tell him to quit LinkedIn or to restrict who he networks with
c) Tell him to prevent his network being public
The problem with (a) is that competitors may also befriend him – and can then start compiling an organisation chart / contact list for your company. (b) may be overkill as LinkedIn is viewed as an essential networking tool for business. (c) should be considered for everybody – and whoever you are, it’s important to take care on what you put up on LinkedIn – whether on your profile, recommendations (that can give details about projects or activities) or in discussions. If necessary, edit your profile so only relevant / desired information is visible. (And I hope that I’ve followed these rules – I do change my profile depending on what research mode I’m in!)
Hi Ian,
Nice article! Your points are spot on and very clearly expressed.
You’re absolutely right to stress that organizations need to invest dedicated (and ongoing) resources in any and all social media efforts – there is a real danger of developing ‘flavour-of-the-month syndrome’, leading to a lack of commitment to ALL of your chosen marketing channels.
I always point out to my clients that they don’t need to be *everywhere* in social media: just where your customers are. And focus on being a part of things that reinforce your brand, and add real value to your interactions with customers (and prospects).
Thanks for writing–I’ll definitely check back for more. (Thanks to @melissabreker for tweeting about this post!)
Cheers,
James
Thanks for compiling, and you’re right: These are good reminders.
Since I lead a small agency, I’m taking Pinterest as a platform to round out my brand and the people behind it. For example, Facebook and Google+ have 2 distinct profiles, one biz and one personal. LinkedIn is purely professional. This is an opportunity to visually demonstrate what’s behind the brand, always people!
Would love to hear your thoughts.
Hi Suzanne,
Thanks for reading. Very interesting approach. I’m assuming that you are going with a “our team hard at work” tone rather than the traditional corporate pictures. Ultimately, your content on Pinterest should be compelling to move prospects to say, “These are the people I want to work with!!!”
Ian
Excellent and very comprehensive post on Influence. One of the best I’ve seen. I just hope that people are not turned of because you started with the scope – while I fully subscribe to it, too many misinterpret the importance of larger networks (if done right).
One factor in all this is ‘time’ that you haven’t touched. And time has actually two pretty different types of impact.
Once a person reached a significant level of influence, it is amazing how long that person maybe absent from the net without loosing much of the gained influence. I don’t have enough research data yet but I believe we can use the so called ‘e-Function’ a logarithmic model to describe it. I explain it this way: “The lower your level of influence, the faster that influence evaporates if you don’t maintain it.”
The other effect of time in the influence game: “Topic Congruence”
Influence in a mainstream topic is harder to get then in a trending topic. Yet, only if you are really into the trend you can gain influence in that topic. Time is of essence in those trending topics because even if you don’t fully comprehend a topic, if you are able to communicate relevant knowledge you gain influence quickly.
Anyway – awesome post Raymond
Excellent post on an evolving topic. Whether or not one agrees with current methodologies, measuring online influence is here to stay!
Ian – why didn’t you do the search on Topsy. I just tried it and got the following 767 results for the last 24 days, 812 for the last 30 days, and 814 for all time. Social Mention is also worth a look with 104 results. http://www.socialmention.com/search?q=%23rogers1number&t=all&btnG=Search
Thanks for the suggestions Arthur.
Thanks for this post. I would also recommend checking out the Adobe Ideas platform, http://ideas.adobe.com sourcing incremental emerging product feedback that helps prioritize and filter enhancements. Also, GE’s major open innovation challenges are worth checking out as well: http://challenge.healthymagination.com/ and http://challenge.ecomagination.com/ (each of these are powered by Brightidea’s innovation software).
Janelle,
Thanks for your suggestions. We’ll have a look at the platforms.
Best,
Ian
Great post Ian! I find the Bucks County example really fun. You write really well by the way!
Thank you Micheline. Yes, Bucks County is a very good example of what brands can do with Pinterest. Cheers.
Thanks for the mention Raymond! Looking forward to future collaboration!
A strategy that works!! http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2012/0525/1224316663069.html?goback=.gde_91202_member_118459340
Thanks for the discussion of these products. The tools you describe for getting the word out seem very powerful, however the discovery tools you are using, paper.li and Twylah are both automated discovery systems which is a weakness of your model. While these engines are useful, because the relevance of the results are determined by algorithms, rather than by the user, there will inevitably be misses: important events will be overlooked, while a lot of irrelevant results will have to be vetted. In a competitive world, discovery of relevant events (blog pieces, Tweets, FB posts, news, videos, etc.) requires a timely awareness engine that allows the user to make the decision about what’s important in the Intertubes.
Raymond, thanks for including Paper.li in this post. We’re honored to be mentioned along side Twylah and Buffer.
Nicholas, I agree with you when you say there will inevitably be misses with automated services, or semi-automated services, however I believe that as the amount of created content continues to increase on a daily basis, we will see an increase in automated tools as to help us surface information that is relevant to our needs on a daily basis.
I view automation as a helper. I don’t want to search daily for content of interest. I don’t have the time and sometimes I don’t have the patience even if I have the time… I count on automation to give me a head start and I take it from there.
I use scoop.it and love that product as well. They serve up content suggestions and I need to accept them and place them in magazine. Because the service is far more manual, I find that my topics are not as up to date as they could be. This is because it takes me more time to add content, then delete it.
One thing I have learned though is that when we use automated tools, we need to take the time to review information. Because it is automated, does not mean that it doesn’t need to be tended to.
I must say – appreciate this!
Thanks for sharing our conversation with Hudson Boat Works! Twitter provides a great platform for us to showcase and share the exceptional work happening in our city. For instance, traditional local media wasn’t interested in publishing a story about London Ontario boats competing in the Summer Olympics, so we used social media to share and raise the profile of local industry. This helps to educate our community on local assets, as well as showcase industry strengths to site selectors, etc. who follow us!
Thanks Kadie. It is the classic case of using social media to control what gets out about what is going on in a region. If done correctly, agencies can be a powerful news outlet (with various broadcasting tools) for site selectors and other key economic development stakeholders.
Raymond, great post and you clearly understand the innovation we are bringing to the influencer market.
Thanks again for this and your interest in Kred.
Regards,
Andrew Grill
CEO, Kred
@andrewgrill
Thanks Andrew,
The social influence marketing is a new science to develop, and sharing thoughts will help to build it in the best way…
P.S.: I’m pleased, but not surprised!
Hi, this is Shawn from Kred. Thank you for your kind words about our influence measure.
Another area of Kred that may interest marketers and social media practitioners is that our algorithm is transparent, providing real-time score calculations so that everyone can understand the source of their scores. Our sister measures are more open than they were, though still essentially black boxes.
Our mission with Kred Story goes even larger; we want to make social analytics based on open public data accessible and easily understood to everyone. We think this will become ever more important to active social media users as platforms and other data companies seek to create value from the data its users deliver to them with every action.
Cheers
Shawn
Thanks also Shawn,
It’s a fact that this feature is one of my preferred one, and since the first time I started using Kred. I really appreciate being enable to see exactly where and why my social score is fluctuating. It help me to better understand the real meaning of this social scoring, and how it can be useful to achieve my own goals (or my client’s goals). The key is probably to find the best tool considering your special goal.
Hi Raymond – a very good piece and a refreshing read from all those who have been “bashing” the likes of Klout. I too have been less than complementary about measuring social influence. Don’t get me wrong, it does indeed have a place and value. But as you say, it should never be taken as gospel in isolation from any other metrics or measurement criteria.
To be fair, Kred, seems on the surface to be much more credible than Klout. I have a particular issue with Klout…as you can read in my own blog post about it here (http://digitalmusings.net/does-social-influence-really-matter/)…however I am pleased to see them acknowledging that their previous algorithms were flawed. They’re still not perfect, but at least they are trying to improve things. Although I still believe that they are a long long way from living up to their boast of being the “Standard for Influence”.
Great post and thanks for sharing!
Hi Dan,
Thanks again for your kind comments. I just read your blog post, and in substance, I agree with your point of view. And, as you said, they may be not perfect, but at least they have the merit to work on it. The social influence marketing is a new part of the online business culture, but his measurement will stay a need for marketers.
Golden Area Initiatives (Community Economic Development Services for the Town of Golden and Rural Area A) contracted Intelegia to create the social media strategy and platforms for our Investment and Migration Strategy. Intelegia provides an unique approach of doing business – excellent “hands on” customer service, “listening” to their client, provide direction, work in partnership to deliver the end result of an excellent product mix and the results are measurable. The customized social media tools are playing a role in Golden’s community development – thanks to Intelegia!