Mike Geraci - FreeRange Media

‘Tis the season…when the web becomes fat with reflections and best ofs for the last 12 months and predictions for the next 12. Some lists are awesome, some not so much. Each year, marketing consultant Rohit Bhargava shares his predictions for early stage technologies and business concepts that will power the next year. His lists fall into the awesome category.

Not only does he call out, define, and provide examples of the upcoming trends, he also revisits his previous predictions to grade their accuracy (he did well in 2012, which is why 2013’s presentation is a good investment of your time.

Mary Meeker is considered an internet guru for her informational (and accurate) presentations on the future of the internet. Here is her latest, with lots of great data  about sales, units, etc…but from a marketing standpoint it is interesting to note the adoption of mobile, and, how this dynamic is powering the ‘re-imagination’ of many basic tasks.

(Source: venturebeat.com)

Is your agency hired to provide a service that the client doesn’t have staff for, or is it brought in because it has experience, knowledge and perspective that the client respects? One is a commodity subject to pricing pressures, the other is an asset that has real value. One turns the screws for greater efficiencies and profit, the other loosens them for exploration and discovery. One is managed based on fear and doubt, the other by inspiration and opportunity. One has high employee turnover, the other has high employee retention. One has challenging clients, the other has happy clients.

Twitter is PR’s gift from the journalist gods. It has become the platform of choice for journalists to freely share their opinions, links to their content and other content they find interesting, and provide color commentary on current events. It’s a rich source of information previously only available via a long-term personal relationship with each media member.    

After celebrities and professional athletes, journalists are the most enthusiastic users of Twitter.  There are a lot of journalists on Twitter. So many that it has become a primary research resource for PR people to gain greater personal and profession insight into their current and new media contacts. But keeping track of which journalists are Tweeting about which topics for which media is getting a little unwieldy. 

Enter MuckRack.com, a service that “tracks thousands of journalists on Twitter and social media.” A database that currently includes staff and contributing writers from 234 publications, blogs, websites and TV stations. The database grows every day as journalists and their employers register themselves in order to increase the visibility of their Twitter feeds. 

The site has a free Newsroom service that curates the day’s top stories by computing the stories most linked to on Twitter by the journalists in their database, providing a unique, real-time perspective on what journalists feel is currently the most noteworthy story. The free service also includes the ability to go to any publication and see staff members that Tweet, their Twitter handles, and what they have been Tweeting about.  

The Pro level account for PR/communication people provides the next phase in digital media database organization, with custom search, a journalist directory, keyword alerts, real-time media lists, and a place to keep notes on each media person. You can sort by publication, by beat, or geography. 

The real-time dynamic of MuckRack makes the quality and quantity of insights available from old-school media database services look lame in comparison.  

For journalists, MuckRack provides a community platform that increases visibility of their Twitter activity and acts as a crowd-source newsroom that everyone contributes to.

The beauty of Twitter from a PR perspective has always been that it provides access to personal and professional beta that was previously unavailable without the luxury of long-term personal relationship with each specific media that by following what your target media.

Before MuckRack that was limited to a couple of dozen key influencers in your space. Now, it is possible to integrate that level of knowledge and intimacy to everyone in your database. Very cool. 

We’re examining a couple of relatively new real-time social search and analytics platforms that attempt to bring some focus and utility to the amazing amount of information that is published on the web each day. First up, Topsy.

Topsy -  Cultivating and Harvesting Social Signal

Using a combination of influence and trending data, Topsy has three key functions:

1. The main search surfaces the most relevant content around your search terms in realtime. Once you identify the best content, Topsy helps you identify the most influential people talking/Tweeting about the topic, story or link.
2. Topsy’s “Experts” search function allows you to identify influential people or brands that frequently discuss your brand, product or category, so you can identify new influencers in your market 
3. Topsy’s Analytics dashboard gives you a snapshot of the amount of mentions of your search term, and allows you to compare versus competitor mentions during the same period. 

I find Topsy valuable for identifying new influencers talking about clients, their products, their competition, and current events relevant to the client in their category. As well, we use the analytics function in reporting to show increase/decrease in conversations taking place around a launch or crisis, and competitive analysis around trade shows and shopping holidays.

The front-end search and analytics services are free. There are commercial API and licensed software options available for companies interested in integrating Topsy’s data. 

You will still need some resources dedicated to getting the most value from Topsy in order to get familiar with its capabilities and how/where to use the information, from PR to customer service, but its a great, free alternative to Radian6 and other premium social monitoring services.