Wanted: One more social media measurement provider to put in the spotlight

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The Third Tuesday Measurement Matters #TTMM conference will put three social media monitoring and analysis providers on the spot and in the spotlight.

Each will be asked to tell us about a social media measurement challenge they set out to solve and how they did it. And then, we’ll ask them to look ahead and tell us what challenges they think must be overcome in the next year(s).

We have confirmed the first two monitoring and measurement providers who will be put in the spotlight: Radian6 and PostRank.

Radian6 was on the leading edge of developing an algorithm and index to measure influence. PostRank linked its fortune to the concept of engagement. Both have demonstrated an ongoing commitment to research and constant improvement of their monitoring and measurement suites. Clearly, they belong in the spotlight.

We have room in the spotlight for one more company. And I’d welcome your views about who it should be.

Which social media measurement platform do you think is on the leading edge of social media measurement? Which do you think have tackled a tough challenge and come up with an approach that is worth sharing?

Leave a comment on this post and help shape the agenda of Third Tuesday Measurement Matters #TTMM.

After all, if you want to understand the state of the art, why not ask those who are investing their money to explore it?

Registration is open for the Third Tuesday Measurement Matters conference

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Registration is open for the Third Tuesday Measurement Matters #TTMM conference, to be held in Toronto on September 28.

A stellar roster of speakers

Attendees at Third Tuesday Measurement Matters will meet, hear from and participate in discussions with social media measurement experts, including Katie Paine, Carol Leaman, Ilya Grigorik, Charles Funk, Marcel LeBrun and David Alston (tentative), Sheldon Levine, Josh Hallett, Claude Théoret, Pragya Dubey, Scott Lake, Leona Hobbs, Darren Barefoot, Rob Clark, Brian Cugelman, Christopher Berry,  and Patrick Gladney.

A stellar lineup of speakers. And there are more who we anticipate will confirm their attendance during the next week.

A word about cost

The registration fee will be $125 per person. That’s more than we charge for most Third Tuesday events. However, we have a full day’s rental on the hall, audio visual system, lights plus a lunch and two breaks to provide food and beverage.

Our aim is to break even on the cost of staging the actual conference. And we’ll do that with a combination of sponsorships and registrations.

We couldn’t do it without the support of our sponsors

I hope you agree that this is one heck of a lot of conference for a fee that is far lower than you are used to paying. That’s the value of being community-oriented – and of having sponsors. They cushion the risk of mounting an event like this.

And we couldn’t do it without our sponsors. For the past year, we’ve been lucky to have some outstanding sponsors who have helped us to make this happen: CNW Group, Rogers Communications, MolsonCoors Canada, Radian6 and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. You have stood by us. Your contributions make it possible for us to focus on organizing and programming without having to worry whether we’ll be on the hook for hard costs. Thank you. Third Tuesday wouldn’t happen without you.

Still to come: Free admission for a lucky group of students

Social media measurement should be an essential part of every communication, marketing and business curriculum. Students stand to benefit greatly by attending Third Tuesday Measurement Matters. But not all of them will be able to afford it.

So we’ll be announcing a special zero admission fee for a lucky group of students. We’re in the final stages of finalizing a sponsor for the “$0 student fee” and we’ll make a separate announcement as soon as the details are worked out.

If you care about social media measurement

… this will be the conference of the year. So, I do hope that you’ll consider attending.

A New President for Thornley Fallis & 76design

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Thornley Fallis and 76design have a new President: Keelan Green.

Keelan joined Thornley Fallis in 2002, just as the bottom was falling out of the tech industry. That was a tough time for the company. We shared our tech clients’ pain. And it put great demands and strain on our team.  This was when Keelan first showed his mettle. If a client needed a tight turnaround on something for Monday morning, Keelan could be counted on the pitch in over the weekend. If a piece of work was good, he’d look at it and make the changes necessary for it to be great work. Keelan always looked beyond the process of the work to focus on the results. And clients loved him. They came to the firm to work with him and they stayed for more.

It wasn’t just our clients who gravitated to Keelan. Even before he was appointed to a leadership position, other Thornley Fallis and 76design team members began to gather around him. After all, in a storm, you follow the person who you believe has a plan and the ability to get you home safely. That was Keelan from the start.

As time passed, we promoted Keelan through several positions. In every position, he excelled. As an Account Manager for some of our most important clients. As an Account Director and then as Vice President. And ultimately as Vice President and General Manager of the Ottawa offices of both Thornley Fallis and 76design.

In 2008, the economy entered recession. Keelan dug deep and brought our Ottawa office through the downturn with a minimum of bruises. As the economic free-fall ended and we hit the bottom of the cycle, he looked ahead and began to plan for the recovery. As a result of this leadership, our Ottawa office emerged from the recession stronger than it had entered it, with an expanded set of services and a larger client base. Growing out of a recession. It’s something we all want to do. It’s not easily done.

Now I’m asking Keelan to provide this type of leadership to the entire company. I’m delighted that he’s accepted the challenge. And I’m looking forward to working with him as he conquers new challenges and leads Thornley Fallis and 76design on to ever better things.

Finally, this is the kind of announcement I really love to make. Not just because it’s a good news announcement. But because it signals that we are being the kind of company we aspire to be – a company that attracts the very best people and then provides them with opportunities to grow personally and create a job they can truly be passionate about. Keelan’s growth and success with Thornley Fallis and 76design is a brilliant example of this vision in action.

So, this is a great day for our company. A step ahead for Keelan Green and a chance to celebrate our values.

Inside PR 2.15 is online

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The latest episode of Inside PR is online. This week, Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and I talk about social media meetups that we attend and how pick which events we will participate in.

You can listen to the complete episode here.

Inside PR 2.15 Shownotes

0:30 Martin opens the show.

1:37 Joe shares the first listener comment, from Clint Stiles, about Inside PR #30.

3:37 Longtime listener, Chartwell 65, offers some suggestions to improve the show.

8:55 Joe talks a bit about Third Tuesday and how it started up.

10:20 Joe kicks off the next topic and asks Martin and Gini how they decided which events to attend and why?

14:37 Martin tells us about his first time attending PodCamp Toronto.

15:35 Joe shares what he looks for in a conference.

19:46 Gini encourages everyone to check out Empire Avenue.

20:13 Martin closes the show.

Thanks are due to Inside PR producer Yasmine Kashefi for creating these shownotes.

The 23 Browser Tabs I Open to Start Every Workday

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Five years ago, my workday routine was much the same as it had been for the better part of a decade. Arrive at the office. Open Outlook. Open Word. Open Excel. Prepare and revise documents that would be saved on my PC or my office LAN and then would be distributed via email.

Those days are long gone. Today, I find myself working more and more in my browser and Web-based apps and less and less in Microsoft Office programs.

Yes, I still open Outlook when I arrive at the office (though I have already cleared most of my email from my BlackBerry). The traditional flow of calendar requests, email, task assignments and notes are there. And it works extremely well.

But from that point forward, everything is different. I don’t open Word. I don’t open Excel. Instead, I go straight to my browser. And I’ll spend a significant proportion of my day in my browser. And to make the start up process easier, I save a set of tabs that I open as the start of every day.

So, what browser tabs do I start my day with?

Tabs 1 – 7: Publishing

WordPress admin consoles for the blogs I publish or contribute to: ProPR.ca, Social Mediators, Inside PR, Corum App, and the CCPRF. I’ll moderate comments and try to write early in the morning – ideally before I answer email and begin to be dragged into the routine of the day.

The Aggregator Admin consoles for the Thornley Fallis and 76design Websites. Our Websites feature content drawn in from a variety of blogs written by our employees. I use the Aggregator Admin console to curate the content that appears on our Websites.

CoTweet: I use CoTweet to check and manage the @thornleyfallis and @76design identities on Twitter.

Tabs 8 – 11: Collaboration

Present.ly: We use Present.ly as our “behind-the-firewall” micro-publishing app. I keep this tab open to follow conversations among the TF/76team members.

TF Wiki and Agent76: We use a Wiki as our Intranet. It’s also a gateway to agent76, our time tracking and activity diary app.

Another WordPress admin console for my internal company blog, “Joe Behind the Firewall.”

Tabs 12 – 17: Social Networks & News

Google: I use Google.ca to get search results tailored to my interests as a Canadian. And my iGoogle homepage includes: Google Reader, GMail, Google Map Search, YouTube Search and Google Trends. I use this tab constantly throughout the day.

Google News: I open this every day. But I have to confess I rarely use it. Virtually all the news I want comes into Google Reader through my subscriptions to online news sites RSS feeds.

Meetup: I use Meetup to coordinate the Third Tuesday Toronto and Third Tuesday Ottawa social media meetups. I keep the app open all day when a Third Tuesday is approaching. When Third Tuesday is inactive, I’ll close this after a quick check.

LinkedIn: This social network is on the upswing in utility. I don’t spend much time in discussions here. I’d rather participate in the open discussions on blogs and Twitter. However, LinkedIn has proved to be a highly useful place to recruit new employees for our firm. So, I see myself investing more time in this network in the future.

TripIt: TripIt is an outstanding service that I use for trip planning and to find friends who are travelling to the same locations as me. It helps to cut down on the room service meals.

Facebook: With 500 million users, I can’t ignore it. But Facebook can be the greatest time suck. And I rarely open it during workdays. Much activity of little consequence.

Tabs 18 – 23: Measurement

Radian6: We’ve standardized on Radian6 as our preferred social media monitoring, management and measurement suite. I track everything relating to our companies. Clients too.

PostRank: PostRank gives me unique insight into the engagement of my community with the content I publish. What’s getting their attention? What’s not. An indispensable tool that just keeps getting better.

Google Analytics: another view of what’s really going on with my blog? With our Websites? A free analytics tool I couldn’t live without.

Feedburner: Although Feedburner has suffered from inattention and hasn’t really been developed since Google acquired it, it’s still a must-have to spot trends of use with my RSS feeds.

Google Insights for Search: I start here when I’m trying to understand which search terms people are using for concepts that I’m interested in …

Google Search-based keyword tool: … and then I use the search-based keyword tool for ideas on other search terms I should consider.

How about you?

How much has the programs and apps you use in your workday changed in the past few years? Are you still using traditional wordprocessors and spreadsheets or are you relying more and more on Web-based apps?

Which do you consider to be the "Best of Breed" Social Media Measurement Tools?

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Help select the Third Tuesday Measurement Matters speakers

Today, I’m asking for your help in deciding which developers of social media measurement tools we should invite to speak at the Third Tuesday Measurement Matters conference.

If you could hear from the people behind the leading social media measurement tools talk about their approach to measurement, who would you most like to hear from?

Insight from the people who design measurement tools

We’ll provide an opportunity for the key architects of three of the leading social media measurement tools to speak at Third Tuesday Measurement Matters.

This won’t be a standard product sales pitch. Instead, we’ll ask the speakers to talk about the key social media measurement problems they set out to solve and the solution they’ve developed. We want to get insight into the leading edge of measurement. And we’ll also ask them to look ahead and give us some insight into the biggest social media measurement challenges they believe we must solve in the coming year.

Who would you like to hear from?

Which measurement providers do you consider to be the very best? What do they do especially well? What do you think we can learn from them?

Please give us your suggestions and opinions as a comment below.

Inside PR 2.14 – better late than never, I hope

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Oops. We didn’t press the “publish” button on Inside PR 2.14 and then we didn’t discover it until the weekend when everyone was offline.

But, it’s published now. You can listen to it here.

Inside PR 2.14 [ 0:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

As always, we’d welcome your comments and we’ll respond to them in the next episode.

Call for Speakers: Third Tuesday Measurement Matters conference

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We’re looking for suggestions for social media measurement experts to invite to speak at Third Tuesday Social Media Measurement Matters #TTMM conference.

Already, a number of speakers were suggested or volunteered in response to the initial announcement of the conference, including: Alan Chumley, Rob Clark, Jen Evans, Leona Hobbs, Jay Goldman, Brian Cugelman, Olivier Blanchard, Alex Brasil, Josh Hallett, Darren Barefoot, Claude Theoret, Paul Cowan, and Chris Berry.

It’s also been suggested that we invite someone from Gatorade. You’ll remember that they made quite a splash last month with their new social media mission control centre. I’m sure that they could offer insight and learnings from their experience with this.

The good people at Sysomos, MediaMiser and CNW Group/DNA13 also have offering to contribute their expertise.

Ideas that Break Through

We’ve all been to conferences where speakers’ presentations duplicate one another. Conferences where panelists presentations take up most of the time and leave little time for interaction and audience participation.

We want to avoid these problems by structuring the panels to maximize the time for questions and answers and interaction between panelists. After all, why bring together a group of the brightest people around if you don’t want them to interact with one another and the participants at the conference?

Each panelist will be asked to speak for ten minutes on a single issue or idea that he or she thinks is of paramount importance and will be asked to clearly state one big or actionable idea that we can all take away. Then, we’ll throw the discussion open to the floor, inviting your questions and comments. In this way, we hope to hear some great ideas and have plenty of time to discuss them and their implications.

Who would you like to hear from?

Our aim is to put together a conference that brings together the speakers that you want to hear from.

Who are the experts on social media measurement you follow? Who have you heard give a great presentation on measurement?

The doors are open wide to your suggestions and ideas. Please give us your suggestions as a comment on this post.

Third Tuesday Measurement Matters Preliminary Agenda

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Yesterday, I talked about why we are holding the Third Tuesday Measurement Matters conference. Today, I’d like to talk about what that conference might look like. And I’d like to ask for your input into the preliminary agenda of the conference.

What and who?

Third Tuesday Measurement Matters will bring together social media measurement experts and technology leaders.

We have a full day to organize. I’m proposing a single track so that we all share the same experience. That also keeps things simple and makes it easier to find a suitable venue.

Who then should we hear from? I think we should have a mix of

  • Experts who can talk about how to approach the challenge of measuring social media. What should we be measuring? What metrics should we be applying in what situations?
  • Measurement suite vendors who will provide practical demonstrations of the leading edge measurement tools. This should give us insight into what is possible now. And we should ask them to provide a preview of their development plans so that we can look ahead at how measurement will evolve in the near future.

Preliminary Agenda

The agenda will feature a series of panels of experts discussing key social media measurement issues. Between panels, the leading social media measurement suites will be demonstrated and we’ll hear about their strengths and development plans.

8:30 Opening Keynote

9:00 – 10:15 Panel: Monitoring: How to set up and run your social media command centre

10:15 – 10:35 Social Media Measurement Suite Demo 1

10:35 – 10:55 Break

10:55 – 12:10 Panel: New metrics for new media – influence, engagement, resonance – and others?

12:10 – 12:30 Social Media Measurement Platform/Tools Demo 2

12:30 – 13:30 Lunch & Keynote

13:45 – 15:00 Panel: Analysis – more than skin deep – how to find real meaning

15:00 – 15:20 Social Media Measurement Platform/Tools Demo 3

15:20 – 15:35 Break

15:35 – 16:50 Panel: Show us your ROI – Yes, we can demonstrate a return.

16:50 – 17:30 Closing Plenary – Participants talk about the best insights of the day

Theme sessions will feature three or four panelists. Each panelist will be asked to speak for five minutes on a single issue or idea that he or she thinks is of paramount importance and will be asked to clearly state one big or actionable idea that we can all take away. That will leave almost an hour in each panel for questions and discussions with participants.

The Measurement Suite Demos will feature three different leading-edge measurement suite vendors. We’ll ask vendors to avoid giving a standard sales pitch. We’ll ask them instead to talk to us about their approach to measurement – what metrics do they apply and what algorithms and measurement techniques do they use. We’ll also ask them to conclude by providing us with their views on the developments in measurement that they think we should watch for in the next year.

Does this work for you?

What do you think of this proposed approach? How can we improve it? Are there other topics we should address? What do you think of inviting leading edge vendors?

I’d like to hear from you. So, please leave a comment to discuss the ideas I’ve advanced in this post.

Announcing the Third Tuesday Measurement Matters Conference

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We’re kicking off the fifth season of Third Tuesday Toronto (#TTT) with something special: a day long conference on social media measurement.

Third Tuesday: Measurement Matters conference (#TTMM), Sept. 28, 2010

“Are we there yet?” “How much longer before we arrive?” Every vacationing parent recognizes these words as the first expression of our need to know where we are and what progress we’re making.

Measurement matters. It’s how we know whether our efforts are having any impact. It’s how we know whether we’re making progress toward a goal or whether we’re stalled.

We measure what’s important to us. We measure to understand what is going on. We measure to provide insight into what works and what doesn’t.

Measurement really matters in emerging and fast changing fields. And social media is a field that is evolving rapidly. Evolving in participation, as it transforms from something for early adopters to a part of mainstream life. Evolving as new tools and platforms proliferate. Evolving as people adopt it and find new uses for it.

Anyone who uses social media for their work or is serious about it must understand what we can and should measure and how we can do it.

That’s where Third Tuesday Measurement Matters comes in.

A discussion of best practices and leading edge thinking

Many smart people are spending a lot of effort figuring out measurement methodologies and developing new metrics and measurement tools. They’re developing insight into the nature of participation in social media and the new patterns of social interaction. They’re developing new metrics to measure these new interactions. And they’re developing suites of tools that enable us to monitor, measure and analyze what’s going on in social media.

We’ll be inviting leading experts in social media measurement and companies who are developing the measurement tools to participate in Third Tuesday Measurement Matters. They’ll talk about the measurement challenges we face and offer their thoughts on how we should tackle these challenges. They’ll also demonstrate the best tools we can use to measure social media.

Help us shape the conference that you’d like to attend

We want this conference to deal with the issues that interest you and answer the questions that matter to you. So, we want your input into what we should discuss and who you think has insight to offer on the important issues.

In the coming days, I’ll post a preliminary agenda and ask for input on the topics that you’d like to discuss and the speakers you’d like to hear from.

Check back here in the next few days for more information and your opportunity to shape the agenda and lineup of speakers.

Third Tuesday Measurement Matters (#TTMM), Toronto, September 28, 2010.