The Socializers

A Network Analysis Process

admin June 1, 2015 No Comments

A Network Analysis Process:

1. Subscribe to a social media monitoring service with a very hefty set of data (i.e.- Brandwatch)

2. Create an accurate query within this monitoring solution related to your marketplace. Date this query back 24 months. The goal with this step is to discover the largest networks (pages, groups, authors) related to a marketplace.

3. Go to the Export function within the monitoring solution and export the entire data set related to your 24 month query. Every row.

4. Isolate ONLY the Twitter results in an Excel document. In addition, isolate ONLY the Facebook results (in Excel).

5. Subscribe to Full Contact API ( https://www.fullcontact.com/developer/ ) at the highest level you can afford.

6. Download the Full Contact Person Enrichment Template (FCPET) from Full Contact API.

7. Set the Seed at 3 or above (in the FCPET document). Set the source to either Twitter Handle or Facebook ID.

8. Ensure you have a rock solid Internet connection.

9. Paste all Twitter handles from the data export into the first column of the FCPET document. Run the append.

10. Paste all FB handles from the data export into the first column of a second fresh FCPET document. Run the append.

11. Keep the results in the FCPET in exact order from the Brandwatch data export. This is so you can paste in a few columns from the Brandwatch export, such as sample mentions, account type (Individual or Organization), gender, etc.

12. Hire an analyst to meticulously go over the resulting spreadsheets and clean out the junk and spam authors. Use other tools, such as Melissa Data ( http://www.melissadata.com/ ) and Intelius ( https://www.intelius.com/ ) to append more data in additional columns.

13. Organize by Impact score (Brandwatch) or by Region or by any other criteria important to you (use the Data sort function in Excel to do this).

You can use the final sheet to plan content-marketing, derive insights on markets, and understand competitor activity. You can also determine the “real people” talking about your brand using this approach.

Listening is a core muscle for thriving online

admin January 20, 2015 No Comments

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.
~Rachel Naomi Remen

Listening and asking for clarification is hugely important in the social networks. People are finding their voice in these networks, often for the first time. People are writing themselves into being in these networks. This requires frequent wisdom and compassion.

Yesterday, I encountered the reality of this needed compassion in a new way: I saw a variety of conversations that convinced me humanity is increasingly thinking as one mind. The weave of personal comments in threads with mass media news with music and images shared by individuals revealed to me the incredible way we have merged into a collective dance. Remember at high school dances when everyone danced on their own and then would merge into a line or a circle and then disperse again into couples and smaller groups? I watched this in real-time yesterday online. Truly amazing diversity woven into one shape, one circle, one global community – the Internet.

For years, I’ve predicted that a single tweet or FB post or YouTube video or Instagram photo would sweep the globe and fundamentally shift humans. Now I see that this is happening regularly. Individuals are offering up their thoughts in myriad networks via various mediums (text, image, video, music) and, in some cases, all of humanity circles around a particular message. An individual can watch a trend using sophisticated social media monitoring tools and jump in early on an emerging meme. He/she can capitalize on this meme and lead it, albeit with extreme aplomb since these memes are “thought-animals” that have a life of their own. The entrance of a meme into a culture, as many know, can significantly alter the individuals in that culture.

I think we have an opportunity to consciously sequence a series of memes in order to alter global consciousness. We have an opportunity to significantly change the way individuals relate to one another through an emphasis on kindness, goodness and empathy. One opportunity humans have online is simply to listen to others. And so we are all, in a way, sitting down in impromptu circles around specific posts and hearing each other out on that issue in the post. And often the issue morphs as participants work out their feelings and past issues. These expressions indicate a swiftly evolving conversation headed towards, we hope, understanding and unity on a global level.

Again, people are writing themselves into being in these networks. This requires frequent wisdom and compassion.

More On The Adjacent Possible

admin September 22, 2014 No Comments

“Think of it as a house that magically expands with each door you open. You begin in a room with four doors, each leading to a new room that you haven’t visited yet. Those four rooms are the adjacent possible. But once you open one of those doors and stroll into that room, three new doors appear, each leading to a brand-new room that you couldn’t have reached from your original starting point.” ~Steve Johnson

Humans are changing as a result of relationships and conversations within social networks. There are two specific types of people in relationship nowadays that are driving this change. The first type are humans who talk about “transcending flesh” through digital life. These people spend the majority of their waking hours online. The other type of person turns ideas into flesh products & services.

So the first group is focused on replicating flesh experience within the digital or virtual realm. And the second is focused on turning digital experiences into physical products and services. The tension of these two seemingly opposing directions within social networks is highly fruitful for creative types. To be clear, those who frequently “exit the flesh” to play in the digital realm (gamers, for example) are complimentary to those who are creating a science-fiction-like reality in the flesh (innovators in health technology, for example).

Digital experience is giving humanity a hint that flesh can be transcended. Digital experience is also giving humanity the vision of a super-body, augmented by implants. Virtual avatars could potentially exist for many millions of years in synthetic bodies. Such “virtually-possessed” bodies could evolve into beings capable of transferring knowledge into the flesh community. Some even talk now about the homo sapiens species being left behind as the entire population enters a stage of being implanted with various devices. This new species could be called homo cyborg, as flesh and technology are increasingly blended.

It could be said that humans are involved in a slow motion “rapture” of sorts at this time. Our digital selves are summoning our physical selves to a limitless experience. This in turn could beget limitless energy technology and limitless health technology. As suggested before, we may be able to place our entire consciousness like a software program into a synthetic body that has a much longer life span.

The contemporary world operates constantly within public and private online networks. We can call these online forums “networks of light” in which human hearts connect every millisecond. In these networks, hearts become entangled and start to respond like joined twins, even at a distance. In fact, we can say that humans carry on relationships at the speed of light nowadays. We literally enter quantum states, wherein entangled hearts interact within a channel that empowers the teleportation from light into matter.

It is this dawning realization of the teleportation of light into matter that drives human curiosity in this present age. We are remembering on a mass level how to turn thought into flesh…at increasing velocity. And the cyclical relationship between digital natives and flesh-producers generates this reality.

Forming a relationship with the customer is number one

admin August 18, 2014 No Comments

I really agree with Ted Rubin that being real is more effective & potent than being perfect.

Here’s one reason why I agree with Ted:

Within a large corporation, there are often moments when chaos and fear collide to create real mis-understandings. The chaos results from so many initiatives happening at once. The fear results from a very simple reality – people hanging on to their jobs. When a very large corporation enters social networks for the first time, it is usually via several silos, and even separate regions. This can produce chaos, this can produce fear. And those who enter this chaos and fear, and attempt to coalesce the efforts of the corporation in social networks…well, the only hope for such people is to embody the authentic, the real, the humble, the calm and balanced. This effort in social networks is not about a military strike or the creation of a ruling robot…it is about how we as a brand will form a relationship with our customer.

The value of listening for the human family

admin August 18, 2014 No Comments

The human family will come together when simply listening to one another supersedes having the “right” answer. What is important is to value and affirm one another. If we can do this, we will have the entire human family talking and listening to each other. This short existence is a special time for each person, a time for sharing ideas, exploring creativity, and basking in the glow of one another’s approval.