By Alexandra Reid
Monitoring social media is like drinking from a fire hose. If you don’t abridge the flow, you will get washed away. As a community manager, I have an intimate understanding of what it feels like to be pummeled and drenched by the waves of content that constantly come at me. However, I also realize the tremendous opportunities that float alongside the masses of Tweets, status updates and blog posts published on the web every second of every day.
Measuring market demand through social media is a growing opportunity that may prove to be extremely valuable to entrepreneurs. There are many companies currently developing software to measure “social media sentiment” to determine public perception over time and pinpoint when a brand is under attack and, more importantly, why. This tactic requires software to siphon targeted streams of content from the social media fire hose to measure mentions of a company or person as well as if the mention was positive, negative or neutral. However, software of the caliber produced by companies like Meltwater Group is still in its early stages and can be expensive for a startup budget and produce overly intricate analysis for early stage companies.
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This post is by Associate Peter Hanschke, an Ottawa-based product management specialist. Peter’s post is part of our continuing series about the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market. We welcome your comments.
By Peter Hanschke
Here’s the situation: Your development team is busy creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). You have people off in all directions trying to secure some funding. But do you have a Market Validation Plan? Furthermore, are you executing this plan along with all the other activities? In other words, is this an activity that you are currently performing?
As the name suggests, a Market Validation Plan (another MVP for those who like TLAs) is about reaching out to your target market to determine whether:
- The market likes your product or product concept
- The market is willing to buy your product when you have it ready
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By Linda Forrest
Whenever the concept of influence comes up, I’m immediately confronted with a mental image of Will Farrell positing that he’s “kind of a big deal,” a memorable and oft-quoted line from the raunchy comedy Anchorman. The irony is that in the film, he is, as stated, kind of a big deal. The same is true of influencers, tastemakers, trendsetters or whatever term best describes people whose opinions and actions hold weight amongst your target market.
There is an entire discipline of marketing devoted to this concept called “influencer marketing.” Wikipedia describes it as:
a form of marketing that has emerged from a variety of recent practices and studies, in which focus is placed on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers.
Influencers may be potential buyers themselves, or they may be third parties. These third parties exist either in the supply chain (retailers, manufacturers, etc.) or may be so-called value-added influencers (such as journalists, academics, industry analysts, professional advisers, and so on.)
A key takeaway is that influence is most effective when it’s not overtly used to deliver a specific result. Rather, influencers affect their markets without necessarily using certain tactics or well-defined parameters to do so. This distinction is what makes the concept of influence measurement so compelling.
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By Alexandra Reid
As a community manager, I admit I am rather biased when it comes to explaining the value of online communities, so I promise to do my best to be both balanced and accurate as I weigh their merits and demerits. If you’re reading this post, you’ve likely already heard the hoopla about how bustling and engaged online communities can be valuable for businesses. What you may not know is how they can be specifically beneficial to you, the entrepreneur in the ever-crucial stages of developing a startup when budgets are low and time is precious.
A common misconception that many people have about social media is that it is free. Sure, the platforms on their own don’t cost a nickel. But if the intention is to use them for business, they require a considerable level of resources, especially human resources required to develop a strategy and then to carry out online activities. You need to have a crystal-clear understanding of your goals and the processes through which you will achieve those goals for your investment in social media to be worthwhile. Trust me, social media is no light undertaking to be considered in passing. Do not idly throw this position on someone who already has 10 other responsibilities just because he or she has a Twitter account. Someone with a firm grasp on how to plan social media activities to achieve business goals should be in charge of building online communities to ensure you do not waste your valuable time, energy, money and reputation on a trial-and-error approach.
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By Linda Forrest
Last week, Chrysler experienced a PR crisis when a Tweeter at its social media agency posted a Tweet that not only used an expletive, but was completely off-brand. From a marketing perspective, this came at a very bad time for the company, which had made a splash with its “Imported from Detroit” campaign launched at the SuperBowl. The company issued the requisite apology, which it later explained in more depth. The employee was fired from the agency, and the agency lost Chrysler’s business.
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By Alexandra Reid 
