Attensity Company Blog
-
Does Your Social Media Monitoring Platform Work For You?
Everywhere I go, it seems that Government enterprises are getting turned on to the importance of social media. Recent conferences for Gov 2.0, for example, had significant attendance from Government folks from across the US. And they were not just there to listen; they shared many creative ways that they are putting social media to work for them.
Uniformly, however, I find that I often get one of two responses when asking “how effective is your social media strategy, and how do you monitor and measure it?” The two responses are either a blank stare, followed by a “that is a good question” or “we use Google!”
If you are one of the ones with a blank stare, I recommend you check out my colleague Maria Ogneva’s post on importance and difference between monitoring and measurement and this brief primer.
In the case of Google Alerts, when I probe further into why people use it, here is the answer I usually get:
* It is free
* It is easy, we all know how to use it
* I can set up topics, and Google will automatically send me links without me having to do any work beyond the initial set up
Frankly, those are pretty compelling arguments. However, when probing further about how effective Google Alerts is in meeting their needs, often a different picture emerges. Here are some of the follow-on comments I receive:
* I get a lot of material that is not relevant
* I am never sure what I might be missing
* I cannot track trends on issues that are important to me
* I cannot figure out who the major influencers are on the topics I care about
* I cannot compare coverage on politicians and campaigns
* If I don’t know what I am looking for, it is difficult to use Google for discovery
The bottom line is that (as is often the case), free isn’t really cheap if I am not getting the information I require to be effective and to make better decisions. Using a free tool like Google Alerts, you won’t get the complete picture or any meaningful way to archive, store, slice or analyze the data. In other words, you will get some useful links, but without the actionability behind it. Free tools have their place for sure, as do premium tools like Attensity360. That’s why we built Attensity360—to bring you advanced analysis, charting, and sharing capabilities for reporting and decision-making, easier ways to listen, triage and engage, and a completeness of data in a historical context. -
Making Democracy More Representative
Recently I have spent a good deal of time on Capitol Hill meeting with politicians and political consultants. Here are some of my observations vis a vis the Hill’s social media readiness.
Social Media IQ (or SMIQ as I’ve started calling it – I’m determined to make it stick!) As far as SMIQ goes, the average politician’s score is under 40 (on a scale of 1-100), but growing quickly.
What is SMIQ, and why should I care? Let’s take a closer look below. There is an adoption curve for SMIQ that goes something like this:
* 1-20: I don’t understand social media and have no idea how to take advantage of it; I am still struggling to program my VCR clock.
* 21-40: I get that a lot of people spend time on social media; my consultants and my kids insisted that I create a Facebook site (so I have), and I have actually looked at twitter and a few tweets that my staff has shown me.
* 41-60: I now have a Twitter ID, and have assigned one of the members of my staff to actively monitor social media. We do it by using Google alerts – hey, it is free and way better than nothing at all! I am actively emailing constituents at least once a week on things I care about. What is YouTube?
* 61-80: In addition to periodically tweeting and updating my Facebook page, I continue holding town hall meetings, even have done some as a webinar, but often find myself surprised by what my district/state is up in arms about. My reach in social media is getting better, but I don’t know yet how to let all of my constituents know that they can talk to me on Twitter. How do I increase my reach?
* 81-100: I am an active participant with a variety of social media tools; my staff is really tuned to the importance of staying current and relevant. I have gone from ‘broadcast-mode’, using social media to communicate my ideas, to active listening mode. I hear what people are saying and tune my message to address the issues they care about. I actively manage my reputation, and aggressively participate in ongoing dialogs. I have identified the main influencers on issues, and regularly dialog with these people. I get real-time data on what is being said about me, and the key issues affecting my constituents. I am rarely surprised at town hall meetings. Because I’ve formed relationships with key community influencers, and because I produce content (video, written, etc) that’s relevant to my constituents, my message now travels further than beyond.
Oh great! Another score to keep track of, you may be saying. Whether you call it SMIQ or something else, or whether you follow the readiness cycle, one thing is for sure: social media literacy can no longer be ignored in politics. Staying in the under 40 score range can likely mean that a politician becomes the “ former” representative from District X.
In my opinion, one of the key missing ingredients to improving one’s SMIQ are tools that are easy to use and capable of extending the ability to listen well, and thus to respond well to constituents and their key issues. We think that Attensity360, actively monitoring 55 million social media sites daily, is the key allowing the political process to be more representative
-
Thoughts from Gov 2.0
This week I attended the Government 2.0 Expo in Washington DC. In general, I found it to be quite informative. In my attendance at sessions and in conversations with a number of attendees, I have created a list of my take-aways.
- The Government now really ‘gets it’. We heard from agencies across the board from Civilian, to DoD, to Intelligence. The world of embracing the new web 2.0 technologies and incorporating them in day-to-day work is here. There are some incredible, leading edge capabilities now being deployed in agencies that could not have been imagined a few short years ago, but they are now happening every day. Example: mashups within intelligence agencies that are tracking ship hijackings. Applications developed and deployed in just a few days, even in highly secure environments.
- Open source is now the first resort. Senior DoD official says that is where they now look first – and only look to buy if they cannot get it elsewhere. Since they do not have to go through major procurement hoops for most open source acquisitions, they move much faster than ever thought possible. Peter Coddington is really onto something with his concept of being able to deploy some of our capabilities in an open-source framework for the Government via the new InTTENSITY website.
- App stores are proliferating. Agencies have taken the Apple app store concept and deployed it inside their agency. Lt. Gen Sanderson, the CIO of the Army, stated that they created an app store to support their warfighter capability, open to only Army personnel, and have had developed incredible applications now in use on the ground by warfighters, because the apps are developed by warfighters, in near real time. The Army just had to provide the venue. Who better knows what is needed in the field than the people in the field? And they are developed and delivered quickly. Wars are now being fought in chat rooms as the primary communication medium of troops on the ground.
- The smart phone is the key to much of the future. For many of you, that seems like old news – however, I have seen the possibilities of how they are being used, in ways I certainly would not have imagined, to get access to data and to deploy and deliver real time data to support analytics – from tweets, to pictures, to videos, to emails, to... There are a lot of places in the world where the mobile phone is the only reliable and affordable means of communication.
- Collaboration is the way the government is aspiring to work. Within the intelligence community for example, the focus has moved from the need to know, to the need to share, to the responsibility to share, all based upon the need to get it done, in near real time. Part of this is to being topic focused, rather than agency focused – and since many people across many agencies may all be working on the same topic, how to connect and collaborate to get to answers more quickly.
- Traditional information stores and large relational data warehouses with data uploaded via ETL are not viewed very favorably – as one person said in his presentation, by the time you finally get all the information in there, it is too out-of-date. I am sure that there are some applications that can only live there, but that is not where the Government world is going.
To be relevant in the future in the fast-changing world of Government, we all must find ways to support and help advance these initiatives. -
On A Personal Note...
I am going to take a bit of liberty and create a more personal than business tone blog for today – so please indulge me! One of our key talented people, Tom Sabo, had open heart surgery this past Sunday February 7th. He was born with a defective valve, had it replaced once, and it just ran out of gas and needed to be replaced again. Tom has a great wife, Jess, and a neat little daughter, Mia. The best news is that in spite of snowstorms causing the surgery to get re-scheduled to Sunday, it went extremely well. Tom is weak, but is already up and walking around and has begun the recovery process that may take a bit longer the second time around.
The entire Attensity team has been thinking and praying for Tom, the surgery and his recovery. We are so pleased to report on his good progress. This has caused me, and perhaps you, too, to reflect upon the really important things in life. Family, friends, integrity, doing the right thing and not taking oneself too seriously! Tom really embodies all those values. We are all the better for having Tom’s example to cause us to reflect on our own values. Those of you who have met and worked with Tom in the past will I am sure second my remarks – there is no way to be around him without having his contagious personality infect you. We are looking forward to Tom’s return and his continuing contribution to our business and our lives. -
Welcome to the NEW Attensity Government Systems!
January 14, 2010 • Author: Craig Norris • 0 comments • Leave your comment
Tags: Attensity, Inxight, Text AnalyticsToday, I say to you "Welcome to the new Attensity Government Systems"
You may ask, "But Attensity has been around for over 10 years? Why do you make this statement?"
Well, let me explain. We have created a separate government-facing business unit to specialize in doing only business with government agencies. This provides for us additional focus and additional capability that we have not had in the past, and it provides better solutions for our government customers and prospects. Let’s look at some of what is new on the solution side of Attensity Government Systems:
The integration of Inxight Thingfinder and Attensity solutions. Attensity Government Systems now can re-sell the previous Inxight software coupled with Attensity. This provides tight integration of nouns and verbs and that leads to better triples (RTF triples), improved link analysis visualization, and easier downstream integration with other systems such as i2, Palantir and others.
Strengthened sales team in partnership with Carahsoft to provide better market visibility and coverage and to make sure we are easy to do business with.
Provide new capability our ability to automatically generate triples (noun-verb-object) data from text, and to create Google-like search capabilities on those triples to deliver substantially upgraded and easier to use search and discover capabilities across all Government Agencies.
Provide additional capability for Civilian Agencies and DOD to use our Voice of the Citizen solutions to understand what people are thinking and saying and to take action on these facts.
Create an open source, online capability for easy trial and easy buying of our solutions for integrators and smaller project implementations.You will be hearing much more about this on our website, in press releases and in blogs to come.
‘Automagically’ combine Open Source Intelligence and information from social media with other internal sources of information to create a more comprehensive picture of activities and issues for use by analysts and others.
We also have put a new management team in place, starting with a new Board of Directors. I am especially proud of the talented and experience people who are now working with us on our Board to expand our business. Check them out here.
In addition, I have taken over the full-time responsibility to lead only our Government business. I do this because of our view that there is tremendous opportunity for Attensity Government Systems to truly be the leader in using semantic and NLP technologies in new and creative ways to change the way analysis is thought of and is performed. That is what we are about.
For your information, here is our new “boilerplate” that defines our business as we go forward:
About Attensity Government Systems
Attensity Government Systems (AGS) provides semantic technologies and software applications that enable government agencies to quickly find, understand, and use information trapped in unstructured text to drive critical decision-making. AGS’ solutions pre-integrate nouns (entities) together with verbs, combining leading semantic technologies, such as Inxight ThingFinder, with Attensity’s unique exhaustive extraction and other semantic language capabilities. This creates a unique capability to see important relationships, create link analysis charts , easily integrate with other software packages, and connect the dots in near real-time when time is of the essence. The comprehensive suite of commercial off-the-shelf applications includes intelligence analysis, social media monitoring, voice of the citizen, automated communications response and routing, and the industry’s most extensive suite of semantic extraction technologies. With installations in intelligence, defense and civilian agencies, Attensity enables organizations to better track trends, identify patterns, detect anomalies, reduce threats, and seize opportunities faster.
I welcome your feedback, comments, and suggestions as we begin this new era.
Craig
Subscribe
Blogroll
- Intelligent Enterprise Blog
- Marketing Profs Daily Fix Blog
- Bruce Tempkin's Customer Experience Matters
- Seth Grimes b-eye-network Blog
- Fern Halper - Hurwitz Group Blog
- Curt Monash Text Technologies Blog
- Customer Think Blog
- 1 to 1 Media Newsletters
- Destination CRM Blog
- Nathan Gilliatt - Social Target Blog