Attentio Blog

One of Attentio’s newest product releases, Attentio Brand Mapsâ„¢, achieved this accolade during the 3rd Int’l AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media in San Jose, California.

BRUSSELS, BE — June 9^th, 2009 — Attentio, one of the fastest growing social media analytics and online listening companies, has received the Best Demo award. The prize, awarded during the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM), in San Jose, California, once again recognized the effective visualization technique matched with leading edge algorithms created by Attentio that are used to help understand and detect relationships between brands and topics in social and mainstream media.

Every year, the highly respected Int’l AAAI interdisciplinary conference brings together researchers and industry leaders interested in creating and analyzing social media. Past conferences have included technical discussions from areas such as computer science, linguistics, psychology, statistics, sociology, multimedia and semantic web technologies.

“As a technology company providing a software as a service, (SaaS) it is so important to be recognized by your customers and peers for creating great new technology. We are particularly excited because the patent pending Attentio Brand Maps™ uses extremely clever technology “under the hood” but produces results that everyone can understand. The fact that we visualize this over time and for social media is a USP for Attentio. We are particularly proud to win this, given the event receives support from major search technology companies like Google and Microsoft” said Simon McDermott, CEO of Attentio.

In the past years Attentio has received awards from Red Herring and Euro-ICT and has been building up their client base significantly even in difficult economic conditions, said McDermott “People know social media redefines how companies communicate to people, added to this the increasing importance of measurement it is no surprise that this type of technology and service is increasingly popular with the world’s largest brands and agencies”

About ICWSM

The International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media grew out of two events: the annual series of Workshops on the Weblogging Ecosystem (WWE 2004/06) held in conjunction with the International World Wide Web Conference and the Spring Symposium organized by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) on Computational Approaches to Analyzing Weblogs (CAAW 2006).

ICWSM organizers provide to the participants a wide range of collections of social-media data and encourage experimentation on common problems and datasets. For more information, visit http://www.icwsm.org/

About Attentio

Attentio SA, based in Brussels is one of Europe’s leading social media analytics and online listening companies. Its central location enables the firm to support corporate clients and agencies throughout Europe and the US. One of the leading company products is Attentio’s Brand Dashboard™ used to monitor and analyze social media such as blogs, forums, twitter and news providing a comprehensive real-time insight into consumer behavior and attitudes. For more information on how online market intelligence can benefit your business or to schedule a demonstration of the tools contact Attentio at +32 (0) 2219 8666 or attentiocontact@attentio.com or visit our web site at www.attentio.com.

Being pregnant, especially for the first time, is a big deal.

I am just discovering this, being now 4 months pregnant. During this life changing time, you need someone to talk to. But before the magical 3 months margin, when you cross over to the “safer side”, it’s a custom not to reveal to anyone except your spouse that you are – hopefully – carrying life inside you. In their quest to share the good yet uncertain news, more and more young women find themselves looking for peer support and opening their hearts in different forms of social media. Myself included.

Discussion forums:

The great thing about discussion forums is that there are so many of them out there. Within one specific forum, there are different kinds of groups for different needs: those wanting to become pregnant, those not successful at becoming pregnant, those thinking they are pregnant but not so sure about it, and those who are surely pregnant and who are organized into different groups according to the months of their due dates.
The beauty of these forums is that you can sign in anonymously and talk to strangers in the same position, look for the same kind of symptoms and compare the most reliable pregnancy tests on the market. And while the information you get is subjective, it’s been filtered through the experiences of many moms-to-be just like yourself. This is exactly the information you need.
(Eg. BabyandBump,  Zappybaby Forum)

Mommy Bloggers:

In addition to forums, I also follow a few active moms-to-be-bloggers. What pulls me to these blogs are the funny and earnest day-to-day experiences these women, whether located in my town or the other side of the world, have to share with the rest of the readership in the web. Besides some acquaintances, none of my friends are pregnant at the moment, and frankly, those friends who have small children and who could have experiences to share, are too damn busy to meet face to face with me. So I happily turn to my fellow prospective mums online to hear their timely and often very personal experiences.
(Eg. moms.alltop.com, De Ultieme Mama Blogs Lijst!)

Social networks for moms:

In addition to blogs and forums, I’ve also visited social networks dedicated to moms. In addition to being able to create your own baby page with your most important pieces of information, these sites allow you to post pictures, answer polls and find lots of useful information ranging from healthy diets to problems school aged children come across with. In addition to the useful information, there’s also lots of fun, not-so-useful content to spend your time with.
(Eg. Café Mom, 9maand.com)

My thirst for knowledge around this phenomenon seems inexhaustible.  I’ve carried home stacks of books from the library and bought a bunch of baby magazines. While the library books give you good suggestions on baby names and professional advice on what to do in case some specific symptoms appear, these books are not going to tell you that the name Antarcticus you found in the book and are seriously considering, is actually ridiculous and your child will be forever bullied at school for his idiotic name if you are foolish enough to go with it. This is what the moms signed into the names-for-my-baby discussion group on my favorite discussion forum would tell me right off the bat.

Another problem with the magazines is that they are often packed with advertisements. It’s hard to know if the information is reliable and clinically tested when every other page is an add of a sponsor. No thanks; I’d rather adjust my purchasing plans according to the advice of the subjective unsponsored moms.

Social media sites are great sources of up-to-date and candid opinions about the best fitting pregnancy clothes, the safest strollers and multivitamins that are suited for pregnant mothers. A wealth of information for anyone interested in understanding babies, moms and whatever is essential in their world.

Photo from:http://www.medicalfacts.nl/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/baby.jpg

Attentio released last week the latest improvements and additions to our Dashboard:

New features:

Centric Brand maps: now, using the brand positioning maps (MDS) users can also centre the brand or topic of their choice to see how other brand and topics relate to that one brand. The already available brand positioning maps display the relations of all brands and topics tracked, with the new brand map type these relations can be discovered referring to one brand in focus.

Email alerts 2.0: new type of email alert that allows Dashboard users to set up email notification for influential articles on a particular entity (brand) or topic. For example: users can request to be notified by email when a top influencer writes about your Brand AND Quality.

Event Detection with tag clouds: event detection is a feature that detects topics or events automatically. Now it’s also available in the form of tag clouds that allow users to quickly visualize the larger events (bigger font size) and drill down to the articles by clicking on the events. The darker the colour of the detected event the more recent it is; older events have lighter colours.

New data sources:

Twitter: users can add Twitter to their projects, and get an idea of how much their brand is mentioned within Twitter. Twitter works as blog or news source with all its functionalities – topic drill down, sentiment analysis, region classification and event detection. Also Brand Maps are generated for Twitter.

Daily Motion: an important European video site, comparable to YouTube. Daily Motion is especially important in French speaking countries. It can be selected to track brand visibility in viral videos.

There is a disconnect between the users of social media and the power of the content they create.

Users of Facebook, Twitter and MySpace don’t always realise that what they write can and will be used against them in evidence. What most write or share is harmless, a fun picture, a comment from a concert they went to, or who they’ll meet tonight. But…There is plenty that you don’t have to share IMHO. Here is my small (partial) checklist of what can stay private. 

1. Keep work environment discussions quiet, it can come back to haunt you. For example someone I follow on twitter, clearly works for IKEA. Sometimes they share too much about what goes on there. I’d say err on the side of caution and normally keep the content secret, unless you need to be a whistle blower or absolutely must share what is going on (its your job to do it etc.) 

2. If you don’t like a location (city, country), then don’t tweet about that and then apply for a job there. It doesn’t matter that you are highly qualified it just makes the employer concerned. What is really at play here is power of the written word versus spoken word. What is written doesn’t come with intonation and body language of interpersonal conversations so it lays heavier in the mind of the person that reads it. People have been fired or not hired because of twitter/facebook comments – see http://www.philgerbyshak.com/fired-for-facebook-and-twitter/

3. Don’t assume that anything you write or share will stay private. There are plenty of people who think @ replies in twitter are private. I would say even be careful with direct messages (yes this should have same etiquette as email). In sum, if you write something in Twitter or Facebook imagine it is part of your online brand and can add or detract to it.

4. Have fun. Even if there are concerns about what you write, most of the content people share is perfectly adorable, lovely, quirky insights from their life. 

In conclusion, I know that in years to come the rules of the game will change. No employer or journalist will have the same power by looking at social networks for juicy gossip. The goalposts will change for everyone, so if employers won’t hire someone with saucy Facebook pictures they’ll not be able to hire anyone at all… I suppose we need to be careful in the mean time before the masses all produce embarrassing content :)

I used to research. Now I retweet. And I’m not alone.

Learn how I, and millions of others, make Social Media our new priority Search sources. And why you, as a marketer or Brand expert, should care.

I used to Search. And I used to NetWork.

Now I NetSearch.

Once upon a time, long ago, in times like 1995, we netizens began to research a topic via an online database. Then we began to research our topics via an online Search engine (and Google became a verb in several languages). Sometimes we netizens would even end up in a database, provoking a fit of nostalgia (Ah, JSTOR and my university days). Now the era of the database is, well, not past, but somewhat passé.

Students, my littlest bro, still in uni, tells me, still go to the database to find the citations to back up the ideas for essays that they’ve already written “on paper” (a.k.a., in a Microsoft Word document). Students search and cite as they write, switching between “windows”, that is Windows’ Word and online Search windows. I only wish my professors had permitted me to cite via hyperlink rather than footnote. I submit that hyperlink citations would make professors’ jobs easier. They could clickthrough to check the source, rather than “Google scholar” the footnote. (Yes, beloved Profs, we know you use Search engines too. Libraries are just too time-consuming when you’re on a deadline.)

Now, students, marketers, and I don’t need to research or Google Scholar or even just Google most of the time. I follow people on Twitter. The people that I follow tweet, I tweet, and we all retweet. And we decrease exponentially the time we once spent on Search, scholarly or otherwise. We don’t have to Search–we “NetSearch” via our networks.

Twitter and Facebook are my personal favourites.

On Twitter, I follow many of the people who follow all the subjects that I need to know about. They follow the people that I can’t or don’t follow, and these people also follow the subjects that my followers and following want to know about. It’s my Twitter NetSearch. Twhirl provides constant computer headlines giving me the latest, up-to-date “NetSearch” info in small bubbles found at the right-hand corner of my computer screen.

Facebook I use to post the articles that I feel require small group discussion. I send an article to my Facebook friends who would, I think, want to discuss the article topic. They “send all” to reply with their thoughts. We Facebook Friends create our own little online mini-discussion groups.

I do the same thing via my personal blogs and favourite bloggers, responding to commentors who, in return, respond to commentors, who reply, who respond…These are people I “know”, or we “know”, people who, through time and NetSearching have come be sources that I, and the people who trust me, that is, we trust. We/they are content creators our online networks have verified and learned to value over time.

This is no longer search or research. This is NetSearch.

It’s social, it’s media, and it’s online. This is the social search that makes up the buzz that Attentio’s tools monitor and measure, making NetSearching easier for you and your Brand.

from Onemanandhisblog.com

Yesterday, to practice my French, I agreed to be interviewed for a traditional marketing survey.

The survey was simple. A beverage Brand is considering a new package, a new can. The Brand wants to appeal to a younger audience (represented by me at age 26). The new packaging is a tall, slender can, a la the Red Bull can. The marketer interviewing me wanted to know my opinion about the new packaging.

The marketer’s interview went like so:

Is this can trendy? A. Yes, very, B. Yes, rather, C. No opinion, D. No, not much, E. No, not at all

Is this can attractive? A. Yes, very, B. Yes, rather, C. No opinion, D. No, not much, E. No, not at all

And so on…

Before long, I was irritated. As an interviewee and a consumer, I felt stereotyped and, worse, patronised.

First of all, from just looking at the “new” packaging, I KNEW the Brand wanted to be the next Red Bull.  But Red Bull, as my fellow youthful consumers will no doubt agree, is about more than just “trendy” and “attractive” packaging. (What is “trendy” and “attractive” anyway? At 26, I know what I think of as trendy and attractive. But the marketer interviewing me was in her 50s.)

At no time within the interview was I allowed to express my irritation or actual sentiments regarding the Brand’s new package or the Brand itself. Instead, I had predefined choices A to E. I had to decide whether I would give the “expected answers” about what the marketer thought I thought about the new Brand packaging (and, yes, we over-studied and over-stereotyped youthful consumers know EXACTLY what the expected answers are, especially when dictated to us, er, rather me, by a 50 year-old-woman who reminded me of my mother) or whether I could try to express my frustration with how the survey was packaged via answer C. (No opinion).

I and my fellow consumers have been inundated by such traditional marketing since the womb. And we know what these marketers really want. Like politicians, these marketers want your money and support (in that order). They don’t really want your opinion.

And while packaging is indeed an aspect of a Brand, I know when I’m being sold a “cool” copycat. A cool copycat is something that is the same old substance packaged in a “new” style “borrowed” from the latest trend to do well. And, despite appearances, a copycat is not cool.

That’s why I’m shocked that this type of traditional marketing survey is still used. It’s ineffective, stereotypical, and can be perceived as patronising. The answers that the consumers give to traditional marketing surveys may be true, but they are not accurate. The survey costs a lot of money but earns very little real consumer insight or engagement. If anything, I will be less likely to buy the copycat Brand because I was first asked for anwers and then more or less ignored.

Now for the real answers. Brands should be plugged into social media. Consumers there explain what they like and why, and they don’t and won’t do it within the traditional boundaries of A to E. These days, Consumers can and do create their own parameters when evaluating the Brand. They share these parameters with fellow consumers, constructing real-time, real word discussions about what they like and why they like, and also what they don’t like and why. There are millions of Brand insights offered freely online, and a million opportunities to engage with customers and find out what they really think.

Like, for example, that copycats are NOT trendy and attractive.

F. The grade given to my multiple choice marketer.

Social media makes Brand reputation management impractical and yet absolutely necessary. A Brand’s reputation is at the mercy of the media online. It is impossible to spin every single story someone posts about a Brand. And it’s also not smart. Trying to hide or withold information undermines consumer trust. Consumers WILL find out any story that a brand tries to suppress, and these consumers WILL decide that either

A) the Brand team did not know something that it should have or

B) the Brand team tried to take advantage of the consumers’ erstwhile ignorance.

Neither of these conclusions reached by consumer are good for the Brand or the Brand team.

Instead, Brands online need to engage with their consumer communities and work to establish Trust. With social media, Trust is an investment that develops over time into a sustainable, social relationship between the Brand and the Brand’s consumers.

That’s why the Brand HAS to manage, or rather monitor, its online reputation. The Brand has to know what’s being said where and how. The Brand can’t spin all its own stories, but it can respond to those stories that are spun–if the Brand team is paying attention.

Attentio software offers Brand teams the “ears” and “eyes” needed to monitor and manage a Brand’s reputation online. The software’s sources span blogs, forums, news, and online video channels like YouTube and DailyMotion. Sign up, log in, and start listening.