Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not enough. Having social media accounts is certainly a great (and quite necessary) start, but if you don’t use them to interact with your current and potential customers, there’s really no point.

Luckily, I’ve picked 3 simple and free social media tools to get you pointed in the right direction:

• OnlyWire: Have a few social media accounts, lots to say and little time? Check out OnlyWire. This tool enables you to post content across multiple social networks at the same time, with the push of a button. The service includes all of the top social and professional networks, and the free version allows for 300 submissions per month. Say goodbye to multiple log-ins and hello to your customers.

• Roost: Use Facebook and Twitter, but not always sure what to post or when? Give your content a boost with Roost. Their free Campaign Creator connects to your profiles, lets you schedule single posts or entire campaigns, and analyzes their reach to suggest areas for improvement. This tool can also apply a fancy algorithm to your Facebook data, spitting out a score that determines whether or not your audience will drive business to your location. It’ll even tell you the geographic spread of your fans.

• Timely: Under the impression that the more times you hop on Twitter and drop your knowledge the better? Timely begs to differ…according to this tool, it’s not about the number of times you tweet, it’s about which times you tweet (however, please don’t forget that first and foremost it’s about the content). Timely will analyze your last 199 tweets, figure out the best time slots, and auto-schedule your posts based on the data. Now you can start dropping that knowledge when it’s most likely to be picked up.

With new social media monitoring tools (many of them free) popping up almost by the day, there should be no excuse for neglecting your networks. Start engaging with your current and potential customers and you might be surprised by the increase in online conversations surrounding your brand.

Honestly, initial engagement around this news leads me to believe people are not understanding how significant it actually is. Time (and search results) will certainly tell – but in the spirit of helping companies do all the right things to get and keep high search engine visibility – here’s some quick insight:

What’s Schema and Why Should We Care
Schema is a collection of new HTML tags that help search engines more accurately index relevant content within web pages.

Since the collaboration and roll-out of this new tagging system was coordinated by the three leading search engines, everyone should be looking at Schema (schema.org) as a new standard for making web pages as search engine friendly as possible.

Note: I appreciate the arguments about how The Big Three have dictated this change, essentially skipping organizational/open review processes often associated with creating “standards.” But what’s done is done – so in the spirit of Heartbreak Ridge, it’s now time to improvise, adapt and overcome.

What You Should Do
Start by making sure your webmaster or whomever is handling SEO/search engine visibility for your web properties is on this. I’d recommend proceeding as follows:

1. Get oriented on why and how: The Schema site FAQ is a good overview of the purpose and reasoning behind the big change – but the real meat of what and how to implement the new markup language resides within the Getting Started documentation.
2. Get familiar with the Schema vocabulary applicable to your web pages: This begins to get technical, but the Getting Started document provides a good understanding of how information within your web page can be structured through “types” and “properties.”Even without being technically-minded, you can look at the full list of item types to get a quick idea of the kind of web page attributes which can now be indexed via the new standard.
3. Create a Schema plan: Conduct an audit of your web pages/sites to match applicable content with the Schema item types. You have numerous options for documenting how you will go about making changes, depending on how detailed you want to get. A spreadsheet might be the most helpful for organizing items types and properties by page, content sections, etc.
4. Make the Changes and Test Your Results: Google promises the Rich Snippets Testing Tool will soon support testing of the new Schema tags to ensure you have an opportunity to see how your content is parsed/displayed in the search results. I would recommend implementing your schema plan regardless of how long it takes for this tool to be ready for prime time. As always, keep an eye on your analytics to see the results of your changes.

A couple of other thoughts that come to mind with this change pertain to how we’ll begin seeing search results adjust due to those taking advantage of Schema vs. those who are not. Other than our own clients’ search results, we’ll of course be watching organizations like SEOMoz to see what they come up with in terms of research to validate the predicted significance.

I’m also curious about how the use of Schema might effect quality scores on landing pages used in conjunction with pay per click marketing. I can only guess that search engine ads driving traffic to pages that leverage schema will have a greater likelihood of higher placement and lower cost per click.

As Marshall Kirkpatrick stated yesterday, “This will change the way people design websites, it will change the way people do search marketing, it will change a lot of things. It should be very, very interesting.” I agree. How bout’ you?

If not, or for those of you not receiving our email, please take a few seconds to answer the (single) survey question now. I’ll be sharing the results in our next email and would be very thankful for your participation.

And now for the article…

Call me late to the party, but I believe we’re finally seeing enough evidence (change) in the U.S. to justify the consideration of time and money for QR code marketing.

For those of you relatively unfamiliar with QR codes, mobile tagging and the origin of two-dimensional barcodes, Jeff Korhan’s recent post on how QR codes can grow your business is a must read.

For those with a deeper technical understanding, I’ll acknowledge QR codes are relatively old technology — and I appreciate the emergence of near field communication (NFC) as a potential alternative to some QR code uses.

Notable Numbers, Adoption Rate & Demographic Resources

• The recent release of Compete’s smartphone intelligence survey results from Q3 of 2010 shows that 28 percent of smartphone owners have used mobile apps to scan barcodes.
• Mobio’s “Naked Facts” report highlights a 1,200 percent increase in mobile scans from July to December of 2010. There are consistencies here with ScanBuy’s 2010 Mobile Barcode Trend Report, but a future comparison that factors in successive (2010 and 2011) holiday campaigns might be more meaningful.
• ScanBuy pointed to 20 million Americans already having “standard code readers” on their phones, but with the recent release of their “scan & send” feature, QR code accessibility now reaches at least 80 percent of all camera-ready phones.

How the Growing List of Uses Support Adoption

QR codes are typically formatted to deliver one of three outputs after they are scanned: a text field, contact record, or a link (any URL you define). The ability to set up and redirect people from a unique URL is, therefore, fundamental to how we’re seeing QR codes applied in social media marketing.

Aside from metrics, another key consideration is the simple, day-to-day exposure of these codes.

Take New York City’s new initiative to include QR codes on every building permit by 2013. That could translate to around 1 million printed codes, enabling New Yorkers to quickly obtain city-wide information about construction sites and buildings.

At the Denver airport, 1st Bank has made QR codes the centerpiece of a series of large advertising displays. And yes, the clever novelty factor is in full effect — with “free sudoku” likely having a short shelf life.

Aneta Hall points to many more examples, but the point is these codes are now everywhere and past the point of flash in the pan. That means more is on the way — more case studies, conversations, integration, technology, etc.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road for QR Codes in Social Media

As the noise increases in this space, there are couple paths that may help make your next step in this effort worthwhile:

1. Consider what might apply to an existing business problem: A CMO recently told me that his company interacts with more than 1 million people per year at various events. “If we could even get a small percentage to like our Facebook page while actually at an event, it would be a big win.”Perhaps he could partially solve this problem by driving QR code scans directly to a Facebook like button, then pairing a coupon or other quick incentive to ensure the transaction is tracked and completed. Note: Pingtags has a LinkedIn focus with QR codes.
2. Build on what works: This not only applies to the specifics of your business, but also on the bigger picture of success in social media. Consider GroupM’s research on The Role of Search and Social Media in the Purchase Pathway, which cites that 48 percent of consumers combine search and social in the buying process. “Wait,” you say. “I thought we were talking QR codes.”Stay with me. In this example, the research reaffirms the significance of consumer reviews as (the social) influencing the decision process. So now we might ask how QR codes can be used to drive awareness around our reviews or testimonials.If we also know from this research that 64 percent of consumers are more likely to follow a brand after a purchase, consider how does the QR code strategy adapt (on products, in e-mails, etc.) to engage existing customers?

Yes, these are quick-fire examples, but hopefully they give a good sense of the approach. Strategic and research-oriented thinking will ultimately help provide greater value to QR codes. And although QR codes may continue to be applied in gimmicky manners, make no mistake: QR codes aren’t just another fad.

You don’t even really need to spend that much to see real ROI. We’ve helped several clients with smaller budgets see big increases in their fan bases from effective Facebook ads. Speaking of ROI, Facebook’s reporting gives you the ability to see exactly how many users clicked “Like” on your ad, allowing you to determine a cost-per-fan number.

Facebook advertising has already come a long way. A lot of processes that were once manual have since been automated. Targeting continues to get better and more relevant. Competition is still low compared to other PPC platforms. That being said, the Facebook ads platform still has a long way to go. If you’re expecting the polish and UI of a Google AdWords, you’ll be in for somewhat of  a rude awakening with Facebook advertising. If I were working on the Facebook ad platform, I’d take a look at the following five ways Facebook could improve its ad platform.

Prominently show actions and action rate across all dashboards & improve dashboards in general

This is pretty much a no-brainer. In order to see actions and action rates, you have to click a few times from the main dashboard to a specific ad. You can’t see campaign or account level action/action rate data. This information needs to be prominently displayed across your Facebook ad dashboards.

Further, the dashboard (even the brand spanking new iteration of it) needs work. You need to be able to see all your ads and their performance in one place. You need to be able to see your different campaign targeting, all in one place. And you certainly need to see your account, campaign, and ad action/action rate metrics easily. In one place.

Allow for real A/B split testing

If you want to properly A/B test ad variations (with the exact same targeting and bid) in a Facebook advertising campaign, you’re going to run into problems. 99% of the time what will end up happening is whichever ad you create first will suck up the vast majority of the traffic. You can’t create two ads at the same time (think AdWords Editor) to alleviate this. To compensate, you can increase the bid for the B variation to show more, but then your CPC will go up as well, defeating the purpose of said A/B testing in the first place.

You can also create another campaign with the same targeting settings and bids, but then best of luck to you trying to compare performance between the two. That’s where the whole action/action rate metrics bit comes in to play. Facebook at the very least needs to let us upload ads paused, and then make them go live at the same time. Or just serve up ads equally, which would be ideal.

Improve consistency regarding ad creative approval

Stop allowing ads that clearly break your guidelines (especially in regards to words in ALL CAPS) and occasionally disallowing ads that adhere to them. Often times re-submitting the same ad a few minutes later will get it approved. No one knows what is going on. Regardless, I think we all can agree this whole process needs to get tightened up.

Case in point: the advertising guidelines specifically state “Ads cannot include excessive capitalization (such as “FREE”) or incorrect capitalization (such as capitalizing the first letter of every word in a sentence).”

Interesting, since it took me literally 8 seconds to find and screenshot this Madden ad from my Facebook account, which is clearly not adhering to said capitalization rules. (PS – Go COLTS).

Associate credit cards with ad accounts instead of individual users

The MCC within Google AdWords is something you take for granted after a while, especially when you’re helping your clients deal with all sorts of billing issues and adjustments. From the MCC you can dive into any clients account and adjust billing settings. It’s that simple.

Compare that process to Facebook. For whatever reason, only one credit card can be associated with one user, instead of each account that has ads running. Why is this bad? Well, when you want to create a new ads account, you’re either going to have to get your client to create the ads account with their personal Facebook account and give you access or break Facebook’s TOS and create a fake account to tie a credit card to. Neither of which is a good option. Since we like to generally avoid angering our Facebook overlords, we go with option #1. Most clients don’t have an issue with this, and you can always do it for them, it’s just a silly workaround for an issue that needs to get fixed.

Offer certification

I’ll be the first to admit – getting Google AdWords certified was a pain in the _____. But here’s what it did – it made me learn things about the platform I didn’t know about before, even after months and months of experience. It also gave Room 214 credibility to potential clients. Facebook could certainly use a program like this. They could even extend it out to other components of their platform (think: Applications, Pages, TOS, etc). With the amount of money brands are already spending in Facebook, it makes sense to roll out a certification program for agencies and individuals to show their competence. Facebook would also make a pretty penny off it. I think I just helped Facebook realize their $50 billion valuation in one fell swoop.

As it stands, Facebook advertising works. Really well. If you have the budget, you WILL bring in the likes to your page. It’s that simple. While it can be frustrating at times dealing with the current iteration of the Facebook  ad platform, it goes without saying that Facebook will continue to update it and hopefully address some of these issues I’ve outlined above.

If you have any questions about Facebook ads, feel free to leave a comment below or fill out our contact form. We’re happy to help!

The Predictions

It seems that everyone was buzzing last week about the major themes of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Mashable wrote a blog post identifying what they felt were the key trends of the show, and we at Room 214 decided to test their theory, which said tablets, gaming (like Microsoft’s Kinect and Nintendo’s 3Ds), connected technology, 4G phones, and all things Android platform would be the biggest themes. I went to Crimson Hexagon, one of our social media research tools, and took a look at the conversation from last week.

In over 500,00 posts (82% of which came from Twitter), people discussed these topics fairly evenly. It’s worth noting that you can’t exactly split Android and tablet conversation, as Android tablets, like the Motorola Xoom and the Microsoft Streak, drove a huge volume of conversation. While we can see slight variations in overall theme, the above only really shows us that connected technology, in the home, car, etc., wasn’t as big, so let’s take a look at key language themes by day.

The Reality: January 6th

On the 6th, a presentation slide with information about Microsoft’s Avatar Kinect leaked and the Twittersphere erupted. Sony’s seemingly endless stream of product announcements drove high volume, and the general tablet conversation, a dominating theme for the whole show, honed in on the Xoom Tablet.

The Reality: January 7th

The 7th was the day of 4G Smart Phones, more tablet conversation (this time including the Microsoft Streak), and video. Even though Apple wasn’t really present at CES, some mockups of the iPad 2 shell showed up. The power of Apple buzz still blows my mind: even though Apple didn’t actually showcase or reveal anything, these mocks drove iPad keywords high enough to drown out other conversation of products actually being released. Bravo, Apple.

Interestingly, video showed up as a theme across the entire event, as video was incorporated into a wide-ranging set of products, from Toyota’s in-car Entune system to Microsoft’s Surface V2 hands-on video….thing.

So it looks like Mashable, and a lot of other sources that guessed key themes, were mostly right. And while tablets only got mentioned slightly more often than a few other key trends, when you analyze the specific language, you see that tablets were an anchoring theme throughout. Just a few key things were missed: video technology, and the overwhelming power of the Apple brand.

A recent comScore study found that viewers who watch online-only TV or a mix of live and online desire TV to be flexible to their needs:

• 75% “selected online over TV because they were able to watch the show wherever they wanted”
• 74% “selected online because they were able to watch the show on their own time”

Through DVR, Cable and Satellite providers have allowed us the ability to watch TV on our own time, while still placating the demands of individual networks. But while DVR and on-demand have changed the way we watch TV, they are a half-step in innovation. And these innovations are being surpassed, daily, by an ever-growing list of internet-based products and content delivery systems.

Let’s call this internet-based TV New TV. New TV is a bit complicated. It’s an infant. While Hulu and Netflix have widespread adoption, the use of technology like Boxee, Apple TV, XBox, etc. is still reserved for early adopters, mostly because it takes a lot of configuration to get just what you want, and you really can’t get everything (see: NFL).

Cable and satellite companies aren’t dense; they know their current model of TV will have to innovate, or else. Comcast launched Fancast, which is a re-skinned Hulu with some additional features, like On-Demand listings. AT&T U-Verse integrates with X-Box 360, and U-Verse Mobile allows you to watch a few shows. AT&T recently announced that U-Verse customers who subscribe to HBO or Cinemax will be able to stream content from these channels online, which means they can also get it through their X-Box. With the exception of this latest announcement, non of these attempts have been particularly innovative, and the press around each is overshadowed by ongoing legal battles between cable companies and, literally, any new device or service that brings consumers TV via internet.

As New TV is still cumbersome for the uninitiated, cable and satellite companies don’t exactly have a fire under them. Yet. But now that Netflix, which boasts over 16 million members, is offering a streaming-only subscription model, the average tech user has easy, simple access to a total New TV experience. The current battle between Level 3 and Comcast over this change in Netflix suggests, to me, just how hard the cable companies are going to fight back, instead of figuring out how to better provide solutions that are more relevant to our current consumption patterns. As I said at the beginning of this article, consumers have some serious demands about entertainment. And a lot of innovative companies are trying to figure out how to meet those demands. Didn’t we watch a similar battle happen when major newspapers went digital?

An iPad is a different story. I remember reading a post by Fred Wilson, who was revisiting his negative opinion on his iPad. He noted that the “iPad makes using a computer less of a commitment” and goes on to explain how, in addition to easily moving in and out of interaction with the device, his whole family share use together, as well as each having their own personal use. Some data from Nielsen supports his personal observations.

I’m interested in how this sharing takes place live, and how this shared aspect impacts the kinds of apps/sites popular on an iPad versus a phone or computer. While Google TV, Apple TV, Roku, Boxee, etc. are including integration that makes my TV social, a shared tablet while watching TV could create a whole other kind of social experience layered onto the TV experience. No longer would I just sit there sharing IMDB and Facebook facts with my friends/anyone who will listen. We could actively participate around entertainment. Send me any examples you see of this happening, as I’d love to get them posted up here.

Books Are a Social Badge

I continue to love paper books, because of the experience both while I read them and after I read them.  A book on a shelf is a mark of what I’ve done, what I am interested in, and what I think about. My digital friendships cover international ground, though, and many of those people will never get to see my bookshelf.  Luckily, Good Reads came along and provided me with a digital bookshelf (and social network) so I can share, globally, my story as told through book titles.  It gives me the ability to show others what I am reading, rate and review books I’ve read, and keep a list of things I want to read.

Good Reads also serves as a detailed and socially-relevant recommendation engine. I can browse my feed to see what friends are reading, search for a specific book and read reviews from my friends (and other users), and search through themed lists of books. I can also join groups with specific reading interests. It is neatly integrated with Facebook, as well, and allows for two-way sharing. This is reading, socialized. It doesn’t matter if I am reading a paper book or a digital one.

Books Are Digital

Though my world is digital, I read paper books. I am, apparently, archaic. Consumption platforms have changed entirely, and the impact of e-readers like the Kindle, the iPad, and the Nook have been tremendous. As Wendy noted, Amazon claims Kindle books have been outselling hardcovers by almost 50%.

I took a look at the kinds of things people discuss when they talk about E-Readers so I could get a sense for the features so key to these platforms.

I became really interested by the comparison to a paper book. What comes into play quite a bit is the concept of options. Users love downloading free samples so they can quickly scan for what’s most interesting, and then purchase depending on mood and setting. This leads to a totally different relationship between seller and buyer. I have countless books that I have purchased, read 20 pages of, and abandoned on my shelf. In this scenario, consumers can test drive before purchase. That is a game changer.

Amazon has clearly caught on to this, and just announced the release of Kindle for the Web, which allows for first chapter previews directly from your browser.

Books Have a Social Future

What I see happening is, simultaneously, doors opening and closing for the world of authors, publishers, and distributors. Books are about diving into other people’s lives (real, fictional, and instructional) and thus are, inherently, social experiences. It’s all a matter of how the industry capitalizes on the opportunity (or stumbles, painfully, like the newspaper industry has). Much like how Foursquare lays interesting data on top of a physical plant, social media has the opportunity to lay additional related information on top of a traditionally static document. Exciting, no? I’ll end with a beautiful movie by IDEO that envisions just this: the social, community-building, world-changing future of the book.

Preface

In part 1 of this tutorial we walked through obtaining an oAuth 2.0 access token from Facebook via an iPhone (or any iTouch device).  If you wish to go back and review the oAuth 2.0 process in some detail HERE.

Facebook Login and Extended Permission Dialogs

In the second part of this tutorial I’ll show you how to leverage my pseudo-API to:

• Login to Facebook using oAuth 2.0
• Request extended permissions for your mobile application (photos, videos, publish stream and offline access)
• Get your profile data
• Get your friend list
• Get your feed
• Post to your feed
• Post a photo (via a local image (UIImage) not a url)
• Get metadata
• Delete a feed post (via a Post)
• Get search results
• Get (and display) the author’s avatar

Convention

There are 2 APIs being talked about in this tutorial. To avoid confusion, I’m going to refer to them consistently as Facebook’s  ‘Graph API’ and my ‘pseudo-API’*.  Facebook’s Graph API is the stuff we’re interacting with via HTTP Get and Post calls.  The pseudo-API is the Objective-C/iPhone code that’s facilitating the interaction.

*-I call it a pseudo-API if for no other reason I haven’t proven to myself it supports 100% of the Facebook Graph API functions.

An aside about my API design philosophy:  I could have written the pseudo-API to be much more robust and feature rich, with exceptions, logging, auto-magical json parsing, full featured functions like ‘getMyWallFeed’, etc.  However with robustness and features comes complexity and dependencies.  I kept everything aside from the absolute core functionality required to read/write data from/to the Facebook Graph API out of this implementation.  In short, I’ve left it primitive enough that anybody should be able to extend/wrap it easily, if they see fit.

The pseudo-API has only 3 classes.  The core functionality lies in the FbGraph.m file.  The other two classes support this core class.  FbGraphFile is used when uploading a file to Facebook.  FbGraphResponse is, I would hope, self-explanatory.

We’re going to skip over the steps required to create a Facebook application.  I covered that in Part 1:  iPhone, Facebook, oAuth 2.0 and the Graph API.  A Tutorial.  If you completed part 1 of the tutorial, you can use the same Facebook application without modification here.

Sample Code:

http://github.com/reallylongaddress/iPhone-Facebook-Graph-API

Creating the FbGraph Object

Before we can interact with the Graph API, we need to make a connection to it. And before we make a connection to it, we need a FbGraph object instance.  We do so like:

self.fbGraph = [[FbGraph alloc]initWithFbClientID:client_id];

Where:

FbGraph *fbGraph;

And

NSString *client_id = @"123145257717248";

The client_id should be YOUR Facebook application id.  I’ve left my application ID in here for no other reason than the tutorial code will work ‘out of the box’.

The login process

Now we have our fbGraph object instance, we’ll want to ask Facebook for a login screen.  Additionally we’ll need to let Facebook know the extended permissions we’re requesting for our app.  Here’s the code to do that:

[fbGraph authenticateUserWithCallbackObject:self andSelector:@selector(fbGraphCallback:) andExtendedPermissions:@"user_photos,user_videos,publish_stream,offline_access"];

There are 3 major things to note in this line (found in oAuth2TestViewController).

1)  We’re asking the fbGraph object to initialize the authentication process by calling the function: authenticateUserWithCallbackObject

2)  We’re setting a callback object (self) and a callback function (fbGraphCallback).   This object and function will be called upon completion of the oAuth authentication process.

3)  We’re requesting extended permissions:@”user_photos,user_videos,publish_stream,offline_access”

When this function is called, the pseudo-API will find the root application window**, stick in a UIWebView, and ask Facebook for a login screen (passing along your client_id and requested extended permissions):

NSString *url_string = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/authorize?client_id=%@&redirect_uri=%@&scope=%@&type=user_agent&display=touch", facebookClientID, redirectUri, extended_permissions];

**-There’s a second authenticateUserWithCallbackObject function that allows you to specify a specific view you wish the login screen to be anchored/rendered in, if you don’t want it to render within the root view of your application.  Look at the FbGraph class for further details.

Note the ‘display=touch’ parameter.  It tells Facebook we’d like a login screen optimized for an iPhone/iPod touch screen.

Now that the process is started the UIWebView will render the login window that Facebook has returned to us.

After you’ve successfully authenticated to Facebook, you will be presented with a second screen with an extended permissions request dialog.  2 things to note here:  First, all permissions are unified into a single step.  Second, after you’ve approved the permissions, you won’t have to complete this step or see this screen again (so long as you don’t revoke the permissions).

Under the Hood of the Authentication Process

There’s some http redirects involved with the oAuth 2.0 (User-Agent flow) login process.  The FbGraph object is a UIWebViewDelegate, one of the functions associated with this delegate class is: webViewDidFinishLoad.  This function is called several times during the authentication process.  When the URL contains “access_token=” we’re golden.  We’ve successfully logged into Facebook.  When the pseudo-API sees this string, it parses out our oAuth access token, stores it to a class level variable, removes the UIWebView we inserted and finally calls the callback function we defined, returning control to your application.

The Rest of the Pseudo-API

The core of the pseudo-API is about 250 lines of code (including whitespace and comments), which is very little indeed.  This is possible because the Facebook Graph API does everything via simple HTTP Gets and Posts.  In fact, once you’ve figured out how to do Get and Post with the Graph API, you’ve pretty much figured out everything.

If you’re familiar with the current Facebook Connect implementation, you’ll immediately notice Graph API is immeasurably less complex and more consistent.

So, I could go through and explain how everything works in painful (and highly repetitive) detail…but I’m going to peace out, let you read over the code, dissect it, add some breakpoints and get your hands dirty.

FYI:  There is very intentionally very little UI in the app. Rather than having you, the reader, have to figure out my UI conventions as well as Interface Builder, I’ve kept it simple and dumped most all output to the debugger console.  The code is simple, the pseudo-API is simple, the Graph API is simple……

I hope you take a look at my pseudo-API and agree, it’ simple…that’s the idea.

If you find this post useful, if you include this code or the concepts you learned here in an app, if you extend this into a more full featured API….I’d love to know!

Happy hacking.

Dominic

ddimarco@room214.com

@dominicdimarco

Sample Code:

http://github.com/reallylongaddress/iPhone-Facebook-Graph-API

I recently caught up with Gary for a podcast, and am sharing a condensed version of our discussion with you as part of this post. Additionally, I’ve included my “Top 5 Things to Know” based largely on my experience and discussions with Lauren Maynard, who works with the tool almost daily as Room 214’s Director of Research.

Social-Media-Monitoring-Podcast-With-Crimson-Hexagon

Podcast Show Notes
1. We discuss the original intent of Crimson Hexagon’s technology, and Gary references the “disaster” of attempting to use documented practices for extracting meaning from large volumes of textual content.

2. Gary discusses how Crimson Hexagon overcame the challenges associated with common linguistic analysis by developing something I have come to refer to as their “proportional estimate” methodology.

3. I ask about the accuracy of data and validation methodology. Gary explains in detail.

Note: Gary sometimes refers to posts, tweets, blogs, etc as “documents.” Between his knowledge of the subject matter and natural train of thought, you may find yourself needing to listen to certain sections more than once. The last two minutes of the podcast, when he talks about people/messages basically saying the same thing over and over again, are my favorite.

The Top 5 Things You Need to Know about Crimson Hexagon
I’d like to quickly preface this by saying Room 214 is a tool-agnostic agency. My objective is not financial compensation from Crimson Hexagon for saying nice things about them or even selling their offerings.

It is instead to evaluate, recommend, use and help optimize business intelligence and social media monitoring tools from any number of technology providers my agency deems praiseworthy. This is the best way we know how to continue matching effective solutions to our clients’ requirements (ok, end of my pitch).

1. Crimson Hexagon Accounts for Consumer Variation

Consideration of varied language use is important because it can vary greatly by consumer segment. For example, 12 year olds and 45 year olds might describe something they love very differently, but at the core their statements are both saying, “We love this” or “We are going to watch this.” Identification and categorization of both types of conversation is valuable.

2. Crimson Hexagon Research Enables a Thesis

Using the same set of keywords, and assuming a given volume of subject matter, a question can be asked and subsequently answered. Example: For a TV show, questions ranging from intent to view to sentiment reaction can be answered. Most tools require manual sorting through piles of posts based on keywords and inferred trends. Crimson Hexagon can factually and correctly capture trends pertaining to the question being asked within a given set of posts.

3. Crimson Hexagon Enables the Training of Their Algorithm

We have been at this kind of work (leveraging social media business intelligence and monitoring tools) for about three years, so can appreciate that many of these tools are essentially in their infancy. Still, it wasn’t that long ago we joked about providers needing to activate the “army of midgets” behind the Wizard of Oz curtain in order to get calibrations/adjustments done due to poor data filtering or off-target monitoring.

Today, one of our favorite things about Crimson Hexagon is the ability to make their tools work more effectively without the need to give them a call. This is a huge time saver, allows us to better optimize the tools for relevant results and positions our analysts in the driver’s seat when it comes to delivering value.

4. Crimson Hexagon Helps Narrow the Research

The first steps of keyword refinement are made easier with Crimson Hexagon’s visualizer functionality. The visualizer helps us understand how to better narrow a search, and may even reference items that might be missing. This has made our process more efficient, providing automated assistance towards cleaner, more targeted results.

5. Crimson Hexagon Understands Customer Service

This might sound cliché, but we are all basically in the customer service industry (living in the “thank you economy”). We have somewhat of a unique partnership, but it doesn’t detract from the fact that Crimson Hexagon responds to us very quickly. We’ve had other “partners” that didn’t. This makes a huge difference, because the more we use their tools, the more we need to work through nuances. They have consistently demonstrated a willingness to help refine searches, take feedback and give tips and insights with respect to updates.