Friday, April 15, 2011

"Buzz" Analytics

The other day, at one of our regular coffee chats with the senior partner here, he dropped the word, “Buzz Analytics”.
“Heard about it”, I said, “but how important is it?”
“It’s a very effective tool”, he replied, and went on to quote Shane Atchison of Zaaz, who says “the explosion of online dialogue isn’t going away, and you can either sit on the sidelines or try to proactively influence and manage the situation.”
“Or else”, he went on, “as Neil Mason of Clickz Network puts it “blogs and forums are sources of unstructured consumer data on brands. In some ways, it’s no different than surveying consumers for brand opinions, other than that the opinions are unadulterated. This is a valuable source of intelligence for companies concerned about their brands’ reputation.”
Buzz Analytics tools” the senior partner added, “put together all the information in a rational manner of what’s being said about brands and their competition online. So what what we have here is a software monitoring the various feeds set up and determines the sentiment and essence of what’s being said using natural-language text-processing algorithms.
After which, the software reports what’s being said about you and your competitors.”
“Hmmm”, was all I could manage”, I sipped my coffee. I think it was more because I was at a loss of words.
Later, as I sat down to catch up on more about web analytics, it reminded a lot of market research, where data is collected, analyzed and communications developed in accordance.
Yes, buzz analytics is here to stay, dear reader, as tools get even smarter by the day, and companies start competing more fiercely for eyeballs online.
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This article has been written by Wigbert Piedade, aka Wiggy, who is a Creative Director at Pigtail Pundits. A writer and film maker, Wiggy dreams of utopia; he hopes to one day reside in a village by the sea and head to the city on weekends.

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