Join us at Blogworld L.A. from Nov 3-5 at the L.A. Convention Center!

Dominique will be giving a presentation on how to get more impact from your content by leveraging influencers and tribes. Click here for more info on his session.

Make sure to stop by our booth #533 in the Exhibit Hall and check your influence, we’ll be more than happy to see you!

Here is a list of the top SMM Blogs as of Oct 25th.  In the spirit of Blogworld, we’ve also marked who will be speaking at the event. Click the Blogworld icon and you will be directed to their presentation page.

Rank	Name	URL	Trend	Move	Twitt	BWELA speaker
1	Chris Brogan	http://www.chrisbrogan.com	UP	1
2	Seth’s Blog	http://sethgodin.typepad.com	UP	1
3	Jeremiah Owyang	http://www.web-strategist.com/blog	DOWN	-2
4	Brian Solis	http://www.briansolis.com	-	-
5	Logic+Emotion	http://darmano.typepad.com	-	-
6	Social Media Explorer	http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com	-	-
7	Search Engine Land	http://www.searchengineland.com	-	-
8	SocialMediaExaminer	http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com	UP	3
9	Conversation Agent	http://www.conversationagent.com	-	-
10	MarketingProfs	http://www.marketingprofs.com	-	-
11	Social Media Strategy	http://www.convinceandconvert.com	DOWN	-3
12	Online Marketing	http://www.toprankblog.com	UP	1
13	Six Degrees of Separation	http://www.twistimage.com/blog	UP	5
14	MarketingProfs Daily Fix	http://www.mpdailyfix.com	UP	3
15	CopyBlogger	http://www.copyblogger.com	DOWN	-3
16	Internet Marketing	http://blog.hubspot.com	DOWN	-2
17	Scobleizer	http://www.scobleizer.com	DOWN	-1
18	PR-Squared	http://www.pr-squared.com	UP	1
19	Jaffe Juice	http://www.jaffejuice.com	UP	1
20	Web Ink Now	http://www.webinknow.com	UP	1
21	Shel Holtz	http://blog.holtz.com	DOWN	-6
22	Brand Builder	http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com	UP	12
23	BuzzMachine	http://www.buzzmachine.com	UP	2
24	Neville Hobson	http://www.nevillehobson.com	UP	2
25	Ducttape Marketing	http://www.ducttapemarketing.com	UP	3
26	Steve Rubel	http://www.steverubel.me	DOWN	-3
27	The Viral Garden	http://moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com	DOWN	-3
28	Spin Sucks	http://www.spinsucks.com	UP	9
29	SocialMediaMarketing	http://www.scottmonty.com	UP	1
30	Peter Kim	http://www.beingpeterkim.com	UP	5
31	SEO Blog	http://www.seomoz.org/blog	UP	21
32	Internet Marketing News	http://www.marketingpilgrim.com	UP	4
33	ProBlogger	http://www.problogger.net	DOWN	-1
34	PR Measurement	http://kdpaine.blogs.com	UP	12
35	Amber & Tamsen	http://www.brasstackthinking.com	DOWN	-13
36	How to Change the World	http://blog.guykawasaki.com	UP	5
37	Search Engine Marketing	http://www.searchenginewatch.com	UP	32
38	Danny Brown	http://www.dannybrown.me	DOWN	-5
39	Influential Marketing	http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com	DOWN	-1
40	Drew McLellan	http://www.drewsmarketingminute.com	DOWN	-9
41	Geoff Livingston	http://www.geofflivingston.com	DOWN	-1
42	Liz Strauss	http://www.successful-blog.com	UP	2
43	Steve Rubel Stream	http://www.steverubel.com	DOWN	-16
44	Strategic Public Relations	http://prblog.typepad.com	UP	5
45	Christopher S. Penn	http://www.christopherspenn.com	UP	10
46	B.L. Ochman	http://www.whatsnextblog.com	UP	1
47	Stowe Boyd	http://www.stoweboyd.com	UP	7
48	Social Media Club	http://www.socialmediaclub.org	DOWN	-6
49	Greg Verdino	http://gregverdino.typepad.com	DOWN	-6
50	Adverblog	http://www.adverblog.com	UP	28
51	Mack Collier	http://www.mackcollier.com	DOWN	-12
52	Peter Shankman	http://www.shankman.com	UP	11
53	Harte of Marketing	http://www.theharteofmarketing.com	DOWN	-24
54	Servant of Chaos	http://www.servantofchaos.com	UP	5
55	The Buzz Bin	http://www.livingstonbuzz.com	DOWN	-10
56	Communication Overtones	http://overtonecomm.blogspot.com	UP	12
57	Edelman Digital	http://www.edelmandigital.com	UP	1
58	SmartBlog	http://www.smartblogs.com/socialmedia	DOWN	-7
59	CK’s Blog	http://www.ck-blog.com	DOWN	-3
60	Toby Bloomberg	http://bloombergmarketing.blogs.com	UP	1
61	Edelman	http://www.edelman.com/speak_up/blog	DOWN	-4
62	Search Engine Journal	http://www.searchenginejournal.com	-	-
63	John Jantsch	http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog	UP	22
64	Arik C. Hanson	http://www.arikhanson.com	DOWN	-11
65	Bad Pitch	http://badpitch.blogspot.com	UP	2
66	Hitwise Intelligence	http://weblogs.hitwise.com	UP	28
67	Dachisgroup	http://www.dachisgroup.com	-	New
68	Social Media Informer	http://www.socialmediainformer.com	UP	6
69	Outspoken Media	http://www.outspokenmedia.com	UP	1
70	iMedia Connection	http://www.imediaconnection.com	DOWN	-20
71	John Bell	http://johnbell.typepad.com	DOWN	-7
72	Brand Autopsy	http://brandautopsy.typepad.com/brandautopsy	DOWN	-7
73	Dave Fleet	http://www.davefleet.com	DOWN	-25
74	POP! PR Jots	http://pop-pr.blogspot.com	UP	3
75	Ann Handley	http://www.annhandley.com	UP	9
76	Josh Bernoff	http://forrester.typepad.com/groundswell	UP	3
77	Altitude Branding	http://www.altitudebranding.com	UP	3
78	Ben McConnell	http://customerevangelists.typepad.com	DOWN	-6
79	Sphinn / Hot Topics	http://www.sphinn.com	DOWN	-6
80	Internet Writings	http://www.shirky.com	UP	18
81	SocialTimes.com	http://www.socialtimes.com	DOWN	-21
82	Church of the Customer	http://www.churchofthecustomer.com	UP	1
83	Phil Fernandez	http://blog.marketo.com	UP	5
84	Media Bistro	http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser	DOWN	-9
85	PR Guy’s Musings	http://www.stuartbruce.biz	UP	6
86	Techno//Marketer	http://technomarketer.typepad.com	UP	6
87	Shonali Burke	http://www.waxingunlyrical.com	UP	17
88	GlobalNeighbourhoods	http://redcouch.typepad.com	DOWN	-7
89	The Future Buzz	http://www.thefuturebuzz.com	DOWN	-2
90	Dan Zarrella	http://www.danzarrella.com	DOWN	-8
91	Ogilvy	http://blog.ogilvypr.com	UP	18
92	Brains On Fire Blog	http://www.brainsonfire.com/blog	DOWN	-26
93	Andy Sernovitz	http://www.damniwish.com	UP	21
94	Marketing & Strategy	http://blog.futurelab.net	UP	8
95	Simply Zesty	http://www.simplyzesty.com	-	New
96	Edward Boches	http://www.edwardboches.com	-	-
97	We Are Social	http://www.wearesocial.net	-	-
98	Customers Rock	http://www.customersrock.net	UP	9
99	Community Guy	http://www.communityguy.com	UP	9
100	Techipedia	http://www.techipedia.com	UP	25
101	Nick Burcher	http://www.nickburcher.com	DOWN	-2
102	Drew B	http://theblogconsultancy.typepad.com	DOWN	-13
103	Joe Pulizzi	http://blog.junta42.com	DOWN	-27
104	Paul Mcenany	http://heehawmarketing.typepad.com	DOWN	-14
105	Inside Marketers Studio	http://www.marketersstudio.com	UP	7
106	Pro PR	http://www.propr.ca	UP	7
107	Branding Strategy Insider	http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com	DOWN	-6
108	ConverStations	http://www.converstations.com	DOWN	-15
109	B2B Mkting Zone	http://www.b2bmarketingzone.com	UP	37
110	Radian6	http://www.radian6.com/blog	DOWN	-4
111	Citizen Marketer 2.1	http://blog.stroutmeister.com	DOWN	-40
112	Socialmedia.biz	http://www.socialmedia.biz	UP	10
113	Michael Britopian	http://www.britopian.com	-	New
114	Abraham Harrison	http://www.marketingconversation.com	UP	13
115	AdPulp	http://www.adpulp.com	UP	1
116	Charlene Li	http://www.charleneli.com	DOWN	-21
117	David Reich	http://reichcomm.typepad.com	UP	30
118	Chaos Scenario	http://www.chaosscenario.com	UP	14
119	Tom Webster	http://www.brandsavant.com	UP	14
120	Mark Schaefer	http://www.businessesgrow.com/blog	UP	14
121	Global Neighbourhood	http://www.globalneighbourhoods.net	DOWN	-18
122	Sysomos Blog	http://blog.sysomos.com	DOWN	-17
123	Socialnomics	http://www.socialnomics.net	UP	15
124	Shannon Paul	http://www.veryofficialblog.com	DOWN	-38
125	Personal Branding	http://www.personalbrandingblog.com	UP	16
126	New Comm Biz	http://www.newcommbiz.com	-	New
127	PR Conversations	http://www.prconversations.com	DOWN	-1
128	Communications Consultant	http://www.prblogger.com	-	-
129	Chuck Hemann	http://www.chuckhemann.com	UP	16
130	In Over Your Head	http://www.inoveryourhead.net	DOWN	-12
131	Marshall Sponder	http://www.webmetricsguru.com	UP	5
132	Webbiquity	http://www.webbiquity.com	-	New
133	Jeffbullas’s Blog	http://www.jeffbullas.com	UP	6
134	Social Organization	http://www.thesocialorganization.com	UP	6
135	Josh Hallett	http://www.hyku.com	UP	15
136	Brendan Cooper	http://www.brendancooper.com	DOWN	-19
137	Neil Perkin	http://neilperkin.typepad.com	DOWN	-27
138	Conversation Marketing	http://www.conversationmarketing.com	DOWN	-38
139	Bill Green	http://makethelogobigger.blogspot.com	UP	4
140	Adliterate	http://www.adliterate.com	UP	4
141	Christopher Carfi	http://www.socialcustomer.com	DOWN	-26
142	Seroundtable	http://www.seroundtable.com	DOWN	-12
143	PRBreakFastClub	http://www.prbreakfastclub.com	DOWN	-24
144	Fresh Networks	http://www.freshnetworks.com/blog	DOWN	-24
145	StickyFigure	http://brandimpact.wordpress.com	-	New
146	HPC | Marketing Uncommon	http://www.horsepigcow.com	DOWN	-23
147	FeverBee	http://www.feverbee.com	-	New
148	Jacob Morgan	http://www.jmorganmarketing.com	DOWN	-24
149	Emergence Marketing	http://www.emergencemarketing.com	DOWN	-7
150	Customer Experience Matters	http://experiencematters.wordpress.com	-	New

Disclaimer: Links to the BlogWorld Expo speaker profiles are only available for those who put the info in their profile.

Published in partnership with Firefly

In the early days of social media and web 2.0, brands and marketers were fascinated and scared at the same time by how the new web was enabling direct access to consumers.  Brands discovered the power of reaching millions of customers on a one-to-one basis, while marketers helped them deal with unsolicited feedback on issues related to their product/service; or in fact, anything that could help the brand increase its social proximity to the prospective client.

Still, what we now know is this

• People (and people behind brands) can’t socialise with millions of people at the same time.  According to Dunbar, we as individuals can’t actually develop relationships with more than 150 people at a given time.
• Humans have an irrepressible desire to differentiate and socialise with like-minded people sharing a passion or an objective.
• Engagement/socialisation happens mostly while sharing content, and different people in the ecosystem started to play different roles like content writing and content distribution (what Forrester calls Mass Mavens and Mass Connectors)
• Bloggers play a key role in the eco-system both as Mavens and Connectors,(see this Yahoo! Study on the role of bloggers in Twitter).

The net is that the social Internet is far from being flat, but reveals itself more as a network of tribes with their own rules, slang, symbols and influencers.

“Community is the new demographics” (as Jaffe Juice puts it). “One size fits all” programmes, whether they entail listening, engagement, or a “Facebook fan page with millions of people sharing nothing but a like” clearly fail to grasp the diversity of these tribes and communities.

To really understand communities, we have to look at them in context.

 Here below is a visual example from the UK “Mums” Community in eCairn.

Each node represents one UK mummy blogger; arrows between nodes represent links (direct reference or blogroll) and the colour is automatically assigned based on the discovery of clusters of nodes.

Different clusters make up the UK Mums community, as shown above:  a core red cluster is mainly talking about parenting and general mum topics; the green cluster is more focussed on food;, others (navy blue) are into books/writing or (purple) fashion.

That said, it is still difficult to discern the motivation for people to connect in a separated group, like the yellow cluster.

So, what is it they talk about? Here is a mining of last week’s conversations:

Besides the usual suspects, you will notice “Father’s Day” and “Three word gallery”. The latter, which refers to a contest in which mums have to come up with creative, three-word-long taglines for photos, strikes me as a particularly good example of how social the Internet has become.

And who are these mums? Here are a few of them…

The most influential mum in the UK:

The most vocal mum on the topic of vouchers and coupons:

Another point worth noting is the absence of “coupon” or “voucher” among the top expressions.  Using US moms as a benchmark, it is clear that vouchers/coupons do not have the same importance on both sides of the Atlantic.

As you can see from this example, engaging with social media is far more complex than just replying to anyone who mentions a brand name or a topic.

And I guess this is excellent news for marketing professionals!

To view lists similar to this one, including healthcare, hightech, and entertainment…check out our Social GPS.

*New means they were not in the Feb ’11 post, or they have been recently added to our database.

Rank	Name	URL	Trend	Move	Twitt
1	Jeremiah Owyang	http://www.web-strategist.com/blog	UP	1
2	Chris Brogan	http://www.chrisbrogan.com	DOWN	-1
3	Seth’s Blog	http://sethgodin.typepad.com	UP	1
4	Brian Solis	http://www.briansolis.com	DOWN	-1
5	Logic+Emotion	http://darmano.typepad.com	UP	1
6	Social Media Explorer	http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com	DOWN	-1
7	Search Engine Land	http://www.searchengineland.com	UP	4
8	Social Media Strategy	http://www.convinceandconvert.com	UP	2
9	Conversation Agent	http://www.conversationagent.com	DOWN	-2
10	MarketingProfs	http://www.marketingprofs.com	UP	6
11	SocialMediaExaminer	http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com	UP	1
12	CopyBlogger	http://www.copyblogger.com	UP	2
13	Online Marketing	http://www.toprankblog.com	DOWN	-4
14	Internet Marketing	http://blog.hubspot.com	UP	4
15	Shel Holtz	http://blog.holtz.com	-	-
16	Scobleizer	http://www.scobleizer.com	UP	1
17	MarketingProfs Daily Fix	http://www.mpdailyfix.com	UP	3
18	Six Pixels of Separation	http://www.twistimage.com/blog	UP	17
19	PR-Squared	http://www.pr-squared.com	DOWN	-11
20	Jaffe Juice	http://www.jaffejuice.com	UP	1
21	Web Ink Now	http://www.webinknow.com	DOWN	-2
22	Amber & Tamsen	http://www.brasstackthinking.com	UP	15
23	Micro Persuasion	http://www.micropersuasion.com	DOWN	-1
24	The Viral Garden	http://moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com	UP	6
25	BuzzMachine	http://www.buzzmachine.com	DOWN	-1
26	Neville Hobson	http://www.nevillehobson.com	UP	3
27	Steve Rubel Stream	http://www.steverubel.com	DOWN	-2
28	Ducttape Marketing	http://www.ducttapemarketing.com	DOWN	-2
29	Harte of Marketing	http://www.theharteofmarketing.com	UP	14
30	SocialMediaMarketing	http://www.scottmonty.com	DOWN	-7
31	Drew McLellan	http://www.drewsmarketingminute.com	UP	5
32	ProBlogger	http://www.problogger.net	DOWN	-5
33	Danny Brown	http://www.dannybrown.me	UP	8
34	Brand Builder	http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com	UP	11
35	Peter Kim	http://www.beingpeterkim.com	UP	4
36	Internet Marketing News	http://www.marketingpilgrim.com	DOWN	-5
37	Spin Sucks	http://www.spinsucks.com	UP	5
38	Influential Marketing	http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com	DOWN	-5
39	Mack Collier	http://www.mackcollier.com	UP	12
40	Geoff Livingston	http://www.geofflivingston.com	UP	10
41	How to Change the World	http://blog.guykawasaki.com	DOWN	-7
42	Social Media Club	http://www.socialmediaclub.org	UP	6
43	Greg Verdino	http://gregverdino.typepad.com	DOWN	-11
44	Liz Strauss	http://www.successful-blog.com	UP	13
45	The Buzz Bin	http://www.livingstonbuzz.com	DOWN	-1
46	PR Measurement	http://kdpaine.blogs.com	UP	9
47	B.L. Ochman	http://www.whatsnextblog.com	UP	2
48	Dave Fleet	http://www.davefleet.com	DOWN	-20
49	Strategic Public Relations	http://prblog.typepad.com	UP	9
50	iMedia Connection	http://www.imediaconnection.com	DOWN	-4
51	SmartBlog	http://www.smartblogs.com/socialmedia	DOWN	-11
52	SEO Blog	http://www.seomoz.org/blog	UP	8
53	Arik C. Hanson	http://www.arikhanson.com	DOWN	-6
54	Stowe Boyd	http://www.stoweboyd.com	UP	16
55	Christopher S. Penn	http://www.christopherspenn.com	DOWN	-1
56	CK’s Blog	http://www.ck-blog.com	UP	32
57	Edelman	http://www.edelman.com/speak_up/blog	UP	32
58	Edelman Digital	http://www.edelmandigital.com	DOWN	-6
59	Servant of Chaos	http://www.servantofchaos.com	DOWN	-6
60	SocialTimes.com	http://www.socialtimes.com	DOWN	-22
61	Toby Bloomberg	http://bloombergmarketing.blogs.com	UP	7
62	Search Engine Journal	http://www.searchenginejournal.com	DOWN	-6
63	Peter Shankman	http://www.shankman.com	UP	10
64	John Bell	http://johnbell.typepad.com	UP	16
65	Brand Autopsy	http://brandautopsy.typepad.com	DOWN	-3
66	Brains On Fire Blog	http://www.brainsonfire.com/blog	-	-
67	Bad Pitch	http://badpitch.blogspot.com	DOWN	-8
68	Communication Overtones	http://overtonecomm.blogspot.com	UP	4
69	Search Engine Marketing	http://www.searchenginewatch.com	DOWN	-6
70	Outspoken Media	http://www.outspokenmedia.com	UP	14
71	Citizen Marketer 2.1	http://blog.stroutmeister.com	DOWN	-7
72	Ben McConnell	http://customerevangelists.typepad.com	UP	7
73	Sphinn / Hot Topics	http://www.sphinn.com	DOWN	-2
74	Social Media Informer	http://www.socialmediainformer.com	-	New
75	Media Bistro	http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser	UP	73
76	Joe Pulizzi	http://blog.junta42.com	UP	28
77	POP! PR Jots	http://pop-pr.blogspot.com	DOWN	-10
78	Adverblog	http://www.adverblog.com	DOWN	-2
79	Josh Bernoff	http://forrester.typepad.com/groundswell	-	New
80	Altitude Branding	http://www.altitudebranding.com	DOWN	-19
81	GlobalNeighbourhoods	http://redcouch.typepad.com	DOWN	-16
82	Dan Zarrella	http://www.danzarrella.com	UP	65
83	Church of the Customer	http://www.churchofthecustomer.com	-	-
84	Ann Handley	http://www.annhandley.com	-	New
85	John Jantsch	http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog	UP	57
86	Shannon Paul	http://www.veryofficialblog.com	UP	5
87	The Future Buzz	http://www.thefuturebuzz.com	DOWN	-2
88	Phil Fernandez	http://blog.marketo.com	UP	58
89	Drew B	http://theblogconsultancy.typepad.com	DOWN	-8
90	Paul Mcenany	http://heehawmarketing.typepad.com	UP	30
91	PR Guy’s Musings	http://www.stuartbruce.biz	UP	14
92	Techno//Marketer	http://technomarketer.typepad.com	UP	3
93	ConverStations	http://www.converstations.com	DOWN	-18
94	Hitwise Intelligence	http://weblogs.hitwise.com	UP	16
95	Charlene Li	http://www.charleneli.com	-	New
96	Edward Boches	http://www.edwardboches.com	DOWN	-6
97	We Are Social	http://www.wearesocial.net	DOWN	-28
98	Internet Writings	http://www.shirky.com	UP	4
99	Nick Burcher	http://www.nickburcher.com	DOWN	-6
100	Conversation Marketing	http://www.conversationmarketing.com	DOWN	-13
101	Branding Strategy Insider	http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com	UP	7
102	Marketing & Strategy	http://blog.futurelab.net	DOWN	-5
103	Global Neighbourhood	http://www.globalneighbourhoods.net	UP	40
104	Shonali Burke	http://www.waxingunlyrical.com	UP	24
105	Sysomos Blog	http://blog.sysomos.com	UP	8
106	Radian6	http://www.radian6.com/blog	-	New
107	Customers Rock	http://www.customersrock.net	DOWN	-7
108	Community Guy	http://www.communityguy.com	UP	8
109	Ogilvy	http://blog.ogilvypr.com	DOWN	-23
110	Neil Perkin	http://neilperkin.typepad.com	UP	11
111	Noah Brier	http://www.noahbrier.com	UP	11
112	Inside Marketers Studio	http://www.marketersstudio.com	UP	27
113	Pro PR	http://www.propr.ca	DOWN	-7
114	Andy Sernovitz	http://www.damniwish.com	DOWN	-32
115	Christopher Carfi	http://www.socialcustomer.com	-	New
116	AdPulp	http://www.adpulp.com	DOWN	-20
117	Advertising Lab	http://adverlab.blogspot.com	DOWN	-8
118	In Over Your Head	http://www.inoveryourhead.net	-	New
119	PRBreakFastClub	http://www.prbreakfastclub.com	-	New
120	Fresh Networks	http://www.freshnetworks.com/blog	UP	11
121	Social Media Today	http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC	DOWN	-47
122	Socialmedia.biz	http://www.socialmedia.biz	DOWN	-7
123	HPC | Marketing Uncommon	http://www.horsepigcow.com	DOWN	-22
124	Jacob Morgan	http://www.jmorganmarketing.com	UP	21
125	Techipedia	http://www.techipedia.com	DOWN	-33
126	PR Conversations	http://www.prconversations.com	DOWN	-8
127	Abraham Harrison	http://www.marketingconversation.com	DOWN	-8
128	Communications Consultant	http://www.prblogger.com	DOWN	-34
129	The Flack	http://theflack.blogspot.com	DOWN	-22
130	Seroundtable	http://www.seroundtable.com	UP	11
131	Leigh Duncan-Durst	http://livepath.blogspot.com	-	New
132	Chaos Scenario	http://www.chaosscenario.com	-	New
133	Tom Webster	http://www.brandsavant.com	-	New
134	Mark Schaefer	http://www.businessesgrow.com/blog	-	New
135	Connie Bensen	http://www.conniebensen.com	DOWN	-23
136	Marshall Sponder	http://www.webmetricsguru.com	-	New
137	Paul Gillin	http://www.gillin.com/blog	-	New
138	Socialnomics	http://www.socialnomics.net	DOWN	-40
139	Jeffbullas’s Blog	http://www.jeffbullas.com	DOWN	-40
140	Social Organization	http://www.thesocialorganization.com	-	New
141	Personal Branding	http://www.personalbrandingblog.com	DOWN	-63
142	Emergence Marketing	http://www.emergencemarketing.com	DOWN	-5
143	Bill Green	http://makethelogobigger.blogspot.com	DOWN	-3
144	Adliterate	http://www.adliterate.com	DOWN	-20
145	Chuck Hemann	http://www.chuckhemann.com	-	New
146	B2B Mkting Zone	http://www.b2bmarketingzone.com	-	New
147	David Reich	http://reichcomm.typepad.com	-	New
148	Kris Hoet	http://www.b2cmarketinginsider.com	-	New
149	Paul Dunay	http://www.pauldunay.com	DOWN	-22
150	Josh Hallett	http://www.hyku.com	-	New

To learn more about our tool and how it can help your company, join a customized demo.

Please feel free to connect with us through twitter: @ecairn or email us at conversation@ecairn.com

The team here at eCairn always appreciates any feedback!

References:

• Post on Answering your questions on ‘Top 150 Social Marketing Blogs’.

Business: Every year in the United States, there are approximately 2.5 million weddings. Weddings have grown to become a $40 billion per year industry.

Brides: They’ll spend more money on that one day than they will on any other day of their lives (with the exceptions of buying houses and paying for their kids’ weddings).

Blogs: In social media words, such a large business segment translates in a broad community of wedding bloggers/twitterers aggregating an audience of millions who are going through their wedding process. That is, approximately: 2.5 million weddings * 2 brides/grooms * 2 helping mothers * 40% who read blogs.

For brands playing into the wedding industry, understanding the key voices and the nature of the conversations taking place in social media represents a critical knowledge in support of any marketing activities.

Let’s have a look at the blogging piece of the SM wedding puzzle. For that purpose, we’ll analyze our tribe of 699 wedding bloggers, 80% of whom are located in the US and 20% elsewhere.

Who’s Who? The Top 20 Wedding Blogs:

Rank	Title	URL	Twitter	Tweet..
1	Style Me Pretty	http://www.stylemepretty.com
2	Once Wed	http://www.oncewed.com
3	100 Layer Cake	http://www.100layercake.com/blog
4	Wedding Chicks	http://www.weddingchicks.com
5	Ruffled ®	http://www.ruffledblog.com
6	Green Wedding Shoes Wedding	http://www.greenweddingshoes.com
7	Weddingbee	http://www.weddingbee.com
8	Elizabeth Anne Designs	http://www.elizabethannedesigns.com/blog
9	Snippet & Ink	http://www.snippetandink.com
10	Brooklyn Bride	http://www.bklynbrideonline.com
11	Weddings	http://www.elizabethannedesigns.com
12	Southern Weddings	http://www.swsmag.net
13	The Bride’s Cafe	http://www.thebridescafe.com
14	Ritzy Bee Blog	http://ritzybee.typepad.com
15	kiss the groom	http://www.kissthegroom.com
16	classic bride	http://classicbride.blogspot.com
17	Hostess with the Mostess®	http://www.hostessblog.com
18	The Broke-Ass Bride	http://www.thebrokeassbride.com
19	Project Wedding Blog	http://www.projectwedding.com/blog
20	Utterly Engaged	http://www.utterlyengaged.com

In term of audience, the top 3 have a cumulated audience of more than 200k unique visitors per month as indicated below; alltogether, this community is well above the millions unique visitors per month:

How are they connected? A look at the network formed by this tribe shows several clusters (clockwise: green/yellow, red, light blue, salmon, magenta, green, orange/yellow) corresponding to smaller networks within the community:

What’s the conversation about?

The cloud above shows 3 main topical categories:

• Wedding Planning
• Critical components of a successful wedding: Cake, dress, invitations, photography
• People: Bride, Groom, Friends and Family

If we drill down in the planning category, we find that it’s all about:

1. making that day special (see keywords like fun/beautiful/party),
2. understanding it’s a complex process (details, help, planner)
3. being inspired (inspiration, idea)
4. friends and family (guest, friends and family)

Brands in the wedding industry should pay close attention to the new breed of movers and shakers:

1. Know who they are and what makes them unique
2. Understand what is hot and important
3. Engage and help them in their activity by doing something buzz worthy
4. Build long term relationship with them. It’s a network economy

Often, another critical dimension stays unnoticed: Social media is a network of virtual communities.

By communities, understand a large group of like-minded people, highly passionate, highly interconnected (through Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn).

High Tech Communities
(Cloud in Red, Virtualization in Blue, Security in Orange)

The example above is from a set of 4 closely related communities:

• High Tech: Cloud Computing, Virtualization, Security and Storage

We took the top 500 influencers (english language) for each of the above community, except for storage which has a bit more than 100. The aggregate number of conversations from them is close to a million over a 6 months period. Next, we processed them through our social network analysis algorithm to create this map.

(By the way, there’s a full study available for those who want more details about the analysis).

Notice that the 4 communities:
- stay generally very distinct. The exceptions is for storage  because it’s a smaller community. Indeed, influencers from Storage can be found in the Virtualization community, leading to the conclusion that storage conversations are happening often in the context of virtualization.
- display affinities: Security and Cloud Computing are closer to Virtualization than Cloud Computing is to Security.

In this network of virtual communities, 5 important factors are to be considered:

1. Relevance: Virtual communities focus on specific and well-defined scopes.
   Think high tech is a community? Think twice. High Tech is merely a broad category.
   Indeed, we mapped more than 50 separate communities within High Tech (i.e. cloud computing, security, open source, b2b marketing … just to name a few)
2. Separation: Virtual communities that focus on different scope don’t overlap much.
   The world has become one of “specialists”. Nowadays you can be expert on one matter, may be two.
   In the experiment above, we found an overlap of less than 5% between those closely related communities.
3. Shape and Size: Virtual communities can be very large.
   There are many “specialists” and some have decided to become leading voices in their respective communities.
   Its’ possible to find 100s or 1000s of those voices in any given communities. Millions of like-minded people listen to them.
4. Interconnectedness: Virtual communities are powered by a network of relevance.
   Some communities are very tightly interconnected. Understanding the network topology can provide clues to plan the optimum engagement strategy.
5. Influence: Communities are the place where influence happens.
   One can only be influential on something to someone if they have that something in common.
   In the context of communities, something is content. It’s social media currencies and the stepping stone to weave relationships with one’s ecosystem.

Join one of our webinars if you want to know more about our technology:

Here’s the list of the Top 20 for the 4 communities used for this analysis:

Here are the top 150 Social Media Marketing Blogs as of Sept 2010:

• Chris Brogan, Jeremiah Owyang, and Brian Solis are consistently the most influential of the pack with posts from social media metrics, to insightful web strategies.

• The top movers/new entrants in our top influencer in social media marketing are:

SocialTimes.com
Creative Traction
Planting Seeds
(3i)
Third Eye by Shambhu Neil Vineberg. Vineberg moved up the fastest and offers thoughts on a variety of topics, including technology, media and public relations.
Interestingly enough,Vineberg experienced a huge lift because he was referenced by influencial bloggers during ‘Age of Conversation 3’ in May 2010.

The chart above shows the number of conversations per week in the past 6 months mentioning Vineberg’s blog.  Data point from eCairn Conversation(tm).

• Over half of the top 150 influencers in social media marketing moved up or down more than 30 positions since March 2010 (link here to post).

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Oct 12 update: Added Mitch Joel (http://www.twistimage.com/blog aka http://www.twistimage.com).
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Oct 13 update: Last week’s post on the top 150 Social Media Blogs generated several thousands of visits, and has been generating a lot of interest.

Since the response has been so high the eCairn team will be hosting a special webinar to answer some of the questions you might have including top asked: “How are the rankings calculated?” and “how are the communities defined and mapped?”

We will also be tackling one of the key challenges in marketing: “How do I find key influencers to increase my product/brand awareness?”

As a big treat for the audience, we will show the social graph of that community, and look at its current topics of interest.

Please tune in our webinar Tuesday October 19^th @ 9:30!

Register here: www.ecairn.com/webinars or get someone to talk to: eCairn team.

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If would like more information on how we map communities and how to market to industry influencers, tune into our FREE webinar every week (Tuesday @9:30). Click here to register on our webinar.

Any feedback on the relevance of this list is warmly welcome as an opportunity to progress: eCairn team.

References:

• Post on Answering your questions on ‘Top 150 Social Marketing Blogs’.

- The data web , enabling to connect data from various applications and databases
- The Meaning web, an uber-categorisation of content so that machines and humans can search better,  connect the dots,  and overall understand better.

There is no question that the data web is on its way and will provide huge benefits.

When it comes to meaning, well, that’s a different story which brings me back to the title of this post: lolcat

Lolcat is an amazing phenomena. It’s being invented by the cat owners community (kudos for being the most creative community on the web). Members of the community started to exchange pictures of their cat along with funny catch phrases in broken English and in the process of doing this, the community just invented a new language, referred to as lolspeak. The flag web site is icanhascheesburger. Bear with me, this is something:  1M unique visitors a month,  top 2500 in Alexa, i.e more popular than ford.com and in the same ball park as intuit.com.

Not all communities are that creative and this is very instructive.

In the old days, web 1.0, people wrote for the general public. They wanted to be understood by as many people as possible and appeal to a broad audience. Time has changed; the web is now fragmented in a myriad of communities who have different agendas.

I don’t know about you but I can barely read my kids msn messages. It’s not that they are lazy (at least I hope), they just want to build their own virtual gated community. People initially used different infrastructures for this (myspace for musicians, facebook for college students) but as infrastructures grow,  open, interconnect  (social data in the cloud, isn’t that scary ?) what’s left is language.  Kids can’t hide on Facebook anymore. .

This is as old as mankind and reminds me of a story I read on the origin of Hiragana and Katakana explaining that in the old Japan, women and men were writing with different characters. How sophisticated !

So the rise of communities is driving people to write no longer (just) to be understood, but to be differentiated and build some form of new cultures.

Bottom line is that the English dictionary is obsolete and this is a major challenge for the semantic web ( meaning flavor).

As a conclusion, one last message to brands marketers in the pet industry:

if u herrz me, u shud buy keywurdz frum adwurdz. teh cats shur wuld lov it.

]]> http://blog.ecairn.com/2009/06/18/semantic-web-lolcat-and-japan/feed/ 2 domlah Yet_another_lolcat http://blog.ecairn.com/2009/06/03/social-media-is-very-expensive-like-learning/ http://blog.ecairn.com/2009/06/03/social-media-is-very-expensive-like-learning/#comments Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:27:44 +0000 domlah http://blog.ecairn.com/?p=1256 ]]> Once upon a time, there was One world wide web where corporations and brands were talking to public, using a polished corporate language, reviewed by professional writers… and then came communities, each of them developing its own style, code and language.

Doesn’t it sound like the Tower of Babel ?

I actually find some insights from the analogy and recommend that brands approach communities as if these communities were speaking a foreign language.

It may be extreme, but taking this very conservative spin brings up 3 key learnings:

1. you have to figure out who are these people speaking this “new language” and identify the ones that have taught the language to others.  In other words, unless you can find the communities and influencers it’s like you would be mixing Japanese and French trying to learn both concurrently… or mixing a financial analyst and a 12 years old conversations on the bailout.
2. you have to spend significant time learning. There is no magic trick, no machine that will do it for you (I will come down to this in a future post; community languages are so dynamic that their context and semantic cannot be captured in a static dictionary). That’s why the industry-accepted figures on the minimal effort for any decent program in Social Media is one hour a day.
3. you have to capitalize as you learn. Understanding your target communities, trust, relations within these communities is an asset, not a program.

Often, we meet agencies and clients that ask us: “there has to be another way”, “we just can’t spend that time in participating in communities, reading blogs, twitter, youtube,  facebook and whatelse…”.

Sometimes they turn to “one click magic box” but this ends up providing poor substitute for learning.  The more graphs they produce, the less knowledge.

Sometimes they challenge : “where is the return, the ROI” and although ROI can be set for some programs, most of it will stay as fuzzy as the ROI of an MBA, or of a friendship or a rollodex (the MBA example in the link is an interesting one; it does not value better decision making because of the MBA training and just the salary increase).

But the reality is: there is no shortcut.

If you want to know you have to learn and if you want to learn you have to spend the time studying. Doesn’t that sound familiar? I had the same dream when I started German. Now,  you can try to be productive at learning but this is another story.

One of my favorite sentence in social media comes from Anthony van der Hoek,  Director of Strategy and Business Solutions, The Coca-Cola Company:  “It takes years, not weeks to embed consumer conversations in an organization. Companies need to address this now or it will be a huge challenge to catch up.”.

Sounds like a reality check.

So, we’ve witnessed “lists of influential people” (including our list of Top 150 Social Media Marketers) popping up all over the place as if the world could be drawn with a bunch of influential graphs.

Not that easy… and here is a couple of things marketers should think about when approaching influence.

Let’s pick a practical example. You’re launching a new designer shoe and you’re planning to do a blogger outreach campaign to spread the word about the cool features this new “social shoe” has.

Obviously  you would start by identifying the top blogs in your target.
First problem you’ll experience is that most of so called “blog search” are actually post search engines. Techcrunch, for instance, may have covered the Zappos web site recently; it is certainly a very influential blog in Technology and Business but its influence is very low when it comes to fashion or shoes.

# 1: Unless you can address relevance, influence is pointless.

Let’s say then that you’ve been able to identify all the relevant people in fashion, i.e your target community. What we have measured is that some influencers tend to be more influential on the long tail (should be that called popularity ?) , other looked more influential on their peers.

# 2: Influence means influence over a group of people, not only on a topic

Some also seem to reach out more people in the community with “light” binding, whereas others will be the center of small cohesive sub nets.

# 3: Influence is a multi-dimensional variable with at a minimum “reach” and “depth” attributes

At this point you may have a pretty good view of what your target is and for instance, which blogger you can send samples to get reviews.

You still have to maximize your chances of the free pair of shoes not to be thrown in the trash! The thing is you may be completely unknown in that market and sending just another sample to people on the top of the list may be… useless.

So you decide to start influencing the magic middle and to build your way up to key influencers over time. That way, you have a pretty good chance to get coverage within 3 months. More on this from Dave Fleet.

# 4: Influence is a strategy and a process, what works for Zappos may not work for yetanothernewbrandintown.

OK. You’re still with me and are not giving up that easily. Let’s end with a positive note. Chances are high you’re already a member of that same community you want to influence (if not: start blogging now). Why don’t you leverage your existing trust and relationship and start reaching out your immediate network?

# 5: Influence is a process you’re a part of. That’s what we call actionable influence ™.

Have fun !

Here’s a short video showing how it works (better viewed in full screen by clicking on the screen icon at the bottom right of the window below):

New features in the dashboard include:

• Presence monitoring: Tracks overtime the number of conversations about a brand, a product and sentiments about them.
• Influence monitoring: Tracks the influence ranking of one or more company blog(s), the level of connections and ongoing participation between the team and the community.
• Community composition: Provides data about the blogs that are monitored such as ad networks, social networks used etc…
• Latest team activities