We all remember January 14, 2011 — one year ago. Back then started what is now known as the Arab Spring, when, following a month of violent protests against his regime, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia.

——————

After analyzing over 3 million tweets, gigabytes of YouTube content and thousands of blog posts, a new study finds that social media played a central role in shaping political debates in the Arab Spring.
Conversations about revolution often preceded major events on the ground, and social media carried inspiring stories of protest across international borders.

Focused mainly on Tunisia and Egypt, this research included creating a unique database of information collected from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.  The research also included creating maps of important Egyptian political Websites, examining political conversations in the Tunisian blogosphere, analyzing more than 3 million Tweets based on keywords, and tracking which countries thousands of individuals Tweeted from during the revolutions.
The result is that for the first time we have evidence confirming social media’s critical role in the Arab Spring.

The contributors include Philip Howard, Muzammil Hussain, Will Mari, and Marwa Mazaid at the University of Washington, Deen Freelon at American University, and Aiden Duffy at Amazon Web Services.

Thank you for using eCairn to build this report.

——————

UPDATE

New location for this report here.

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’.

Great panel:

• Maria Poveromo, Director of Social Media, Adobe Systems
• Laura Messerschmitt, Senior Marketing Manager, Intuit
• Susan Etlinger, Consultant, Altimeter Group
• Rob Fuggetta, Founder & CEO, Zuberance
• Moderator – Chris Arens, noted influencer, author and marketing/ad agency veteran

Very interesting questions, a mention of eCairn (Thanks Maria) and … I won a book “Marketing Thought” (Alex Littlewood).

Back to the conference. It is clear that brands do more than listening, and actually engage and activate their brand advocates. There were lots of discussions on the differences between Facebook fans and Advocates which clearly are different people. And ROI in social media, the usual suspect. (Altimeter will provide a free e-book shortly).

Laura explained how Intuit engaged, by calling them one by one , its advocates to improve the reviews of Quickbook in the Amazon review section along with the positive ROI that resulted in this program. The reviews were pretty bad initially and were hurting sales.

And the overall  agreement is that we are moving from listening to engagement to advocacy.

However, the discussion is still too “social media” and not “marketing” enough to me, and there are three aspects which are way underestimated in the advocacy picture.

1. Relevance

Non relevant advocates can be detrimental to brands.  Take me as an example: I don’t qualify to make recommendation about baseball, even if I enjoy the Giants victory last year. On the other end, as a French living in the Bay Area, I am quite influential and efficient in recommending a bakery (Mayfield Cafe in Palo Alto is the best in town. They should give a discount to people asking for their baguette in French, put them on Youtube and maybe give a free lemon tart for each 1000 views…).

I  like the SF Giants ( 1M fans)  and the Mayfield Cafe ( 2 fans including me). They could  give them a 8-9 Net promoter score and I freely talk positively about them but frankly the SF Giants may be better off if I just shut up.

2. Segmentation

Segmentation and building a differentiated value proposition per segment is the core of marketing.   Advocates have to  align to the brand segmentation and messaging otherwise putting the entire marketing strategy at risk. This is done by carefully selecting advocates who deeply network and engage in the target communities.  As per Jaffe Juice, “Communities is the new Demographic” so if you want to market to fitness moms, use fitness moms as your preferred advocates.

3. Message

Even if an advocate is relevant,  knowledgeable and in the right community. She/He may still send the wrong message.

Take us (eCairn) again. We are and want to be known as the best software when it comes to mapping tribes and identifying relevant influencers.

It is absolutely critical that clients/ partners that recommend us do it for this exact reason. If the recommendation does not convey the value proposition then,  these well intentioned advocates will bring to our doors referrals who would be better served by competitors (Radian6 like) and this would just damage our business ratios.

Your purple cow has to stay purple in the words of your advocates.

The net is that brands should build and manage their advocate programs as media program with:

• Target
• Media selection (who is in the best position to deliver the message)
• Message

As with many social program, this puts the emphasis on more strategy and some level of control – thru leadership – in the execution.

@dominiq

All Mommy bloggers aren’t the same, though.  The only thing they have in common are kids and a passion for blogging/Twitter/Facebook.  Some cover fashion and style, some home and family, and some are very commercial with coupons and special offers. It’s a bit of a jungle from outside.

We’ve researched this tribe often and I wanted to illustrate how to go about finding relevant mommy bloggers  in this tribe.

Challenge: One of my customers is a large home improvement chain. They want to target mommies who are interested in deco.

As I enter the Mommy Tribe using eCairn Conversation™, I see that there are 4 well-defined clusters (red, blue, purple and orange).  Clusters are a visual representation of the interconnectedness within a tribe, some are more connected to each other than to the rest, just like in this post.

We are going to do something similar to Dominique’s presentation at Mediabistro on ‘how to find influencers’.  My goal is to find mommy influencers who talk about deco and understand what they are talking about.  I extracted the multi-word expressions and we can see what each cluster is talking about.

The orange cluster is centered around mommies who are sharing their experience with ‘Jewels’ and family values.

The purple cluster is focused on tweeting, creative things for children to do such as painting, photography, and imagination.

The light blue cluster focuses on mommies who want to decorate their homes, and create projects.  Many of the keywords revolve around renovation, inspiration and are very visual. This is the cluster I would like to look at for my customer.

Good, we got a few hints on the structure of this tribe in order to:

• Customize the approach for each group. Clearly, sending a discount offer to the blue group is doomed to fail.
• Develop different activity depending on the level of influence. Don’t send a lame pitch to the biggest influencers; they get so many. Instead, think about something that they would be happy to write about because it’s relevant to their readers. Invite them to an event, create a custom program where they can contribute and show their contribution afterwards in their blog.

I would suggest to the home improvement agency to:

• Send a special coupon/offer for home deco to the mommies talking about “coupons”
• Create a virtual room where the client can invite select deco mommy bloggers to decorate it and have a contest to pick the best one in different categories such as “most glamorous”, ” most stylish”, “most eco-friendly” and so on.

Be sure to check out the Mommy Tribe and more at Social GPS: FREE influencer list and community maps for social media marketers.

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

Here is how we proceeded:

• We loaded the initial list in our application
• We mapped the initial community (graph above)
• We analyzed the different clusters and identify a few sub communities around: BI, SOA/CLoud and Machine Learning
• We also mine the content the initial bloggers’ list and got the following “expressions” as the one most frequently used
• We expanded the different clusters and came up with a list close to 1000 (graph below)
• This list has two major clusters and 4 smaller ones
  • SOA/Cloud/Architecture
  • BI
  • BI-Datamining
  • BI-Visualization/Dashboarding
  • Machine Learning/NLP/ SNA/ Comp Linguistics/ AI (oops a taboo word)
  • Developper blogs around data
• Half of the bloggers form a very well connected community around those subjects. The others are not

Below are the top 500 ranked by influence.

With this new release, you get:

• Community Tab
  • Now, Influencers can be viewed in 3 modes:
    • Community List View (already there and default one)
    • Network View (see connections, color influencers with topics)
    • *New* Geo-location View (see influencers on a world wide map)
• Improved Twitter and Facebook profile detection
• Added list of communities on Heathcare
  you can now import lists from a wide range of Healthcare topics – see our big list of lists here.
  
• Fixed a bug affecting the importing of large lists
  

Learn more and register for a demo:

Watch those features in action in the video below:

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: