David Crow

Connector of dots. Maker of lines. Rider of slopes.

Marketing

Groundswell: Application to Gauge Social Networks Attitudes

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Thank you Beet.TV.

There is a lot of interest in tap into the wealth of behavioural data that is unlocked by social media applications. There has not been a lot of tools that really go beyond traditional demographic or web analytic measures.

Groundswell is Forrester Research’s new tool for understanding the social media ecosystem of: Creators; Critics; Collectors; Joiners; Spectators and Inactives. Groundswell provides some initial breakdowns using basic demographic data (Age; Country; Sex) to identify the composition of the social group according to their Social Technographics® and compared to the general population.

Interesting stuff. Unfortunately there is no data about Canada.

It’s tied to the release of Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff‘s book of the same name, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. I’m really curious at how much data they collected, it’s probably better than most anecdotal evidence but the quote from book site is a little nebulous:

"hard consumer data and experience with dozens of companies"

Apparently it’s based on "65 corporate examples including 25 full case studies". But it’s interesting to begin to build a profile of the audience and the general archetypes. This basic level of research is designed to get you to purchase additional research from Forrester. And it’s a very good start. I wonder how many media startups are not able to provide similar basic demographic details about their audience. What happens when we move beyond CPMs and CPCs? At Nakama, the behaviour analysis tools were very immature, probably a contributing factor to our failure, but we understood to build a "mobile social community" we needed to understand who was using our site, from where and what they were doing on the site. In our case, it turned out that it was to upload pictures of their wangs (yep, not their Wangs). It would have been very interesting to have build our strategies and tactics on the understanding of the social media ecosystem provided by Groundswell.

CIX Survey says…

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Ali asked for the survey results from the Exchanging Innovations Canadian-style post.

There were 23 respondents. No details were collected about relevancy to the Canadian Innovation Exchange market. Just looking for plain and simple opinion about what people would pay to attend CIX and what else would be valuable. Rick and Alec have provided commentary on the issue. I think the model is upside down, i.e., I’m not sure why as a entrepreneur I should pay to attend for a dog-and-pony show for VCs, I do pay to attend conferences. It really puts the onus on the CIX organizers to provide valuable content and a meaningful conference experience.

Robert and Sean have been listening and have adjusted their pricing for early-stage and later-stage companies.

The registration fee for seed stage companies is now $595, and later stage companies is $995 – this includes your delegate fee, and all presenting costs.

And have provided interesting keynote speakers:

The survey comments, included verbatim below, indicate the need for better conference experiences. I keep thinking about how we can improve the experiences of attendees and participants for DemoCamp and other participant-driven events.

 

Q.1 What is the maximum you would pay as an entrepreneur to attend and present at the Canadian Innovation Exchange?

Answer Count
$0 – Free 2 (9%)
$25 0 (0%)
$50 2 (9%)
$100 5 (22%)
$200 2 (9%)
$250 2 (9%)
$400 1 (4%)
$500 5 (22%)
$600 2 (9%)
More than $600 2 (9%)

Q.2 What do you expect in return?

Answer Count
10 minutes on stage 17 (29%)
Media coverage – press, blog, other 12 (20%)
3 Private Venture Meetings 10 (17%)
Free advice 9 (15%)
Private meetings with service providers 5 (8%)
$10,000 Best-in-Show prize 3 (5%)
Discounts 2 (3%)
Free software 1 (2%)

Q.3 What else would be valuable?

  • Having some ‘connectors’ who will help introduce people with like interests.
  • All of the above is great but what really matters is meetings with the right people. Otherwise it’s blind dating.
  • Just meeting the right people when we are ready for VC funding and learning the whole process of funding and when it’s a good time to go for funding. We are not ready now for funding now but would like to attend the conference to start meeting ‘qualified’ investors and not people who will drag the process. We are hiring someone to help with the development but hiring a dev is equally important as meeting the right people which I think CIX brings, unfortunately with hiring a dev, cash becomes tight when you are self funding 🙁
  • Critical advice from seasoned entrepreneurs with no vested interest
  • Simple Exposure
  • Allow co-founders to attend for their company presentation! A start-up is a team activity…team work makes the dream work as they say. So limiting the price structure to one founder there is just not the best way to go – even if it involves giving a discount for attending co-founders.
  • Not expected but media coverage would be valuable if my project was deemed worthy.
  • workshops/tutorials – organized collaboratively through the conference producers and the registered delegates.
  • lisitng on CIX website.
  • Social aspects
  • Proof of value. A proxy is knowing who is participating. Otherwise I’d write it off as a go nowhere boondoggle.