As we approach the end of the Spring conference season, and in the run-up to BlogWorld New York, I got to reflecting on how my approach to presentations has evolved over the last while.

Preparing a presentation for a conference is no mean feat (I’d estimate I spend at least 30 hours on each presentation I create for conferences; often more). With that level of time investment, especially if you’re creating multiple presentations each year, you need to make sure you invest your time well.

This year, I’ve started approaching presentations in a new way. I’ve thrown out the PowerPoint*-driven way of planning my presentations, and turned towards a more story-driven way of building them out. My goal: creating presentations that speak more directly and relevant to the people I’m speaking to.

Here, in seven steps, is how I’m preparing my BlogWorld NYE presentation. You can use these seven steps yourself, to improve your own presentations.

1. Decide on your topic.

Simple enough, sometimes. Other times, it may take a little more thinking.

• Who is the audience? Who is attending the conference, and who from that group do you want to attend your session? For BlogWorld, I actually broke it down to a few sample job titles of people I want to ‘speak to’.
• What do they want? Once you’ve figured out who you’re aiming to speak to, think about them more and figure out what they may want to get out of the event. Whether you’ve already figured out your topic or not, that will help you focus the meat of your presentation on them. Write it down, and refer back to this every time you sit down to work on the presentation.

2. Create your framework

The next step is to create the high-level framework for the presentation (I’ve taken inspiration from Cliff Atkinson’s book Beyond Bullet Points here).

Break down your session – what do you want to cover in the time you have? How long do you have to present? How long is the Q&A? Plot it out in a two-column table, with your main topic in a single cell on the left (as a reminder to ladder back to it) and multiple rows within this in the second column – you’ll build on this in later steps:

3. Flesh it out

At this point you already have a bare-bones outline of your persentation. The next step is to flesh it out. I do this with the addition of additional detail to the sub-topic column, and two new columns in the table.

Firstly, figure out how you want to prioritize your topics. You know how long you have and you know what you want to cover, so break it down. You can change it later, but it again helps down the road as you build your presentation.

Secondly, break each sub-topic down into components – this represents the narrative that your presentation will ultimately follow. As you do so, additional thoughts will come to you on soundbites, stats, reference points and even visuals. Note them in the final column here for future reference.

See what we’re doing here? We’re building a kind of hierarchy. By the time you’re done, the sub-topics should read as the key points within your presentation subject, and the sub-topics tell a more detailed story of those key points. Each row ladders back to the high-level topic, and each column tells the story of the presentation at a different level of detail.

By this point you should be finding that you’re forcing yourself to take a hard look at your presentation flow, identifying pieces that need to move around, either vertically or horizontally, within your structure. You should also be getting excited as the presentation takes shape.

4. Write it out

At this point, you’re at the stage of writing out your presentation. Yes, that’s right – write it out.

The level you take this to is up to you. You could just make more detailed notes on the breakdown of your detailed presentation elements, or you could write it out in full. The latter is more time-consuming, but can also give you a better idea of where you stand time-wise. While I rarely refer to speaking notes on-stage, I do prefer to write things out in full the first time so I can walk through it out-loud and see how it sounds.

If you choose to write it out in full, a good guide to length is shooting for roughly 110 words for each minute you’ve allocated to a topic. Your speaking rate may vary, so adjust according to your own style.

5. Start the deck

Step number five of seven, and you haven’t even opened PowerPoint or Keynote yet! Well, now you can. The difference is, rather than creating a presentation based on slides, you’re now creating it based on a narrative. Go through your notes, and drop them into the speaking notes section of slides. Don’t worry about the front end; just the notes.

You can create slides based on the topical break-down you’ve created – the more straight-forward approach – or you can do it based on natural transitions within the speaking notes you’ve created – your choice.

The key part here, again, is that you’re building your deck based on the topic and not based on shoe-horning specific visuals into slides, which often happens if you let slides drive the topic instead of vice versa.

6. Visuals!

Now that you’ve built your deck, the final step is the visuals. Happily for the audience, with the way you’ve planned this out, your visuals now support the material rather than the reverse, and you should be able to avoid “death by awful PowerPoint slides”. Refer to your topic notes, refer to the visuals you jotted down throughout your process, and pick visuals that reinforce what you know you’ll be saying rather than the reverse.

7. Refine and rehearse

You’re almost there. The last step is editing – my least-favourite but possibly most-valuable step. Don’t close things down and wait for the presentation; go over your deck and make sure it works. Sanity-check it with a colleague (or, if they’re really tolerant, your partner).

Finally, rehearse the hell out of your presentation. There’s nothing worse than a presenter who umms and aahs his or her way through their presentation, and you’re not going to have slides full of 12-point font behind you as a crutch if you forget, so make sure you know your presentation inside and out.

You should know your presentation well enough that you can accommodate interruptions without getting flustered (because, as anyone who presents a lot will tell you, it happens all the time. Sigh…).

Conclusion

There you have it. I’ve used this approach for a couple of presentations, and found I come at them with a much more thoughtful approach than I used to. It takes a bit more of a time investment, and it means you need to know your stuff, but I think it’s worth it.

What do you think? If you give a lot of presentations, how do you go about planning them?

If you’ll be at BlogWorld, I’m presenting “Six Important Shifts in Social Media Strategy” at 10:15 on June 5 and let me know if you think this technique worked for my session! (If you haven’t registered yet, use the code “SDaveF10″ to receive a 10% discount on your registration fee.)

*Microsoft is an Edelman client.

Image credit: evablue

My name is Chris Rooney and I’m excited to be your new community manager for EdelmanDigital.com. I believe that great community management is a little like improv: it draws the community’s participation, keeps the conversation fresh and “goes with the flow,” so to speak. That’s the style I try to imitate.

Here are three ways community managers should imitate improv actors:

Always say “yes”

In comedic improv, the best players always agree to new directions for the scene. They accept new perspectives and ideas, which keeps the conversation fresh and moving forward. Likewise, in community management, when a member of your community introduces a new perspective, run with it! You might be surprised by the interesting new directions the conversation can go.

Be generous

Great improv players give generously to fellow players and the audience. There’s nothing worse than sharing an idea and seeing it rejected or even just lukewarmly accepted. Likewise, community managers should graciously encourage audience participation. Thank the audience for sharing their thoughts and opinions, ask questions and offer your reflections on their ideas—you’ll inspire great conversation.

Commit to the audience

As a community manager and improv player alike, you want the audience to connect with you and with each other. In the digital world, it’s too easy to detach from the conversation by never getting involved beyond the initial post. You want the audience to know that you have an interest in what they have to say and that you have your own thoughts as well, that you’re not just a brand mouthpiece. Commit to the community by participating, even when the conversation doesn’t specifically concern the brand. The members of your audience will keep talking to you in the long run.

I’m always looking for interesting views to cross-pollinate ideas across the Edelman network. Feel free to follow me on Twitter (@crooneys). Here’s to making new connections, sharing ideas and growing as a community. Thanks for having me on board!

I just watched this quick video (see below) by Sandy Carter from IBM about the value of using social in the B2B landscape. To recap, Sandy lists best practices for social business in B2B:

• Embracing your B2B business partners with social can accelerate competitive advantage
• Partners will feel a part of your business strategy
• Leverage social by connecting your employees within the B2B ecosystem

Sandy then wraps up the video with a case study about Premier, an alliance of over 200 hospitals with a mission “to improve the health of communities.” It’s a great example of a B2B brand working with its partners to innovate and provide shared value across the ecosystem.

Truth is, there is more “shared value” in social for B2B than B2C any day of the week.

Yup, I said it and I believe it. Especially when you consider the opportunity for establishing thought leadership around a specific topic, content (and when I say content, I mean really meaningful and relevant content, not marketing); and the opportunity to build trust with partners, suppliers and customers – just about everyone in the value chain via the content shared online.

But content is a big problem for the enterprise today. Organizations don’t have the resources, intellect, time and money to create, curate, aggregate content for their communities. This is one reason you see many companies recycling content across all of their social media channels; and even using identical content in the regions without a providing a local or cultural perspective.

I recently came across a company that helps the enterprise begin to solve this problem called Pure Channel Apps. Their platform enables enterprise organizations to pass along high quality and compliant social media content through to their channel partners up and down the value chain.

Take for example a fictitious OEM of semi-conductors called Britopian. Basically, Britopian can create social content (tweets, Facebook updates, LinkedIn) and add it a content library. The partners/suppliers can set up parameters to only receive content from Britopian that’s relevant to their business and/or products. If they choose to share/post the content, they will have the ability to manipulate the content to better align with their brand message or tone before it gets posted.

Another way to look at this is through the lenses of the supplier or retailer. If either is struggling with content, they can leverage this platform to pull content from the OEM or manufacturer. It’s basically a win win for the entire supply chain. Adoption of this platform would certainly require all partners to collaborate and work together.  The result is more meaningful and relevant content which can also contribute to community growth, increase in mind share, sales and accelerating competitive advantage. Below is an illustration of how this works.

And here is Sandy’s video. Enjoy.

Image credit: oooh.oooh

There has been a lot of discussion about online influence lately so I thought I would offer my quick two cents. I wrote a little about how a few influencers have impacted my life back in 2009 and I still feel the same way today.

I am normally a positive person but based on my experience, I hold some negative sentiment towards the concept. Influencers, the way its defined by many on the social web, are overrated. Most have an ego (thank you Peter Kim) and they offer ZERO value to any business or brand.  Truth is, I have been called an influencer in the past and it makes me feel uncomfortable. No one outside of my social media circle and family really knows who the heck I am and I am completely okay with that.

Last night I was chatting with Olivier Blanchard (yes, the infamous Brand Builder) on Facebook and asked him about the topic of influence.  He is someone I hold in high regard because of his smarts on the topic and he’s generally a nice guy.  I asked him to send me a few quick thoughts and of course he sent me a dissertation.  Here is a quick excerpt which reminded me of a book I read over a decade ago – Permission Marketing by Seth Godin:

Influence isn’t a Jedi mind trick. And there’s the rub: influence isn’t just contextual, impermanent and relative to timing, topics, channels and a whole bucket of persuasive traits and actions, it’s also as much about the influencee as it is about the influencer. The influencee has to give you permission to influence him on a certain topic. He has to be receptive to that influence. And that’s the piece you can’t control.

Influence is definitely a complex issue and there are certainly some fallacies with the way it’s defined today. In fact, just a few days ago, my friend Lee Odden wrote about the fallacy of influence. It reminded me of Klout’s Agency Insanity initiative last month whereby several “online influencers” were asked to participate in influencer “stand off” that turned into a voting/spamming frenzy. Yes, I participated and yes, I lost in the 3^rd round. It became very competitive with many of the participants begging for votes (and being completely truthful, I did DM a few people asking for votes.)

But true influence of others shouldn’t require outright begging, right? Just because someone get hundreds of votes, does that make him or her influential? If so, influential about what? I could be wrong and maybe I am looking at it the wrong way, I don’t know.

Going back to Lee’s post … in it, he wrote “Pursuing the “big influencers” alone, is probably one of the biggest fallacies on the web.” This is such a true statement and very powerful. I often try and talk my clients out of focusing to heavily on an “influencer engagement” strategy and instead focusing on those customers that already have a natural love for the brand. They are not hard to find.  They have zero expectations and there are no incentives needed. They don’t care if you send them the latest products or send them to the latest trade show either.  And the truth is, they probably don’t care whether you are “listening” to the conversation. They just love your product; love your brand and the way it makes them feel.

While I am not a fan of the term “influencer,” I believe that everyone on planet earth has some degree of influence, regardless of community size (friends, fans and followers). How many times have we been influenced to fly on a particular airline based on someone else sharing his or her positive experience with us? Or better yet, how often have we NOT booked a reservation on an airline because of a friend’s negative experience? It happens all the time. It’s in our DNA.

About two and a half years ago, I first met Jason Aplin. He was just a random guy, nothing special. I liked him from the get-go mainly because of his sense of humor. One of the first things we talked about was his new android phone. He was flashing it in front everyone at dinner bragging about how big the screen was and that it was slightly bigger than an iPhone blah blah blah. And then he started showing me all the multi-tasking features. He loved the product so much and I distinctly remember the passion in his voice. I was certainly impressed and two weeks later what did I do? I bought one.

Now to be completely honest, it was one of the worst purchase decisions I have ever made but that’s a different story.

The point is that Jason is not an influencer (the way most define it) yet he influenced me to make a purchase decision. Situations like this happen ALL THE TIME.  Jason was an advocate of the phone and through organic, real life conversations, he was aiding and influencing others through the purchase funnel. Since then Jason has become a dear friend. He’s a great guy and we often joke about the first time we met.

The second point is this. Advocates drive real business value to the brand. They indirectly sell your products and services without you even asking. They are trusted among their micro-communities because of their authentic voice. The relationship between a brand and an advocate is not build on incentives, but rather an emotional attachment.

In my book I have a chapter exclusively on this topic. Here is a sneak peak in case you are interested.

Here are a few pointers to maximize your chance for success:

1. Present Your Work

Ideas are fragile and best discussed in person with the key decision makers in the highest-quality presentation possible, regardless of project constraints. This is your best chance to communicate the proposed solution against the project criteria, overcome ambiguity and defend scope.

2. Hold a Critique

Critique is the neutral dialogue between praise and censure and is a two-way discussion between the creator and the jury. A critique is a shared effort among all stakeholders, whether they are account, creative, production and client etc., to validate the idea against established criteria.

3. Look to Solicit Clear, Actionable and Objective Feedback

“I Like it” or “I Don’t Like It” isn’t helpful. Critique participants should seek to get to the why?

CLARIFICATIONS:

• Detailing, Expanding “Can you explain _______”

POSITIVES:

• Pluses, Advantages, “What I like about the idea is _______”

OPPORTUNITIES:

• Spin-offs, Interests, Unique connections, “It might ______”

CONCERNS:

• “How to _______?”  Overcome concerns
• “How might we_______?”  Overcome concerns
• “In what ways might we_______?”  Overcome concerns

4. The Role of the Creator

If you are the creator, it’s your job to accurately explain and defend your digital solution, field questions and assess feedback/direction against strategy, redirecting recommended changes where necessary.

• Be prepared and understand the concept completely.
• Communicate clearly.
• Clarify that which is not clear.
• Ask the right questions.
• Be objective, critique is not personal.
• Listen, listen, listen.

5. The Role of the Jury

If you are a member of the jury, appreciate that when talking about work, you should be in a critique mindset. Thinking this way maximizes the potential for a meaningful and valuable conversation about a digital product.

• Withhold judgment prior to presentation.
• Let the creator explain intentions.
• Judge success against previously defined criteria (i.e. SOW or brief).
• Give actionable and objective feedback.
• Listen, listen, listen.

Clearly defining roles and engaging a team in a critique are great ways to build advocacy. Asking the right questions and clear communication are key to avoiding common points of aggravation like feedback loops, misaligned project goals, wacky changes and budget overruns, etc. Professional creatives are taught how to critique work in school, but a critiquing methodology works well in bringing out the best of whatever you do. Thanks to all my great mentors over the years… This Friday5 captures just a few of the best points I could pass along.

Do you have any preferred rules on the critique process? Share them!

Image credit: zetson

Browse more Edelman infographics.

The content for this infographic was composed by Diana Kelter and Andi Teggart. The design is by George Mathew.

I recently spent a week onsite with a client to announce an acquisition. We had, as is often the case with these engagements, set up a special room for the communications staff to huddle in and make super important decisions, such as “should this font be blue or orange?” Sarcasm aside, the idea behind such a “situation room” or “war room” is to physically centralize all communications during a major announcement or crisis. And it’s a place where anything that can happen, will.

The room itself is usually a normal conference room. You’ve got your typical LCD projector, multiple speaker phones and flip charts. If you’re lucky, there are windows. There may be a flatscreen TV for the news. Maybe some timelines taped to the wall. These are all standard conference room artifacts. In fact, there’s really only one way to tell a situation room from a normal one: Look to the side of the door. You’ll find a table piled high with food, coffee and cold drinks, indicating that the people in this room are going to be there for awhile.

I could spend an hour telling you what makes a war room run successfully. You know, things like physically assembling the decision makers (the CEO, the CFO, etc.) to sign off on messaging. Adhering to strict document protocols for version control. Process discipline and so forth. But that’s all been written about before by people far smarter and more experienced than me. So instead, I thought I’d share some practical advice should you ever find yourself staffing a situation room, either in an in-house role or from an agency. It can be an intense yet ultimately rewarding experience…but you’ve gotta bring your A game. Here are five tips to do just that:

1. Keep calm and carry on. A colleague once told me, “the hotter they get, the cooler you gotta stay.” War rooms are testy places. Tempers flare. Small objects go airborne without warning.  And there are almost always tears. But none of that can come from you. Be the calm in the eye of the storm. The rock upon which others lean. Or the cliché of your choice that means you suck it up and take it with a smile.

2. Be helpful in any way you can. In a war room, the boundaries between roles blur. I’m the employee communications person, but that doesn’t mean I won’t help edit the press release. The client sees the agency as one cohesive team, so pitch in. When you do have a free moment, let the client know and see what else you can be doing. Sometimes they’ll ask you to do things that are clearly outside your job description: I’ve gone on office supply runs, carted around computer equipment and taken excruciatingly specific coffee orders, one of which involved a quarter packet of sugar added before the foam. One time I ended up crawling around under a table looking for an extension cord. None of these are in my job description. Or my description of personal dignity. But when the client is paying you to be there and help, you help. They’ll thank you for it later.

3. Relinquish any sense of ownership. You know that feeling when you’ve crafted the first draft of a masterful press release or employee memo? Where the prose crackles with electricity? And you’re thinking, “damn, I’m good” as you send it to the client? Forget that feeling entirely. Every draft of every deliverable is going to change countless times. That glorious piece of literature you want to laminate and send home to your mom? It will be diluted, genericized and edited beyond recognition as various stakeholders weigh in. That’s all a normal part of the process, so don’t get too attached to anything you write. In the end, arriving at a final communication that works for everyone will be victory enough. If you want to publish pieces that are yours and only yours, start a blog.

4. Be patient with many small changes. As a situation room staffer, you have a ringside seat to a never-ending parade of details. Word choices – “do we call them employees or colleagues?”  – will shift seemingly with the wind. The facts will change without warning. I’ve seen messaging go from “we’re not laying anyone off” to “we’re closing at least three sites” to “it’s too soon to say” in the span of the hour. Sometimes you’ll change your messaging so many times that you eventually end up right back where you started, the original language staring you in the face, mocking you. (When this happened recently, my client sat back and announced that we’d “looped ourselves on the space-time continuum.”) Things will shift simply because not all the facts are known or decisions made. Be flexible and adapt. You can have a stiff drink once it’s all over.

5. Finally, whenever food is set in front of you, eat it. Even if you aren’t hungry. Much like sleep, you never know when you’ll see it again.

Image credit: alexmuse

“Chasing the past, I stumbled into the future”. – T A Sachs

I’ve always been a firm believer that in order to look to the future, we must look back to and fully grasp the past (and the present). Having had several recent engaging conversations with smart people who I respect, I’ve picked up a hint of exhaustion around usage of the word “social”. Could it be that some who saw the “change” coming years ago are weary of having carried that torch for so many years as we move into the heavy lifting? It’s natural to want to move to the next thing—but I’m convinced that today we are largely still talking about the “social media” era. The best of “social business” is yet to come in my opinion and we have a lot of work to do in between. Let’s take a look back before we begin to look forward.

Digital: The Interactive Revolution

When I entered the workplace—the world was already in the process of going digital. E-mail was just being introduced and I had gotten a job immediately largely because I entered the business world with a valuable skill—I was taught desktop publishing (ie computer aided design) in addition to design fundamentals. The digital revolution initially begun by replacing the analogue world. Music was digital and computers offered an interactive medium to produce upon. Digital began seeping into personal and professional lives and organizations, businesses and industries had to evolve along with it. Most did and the ones that didn’t were outperformed.

Digital Media: Information Goes Online

The second wave of the digital revolution began to gain steam as the internet became move pervasive. The “Web” became first accessible through browsers and then it became the search engines which organized what we then called “the information highway”. A new digital economy was born as companies rushed to stake their claim online. The “corporate” Website was born—essentially a glorified brochure for your organization however the business world began to wake up to the fact that not being on the Web was perhaps risking being irrelevant. This sentiment is important to take into account as we currently wrestle with the current state of social media. Looking back to the “Digital Media” era provides some insights as we look at how social media has evolved.

Digital Business: The Transactional Era

As the Internet, fueled by digital media and a wealth of information became more pervasive, the Internet evolved yet again creating new ecosystems resulting in new companies (Amazon, *eBay etc.) and creating opportunities for existing companies to extend their business models. Banks introduced online banking. Insurance companies supported online quotes. Cars could be customized and even purchased online. Large organizations grappled with back end integration as infrastructure was re-engineered. Digital had become not only interactive and informational, but it became transactional—offering organizations new ways to connect with customers or even employees (intranets). In short, digital became business and the flurry of activity in the form of mergers, acquisitions and the growth of system integrators reflected this.

Social: The Human Web

With digital now established as transformational business tool—the Internet and the world began to evolve again. Early incarnations of a “social Web” such as message boards and forums gave rise to early social networks and the “blogosphere”. Networks such as My Space or Friendster introduced the concept of managing a social profile on the Web while blogs began to disrupt the media landscape by empowering anyone to act like a journalist or publisher. The ‘Digital Media” era was largely powered by technological connections—computers being connected to a global network. The Social era was powered by people connecting to each other forming a “human web”. The word social becomes key during this era, because we begin to shift behavior during this phase. No longer are we just interfacing with digital systems (human to computer) but we begin to interface directly with each other (human to human).

Social Media: Global, Local, Mobile Connectivity At Scale

Today, we live and interact with a digital world which is not only about finding information but is about being “connected”. These connections are no longer limited to the personal computer, the primary vehicle which allowed for the original digital revolution to take hold years before. Mobile technology and an “always on” mindset for many individuals now blurs the line between the real world and digital—we no longer “log in” at our desks from nine to five but we are part of a digital and human “power grid”. For many organizations, local Facebook pages show high levels of activity vs. global corporate Websites and organizations find their employees asking why internal tools can’t be social and mobile. Networks now drive much of the Web’s traffic as billions of people share links and opinions about the world around them. As a result of all of this activity—huge amounts of data or “social data” is currently flooding the current global digital ecosystem. This sets the stage for an era that’s already begun, but is still in it’s infancy.

Social Business: Connected, Adaptive & Intelligent

Despite much of the chatter around “social business”, the reality is that most organizations are currently dealing with the realities of social media and only a few truly recognize the potential of social business. Not unlike how digital media evolved into digital business—social business takes the foundation of social media and begins to build new economic models on top of it. Proof points include models such as Kickstarter which disrupts old economic models by empowering any venture to become a funded venture. Existing business models however, are also presented with new opportunities (and threats). Business models where new connections are formed to the benefit of both the business, customer and even employee and shareholders are a core tenet of “social business”. One could make the argument that Apple, while infamous for it’s secret culture acted as a social business when they chose to connect to would be developers instead of trying (in vain) to design apps themselves. It is this kind of connected ecosystem which is linked to the idea of social business as well as the ability to adapt to conditions based on the intelligence a business can interpret. In the immediate years to come, the amount of data available to the average business will be infinite, however the data will be meaningless without the ability to interpret and act upon it.

Winners & Losers: Navigating Today And Tomorrow’s World

Having lived and worked during the “Digital Media” and “Digital Business” era, I think we’re scratching the surface as we straddle the worlds between social media and social business today. While there are many similarities to the past, there are also several key differences. Today, digital has become embedded into the lives of millions of people and a generation who has never known life before it pours into our workforce and gradually rises in the ranks. Also, it’s worth noting that the above chart doesn’t suggest that any of the eras replace each other—rather they build upon one another. We are now in a social-digital environment where things increasingly move in real time. Tomorrow’s business models must not only be able to adapt to change, they must help drive that change. These are a few thoughts I’ve had percolating for some time. As a follow up to this post, I’m going to do a review of a very promising book by former colleague Peter Kim and co-author Dion Hinchcliffe (Social Business by Design). From what I’ve seen of it so far—it shows a lot of promise in terms of how a business should be thinking about these kinds of things (below graphic pulled from the book). Would love to hear your thoughts as well.

*eBay is an Edelman client

Image credit: armano

Not a week passes where we fail to hear about the challenge big data poses, how it can be effectively managed and what organisations can do to leverage it to make more insightful decisions.

Big data was traditionally thought of in the context of areas, such as sensor networks, call records, military surveillance, complex scientific research and the like. However, in recent years its definition has been broadened to include data arising from social networks, Internet search and large-scale e-commerce, which are the focus of this post.

Big Data: Social Context

McKinsey, Forrester, HBR and the Economist have offered expert commentary on the wealth of big data in this new, social context, as well as thought leadership on how it can be mined and analysed to create strategies that  touch upon a range of business functions. The salient point all make is that big data impacts not only the usual players in social, such as marketing, PR, sales and customer service, but areas as diverse as supply chain, R&D, HR and much more besides.

We have been forced to broaden the definition of big data thanks to the growth of User Generated Content (UGC), the impact of which means wenow create as much information every two days as we did from the dawn of man through to 2003. The unstoppable surge of content and data has contributed to what we are now calling ‘information obesity’ and led Edelman’s Steve Rubel to coin the term ‘Attentionomics’; focusing on the difficulty of cutting through the noise to captivate people’s attention, amid infinite content and finite time in the big data age.

But how do you go about using big data to make better business decisions?

Collecting the Data

Listening tools like Radian6, Sysomos and Synthesio are fantastic for reporting and evaluating external, digital marketing activity. However, there’s an unrealised opportunity for organisations to utilise these tools to mine data and extract meaning from online conversations to support their internal, operational and strategic decisions which can help them evolve from a social brand to a social business.

Navigating the complexity of big data and formulating social business insights is not easy though. It’s an emerging area that requires a broad and changing skill-set, meaning that all too often organisations can be data rich, but insight poor from their listening efforts.

Big Data in Play

Amongst all the discussion about big data there are already some fantastic examples of organisations leading the way and utilising it to make enhanced decisions for themselves or their clients.

Recorded Future is a software company with CIA and Google funding that specialise in web intelligence and predictive analytics. They have developed something called a ‘temporal analytics engine’ that scours the web to find relationships between people, organisations, actions and incidents so they can more accurately predict events, such as outbreaks of disease, terrorist threats and economic swings.

Another good example of tapping into social data to make better business decisions is that of Derwent Capital Markets. Using listening technology they compares fluctuations in the online national mood with stock market movements, the results of which help guide investments.

Thirdly, some major supermarkets are already using data mined from social media to enhance their supply chain. By studying local online conversation they are able predict demand and determine new products they should stock.

This trio of examples show how organisations are beginning to use big data to make better decisions and offers an exciting look into how online conversations may be used to predict offline behaviour in the future.

Although, we are only at the beginning of this journey, the potential uses of big data are wide, varied and exciting. For me, this is where things get interesting and it’s great to see big data rightly used beyond its traditional application in communications strategy to now guide the business one too.

Image credit: luckey_sun