Category: Creativity

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I Like Sentiment Analysis?

No matter how inane or frivolous your last tweet was, someone out there thinks it’s pretty important.  It used to be that when a company wanted to get the pulse of “the man/woman on the street” they went to elaborate, expensive and time intensive lengths to do so.  Well, thanks to the modern miracle of something called Sentiment Analysis, one man’s constant stream of trite, annoying and far too personal blathering is another man’s gold.

Sentiment Analysis, also known as the less confusing/more ominous sounding Data Mining, is defined as “the computational study of sentiments and opinions expressed in unstructured text documents”. In layman’s terms, companies take things like your tweets, Facebook posts, blogs and customer reviews and then change the way they do business to fit your mood. The best part of the whole thing? They don’t have to pay the social networker a dime. No focus groups, which means no moderator, no conference room and no free pizza and soda (my favorite part of the focus group experience.)  Of course this isn’t a free ride, in order to wade through the mountains of text, and all those pesky 01011010 it cost money, but in the end it’s cheaper, faster and once again, no pizzas.

Of course there are some downsides to this 21st century tool. Matt Rhodes from www.freshnetworks.com compared old fashion human analysis with the seven leading automated social media monitoring tools (Alterian, Brandwatch, Biz360, Neilsen Buzzmetrics, Radian6, Scoutlabs and Sysomos). What he found was that when dealing with “facts of information” automated monitoring tools were as or more accurate than human analysis.  But when it came to actually deciding if a comment was positive, negative or neutral the automated tools fall far behind.  Rhodes points out that this is important to businesses because if you are reacting to and acting upon a large volume of negative comments that turn out to be positive (or vice versa) your entire operation can be compromised. Computers might be able to beat you at Jeopardy, but they still are having a problem deciding if you really loved that Nic Cage movie or you were in fact just being the snarky. And seeing that Twitter is about 95% snark, this is not a small problem.

Is this problem of perception a major stumbling block? If Mr. Rhodes is correct than yes, but with the way software and hardware are updated in the blink of an eye I am guessing this won’t be a problem for much longer. But for now you need to still be wary of any technology that claims to take away the need for at least some old fashion one on one human contact with consumers. Plus, I still want a shot at that sweet free pizza.

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Creativity Leadership On the Edge Proactive Stories Social Media

Volunteering Doesn’t Have to Be Unproductive

I’ve volunteered a few times and each time I’ve regretted it. My first encounter with selflessness was a few years back. A friend roped me into teaching English to a group of foreign students striving to attain US citizenship for 10 hours a week. “Easy”, I remember thinking, “I’ll pop on a tweed blazer, puff on a pipe, and teach everyone in ear-shot advanced English while making a bunch of new friends.”

My dream was shattered the moment I walked into the classroom. I was barraged with questions about thorny dangling modifiers, idioms I didn’t know existed, and verb problems I thought only belonged in college level French classes.

The only way I could teach the class was by using the Socratic method of questioning. Whenever I was asked to explain something I’d invariably answer with a question: “It sounds right, doesn’t it?”

Empty stares greeted me.

Most classes would turn into long discussions on what the dating scene was like in everyone’s respective countries. While I helped the students bone up on their conversational English—I certainly wasn’t giving them the practical tools they needed to hammer out an ‘A’ on their upcoming exam.

After a few months my volunteer time was up and I didn’t renew my vows. It was too difficult, tiring, and frankly unproductive for everyone in the class.

This is the basic problem with volunteering. People have good intentions, but sometimes they are slowly strangled in the hands of the wrong non-profit organization.

What’s the point of volunteering in a soup kitchen if you can’t cook? Why volunteer at a resale shop that donates its profits to charity if you don’t have any retail experience (or can’t stand on your feet for over two hours in a row)? Why teach English if you don’t have any classroom prowess?

Thanks to Catchafire.org, volunteering doesn’t have to be so mismatched anymore. It pairs professionals with non-profit organizations—via the great, all-reaching, power of the internet.

So, let’s say you’re a really good Marketing Manager and you want to volunteer somewhere—Catchafire can help you find an NGO that desperately needs marketing advice. It’s better than making rock hard cookies for a bake sale or attending a charity cocktail hour filled with three hours of speeches.

You get to volunteer at a place that needs your skills, not just your sentiment, and you also get to network. It’s a win-win.

Catchafire demonstrates that online networks can produce positive value—not simply friend requests and follows.

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BLG Leadership Insights Creativity Leadership On the Edge Managerial Competence Proactive Stories Social Media

The Ups and Downs of Brand Evaluation

Branding is where it’s at. If you’ve got something to sell you can’t just throw it out there and hope for the best. That’s a great way to guarantee failure and a trip to foreclosure/bankruptcy land.  Some companies have worked for decades to get it just right. Apple ($500 million), Microsoft ($1.4 billion) , Disney ($517.6 million) and other top companies spend giant sums every year on advertising, marketing and branding. But according to the website 247wallst.com knowing the true essence of a brand, or it’s “brand value”, is “more an art than a science“.

In a recent article the folks over at 247wallst.com explain the modern art of brand evaluation and also highlight how it can go wrong with a  list of the World’s Most Misunderstood Consumer Brands. These are big names from the consumer products biz that perhaps need to do a better job of telling us not what they have done, but what they are doing.  It’s both a fascinating article and a list that might make you rethink how you are percieved not only by those you sell to, but also those you lead.

The World’s Most Misunderstood Consumer Brands

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Creativity Leadership On the Edge Social Media

6 Funny Leadership and Social Media Cartoons

Of late we have talked about a lot of very serious topics in relation to social media and leadership. So on a lighter note, check out these six funny social media and business cartoons. We could all use a laugh.

1. The Madness of Social Media Marketing

2. How Social Media Planning actually happens in the workplace

3. Online Marketing isn’t easy

4. Facebook in the workplace?

5. The “Authenticity” of Social Media

6. What we really do online at work

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BLG Leadership Insights Creativity Ideas Leadership On the Edge Managerial Competence Proactive Leaders

Can’t Change Leadership Without Changing Culture

Leaders changing leadership within a company without changing culture is like shuffling a deck of cards. No matter what, you are left with the same players and one game to play. The players should not be the focus. It should be the game. Here’s an article from sfgate.com about a recent attempt to reshuffle the deck over at Microsoft, without dealing with the culture first. Will it work? Only time will tell.

Microsoft’s CEO Is Said to Extend Management Shake-Up

photo: Todd Klassy