There is an interesting post over here from Carter Lusher discussing the difficulties the AR community is encountering with the whole phenomenon of analysts blogging.
Carter lays out a segmentation model that might help with this, but I cannot help thinking that the approach is missing the point a little. I have been on record before as saying that while I blog, I do not define myself ‘Blogger’ with a capital ‘B’, and I am sure the same can be said of most other analysts that make use of blogs as just one medium through which they communicate.
To my mind, the AR people out there might do better figuring out which analysts matter to them, for whatever reason, from buyer influence to the insights they provide, then tracking all of their output (or at least that which is relevant to you) through whatever mechanism. Whether it is a firm branded blog, a personal blog, twitter, a column or article in a traditional publication, or more formal output driven out through research notes and reports, it shouldn’t really matter – monitoring should be analyst or firm centric rather than medium centric.
With a decent RSS reader, use of free aggregation services, and the relevant filters and watches in place, keeping tabs on most forms of electronic output nowadays should not be that big a deal – should it? There are even analyst blog and twitter directories that various people maintain, so you don’t even have to do the leg work to know who is publishing what and where.
Perhaps what is needed is AR training on some of the basic technology and techniques that can help to automate the monitoring process, or at least take a lot of the pain out of it.
Then again, I am not an AR person, so perhaps it is a lot harder than it looks from the outside.
14 comments:
I concur training is needed but sometimes good old basic analytic ability might also help.
Dale,
I somewhat disagree: keeping tabs is really hard, especially if you have a coverage area with "EMEA" in it somewhere.
When I was doing hardware, there were over 150 analysts in EMEA and when I was doing EMEA Applications much more than that. And to be honest, reading the research isn't the most interesting part of the job (Gartner hates when I say this but if I do my job correctly, I should know what's coming): the value is in the conversations.
About analyst bloggers: some have a great blog with insight and use it as a research tool, others are suffering from "blogarreah": they job post on which conference they have seen the latest gadget. It's sometimes interesting but noise is overwhelming. Add twitter to this and you have to skip lunch, dinner and breakfast everyday to keep tabs. And not sleep.
Some AR folks get blogging, and others simply do not want to know - or care. What is powerful about the blogosphere, is that senior execs actually go to blogs (often because they stumble upon them doing Google searches). While tools like Twitter have future potential, it's the actual content/opinion-based blogging which is currently influencing decision-makers. This is even more the case when jounalists regularly scour blogs to find opinions and insight to add to their articles.
I agree with Ludovic that AR folks need to differentiate between the blogs with insight and the "blogarreah". As Carter points out, when you actually whittle it down to analyst blogs with insight, there are only a small handful worth covering. Plus - wouldn't it be interesting - and entertaining - for an AR person to partake in some blogging activity as a break from wading through analyst reports all day trying to police what they are saying?
Just my tuppence-worth
cheers
Dale
I agree with you - but I have some sympathy with Ludovic.
I don't think it's hard per se - but it's so time consuming.
Technology can help to a degree but it can only go so far.
There are automated tools that do help - but actually, you quickly become aware of their limitations and how far they can be trusted to get stuff right.
Teams still have to find time to read stuff, analyse it, think about it, figure out what it means for them - and then do something.
I find it quite incredible for serious AR pros not to take the blogosphere (or twittersphere and other 2.0 apps) seriously.
Whether AR people believe in the merits of these tools or not is a moot point for as long as analysts use social media as part of their day-to-day job then so will I.
I agree that there is a huge amount of information out there that is off putting to most AR pros - indeed it must feel like they are trying to boil the ocean. But - there are some great technology tools out there to help focus on the top few people that are important (and ways to identify who those people are).
Indeed I have found that analysts use the 2.0 world to test their thoughts (Governor likened Twitter to a sounding board) - by getting involved in these conversations and participating AR has the opportunity to understand what analysts are thinking and have the time to influence this before it becomes too late (ie a completed report).
I hear what you are saying Ludo and David, and I sympathise. However, it is a fact that analysts are now producing continuous feeds of output using a multi-channel approach, rather than relying solely on the traditional publishing model that leads to more pedestrian and often predictable release of analyst reports and research notes.
Other industries and professions have had to deal with this kind of phenomenon, i.e. the speeding up of information flow, and have had to get on and deal with it. From retail, through media, to investment banking and insurance, many of the developments and investments in CRM have been concerned with managing an increasing amount of interaction across multiple touch points with those you care about maintaining relationship with. It’s not all perfect, but few now dispute the need for customer-centricity rather than channel-centricity.
Not sure it is any comfort, but you guys are not the first to feel like you are being put upon having to deal with another channel. Sadly, though, arguing that it is unfair to expect AR to carry that extra burden doesn’t actually help. It is a bit like a retailer or financial services company arguing that it is unfair for them to have to worry about the internet. And as AR comes to terms with social media, it should be careful about dismissing 10-15 years of multi-channel relationship management learning in other areas. More specifically, acknowledging the principle of relationship centricity being the key to any effective relationship management programme is particularly important.
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but as analysts, we often need to point out to people that you cannot just ignore what is going on around you and cling to the past forever – otherwise you end up changing the way you work reactively rather than proactively, which is always more risky and expensive, and runs the risk of putting you at a competitive disadvantage in the meantime.
In practical terms, perhaps there is a case for looking at some of the tried and trusted techniques used in the PR domain to monitor coverage, sentiment, etc, and flag up relevant stuff by exception. Please be clear, however, that this is not the same as one suggestion I read, which is that the monitoring of analyst blogs should be passed to PR. Oracle has tried to push us at Freeform Dynamics in that direction before (an offer which we politely declined), and that is definitely not the answer. AR is still AR, it is the mechanics we are talking about here.
Looking on the positive side, though, some AR organisations seem to have it sussed. It is pretty clear to me, for example, that some vendors focus on monitoring me as me, regardless of the communication channels I am using. You can be sure that if I tweet something that is relevant to Microsoft, or publish a relevant blog post or article on Silicon.com, The Register, Computing, or whatever, then I am likely to receive a little note from Metia (one of Microsoft’s local agencies) volunteering additional input if required. That is effective analyst relations and it is effective because it is relationship rather than channel centric.
What am I missing guys?
Bottom line, though, you have to use the blogs in context with the other tools you as an AR person have at your disposal and primary in those is knowing your analysts. If blogging (or social media) is one of their primary output mechanisms, then pay very close attention and read often, if it's part of the mix behave accordingly . . . but never substitute reading blogs for conversations and generally knowing what your analysts think. If you know and understand that then what they publish in their blogs shouldn't be an almighty surprise. Like Dale said on Twitter . . . it's about keeping the R in AR.
Thanks for the comments everyone - I think some common sentiment is emerging around the relationship being central to everything else.
Dale, the last sentence of your 12:29 comment nailed it: "That is effective analyst relations and it is effective because it is relationship rather than channel centric."
It's all about the relationship, and content/opinion, NOT the channel. If you get hung up on the channel, you lose sight of the bigger picture.
If you have a good enough relationship with an analyst (or at least monitor them closely) you will know what they are thinking, why they are thinking it, and how to ensure your organization is (if relevant) within the analyst's realm of caring.
Channels are merely various means of how analysts express.
Thanks for the positive reference Dale. Our AR team's approach is to focus upon 'listening' to analyst conversations, so that our clients can engage and inform that output - wherever the conversation takes place, via whatever channel - rather than to blog or comment prodigiously ourselves.
Agree 100% with the main thread from you and others above. Focus first upon the relationship with the 'influencer' (you), secondly upon their channels of distribution (blog, report, press coverage, etc).
I don't think the solution rests in training AR people to pick the best content. It's not even about embracing social media per se. It's about redesigning and retooling AR business processes.
Think about it in the context of supply chain management:
> The analysts are information suppliers.
> The AR people are the information processing plant.
> The vendor employees/customers/partners comprise the end consumers.
Over the last 10 years, the analyst information marketplace has undergone gradual yet fundamental change. Lately, the rate of change has been accelerating. You see it in the growing volume of freely available analyst content, in the number and diversity of media channels delivering that content, and in the number of sources (analyst companies).
Yet, typical analyst relations roles, tools and processes are still aligned with the old marketplace, when there was little freely available analyst content and a limited number of delivery channels.
Analyst relations needs to sit on top of robust, agile business processes. It needs processes and tools that can stay aligned with the analyst information marketplace.
Social media is the latest wake-up call that analyst-generated information is a commodity -- like fuel -- and analyst relations is as much supply chain management as it is public relations.
Barbara - that is very well put. It makes absolute sense to me.
Lots of great discussion. I agree with much that has been written and that is the problem.
Yes, blogs are just something else that needs to be tracked (see
Social media should not be a special activity for AR, just part of the overall AR plan and Published research is only the tip of the iceberg).
On the other hand, David is completely right that dealing with blogs is time consuming. Especially if you are not already into blogs and have to do a bunch of reading to figure out what it is all about.
Commentators that just blithely suggest that AR teams add more work to their plates when most clearly have too much to do already come across as uninformed and unrealistic, thus easily dismissed. Even AR pros that are interested in getting into blogs, analyst or otherwise, are often so overwhelmed with immediate tasks that they think “Well, I’ll get around to learning about this RSS stuff and try to searching for some analyst blogs when I finish responding to this analyst request.” Well guess what, by the time they finish that analyst request, a half dozen analyst requests more have hit their in-box and some major announcements need to be worked on and they have to help a sales rep whose deal was squashed by an analyst comment and so on. The point is that the perceived free time to get started with blogs never arrives and it gets pushed off.
Of course, analysts that blog do not make it any easier for the AR teams. I did a snap poll on Twitter about whether analysts told AR teams about their blogs. For the most part the answer was no, with comments like “the good ones find the blog” and “neither tell them nor assume they know.” Ok, so AR is now suppose to use precious time to constantly search for whether a relevant analyst has launched a blog? Hey analysts, how about a little sympathy for the AR teams and send out a note when you start your blog. Then, put your blog URLs in your e-mail signature block as a reminder.
What I was trying to do in my post was to point out that there are really not that many analyst blogs that any one AR pro really has to pay attention to so why not get started today. If everybody that is concerned about AR teams not paying attention to blogs came with up a few concrete tips (e.g., “here is how you set up a RSS reader”) that show how relatively easy and not-so-time consuming it is to add a few blogs to the flow information, the more AR professionals would do so. However, merely criticizing AR teams for not getting or not being serious, is counterproductive and won’t encourage anybody to start.
Come on Carter, you know as well as I do that it is a question of when and how rather than if in terms of AR teams embracing analysts blogging. I repeat, while we can sympathise and empathise with everyone faced with having the deal with new stuff being thrown at them, whether it is CIOs with compliance and green computing, banks with anti-money laundering legislation, or AR guys with analyst bloggers, that's life.
Not suggesting it it is a massive deal at the moment, but woouldn't you encourage people to start getting their act together sooner rather than later?
Jonny is advertising a training course over here and I am sure SageCircle, Metia, Sunesis, KCG, etc can provide services and coaching too, so there is help out there.
And you can always turn to Forrester for guidance if you need to :-)
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