I was okay with the privacy setting concerns. I was okay with the liberal usage of my personal info for the sake of advertising. I was even okay with their attempt to create a near universal currency – Facebook Credits – that aimed to totally eradicate modern consumerism as we know it.

But this? This is too much.

The recently launched Timeline layout takes your entire Facebook history and organizes it into a neat, easy-to-creep chronological history. With just a couple clicks, visitors to your profile can now time warp back to your earliest days online. If you’re a Gen Y’er like myself, that probably means your old back & fourths with high school sweethearts and bickering acquaintances are now instantly viewable by people like, say, your roommates, family members, or perhaps even your boss.

In other words, the apocalypse is here.

It’s one of the biggest in-your-face changes that’s ever been made to the service, and one that will prompt many users to re-evaluate their relationship with the platform. In my case, it led to a drastic social media cleanse, which I documented in a post titled The Night I Deleted 83% Of The People From My Life. I was not alone. Countless friends and readers responded to the piece, telling me that they felt the same way; the social network experience was just becoming too big a beast to responsibly maintain.

Timeline has the potential to distort both how we think and the way we’re observed. Let us examine 3 areas of concern in increasing order of severity:

1. Old Wounds (emotional nuisance)

Whereas previous generations were forced to rewind old mixtapes or visit kitschy ice cream parlors to pay emotional homage to their old beaus of yesteryear, we can now revisit and over-examine our past relationships in about the same amount of time as it takes to check the weather.

It’s not just romantic ghosts – think of all the dated social affiliations and connections you’ve accumulated throughout the years. Digging up gossip fuel and incriminating dirt on one of your friends has never been easier. A new browser tab here, a clickity click there, and presto! You’re now free to sift through each and every interaction you had with the people you once held true to your heart. It’s like pouring salt on old wounds. Or perhaps, more accurately, browser cookies on weakened firewalls.

God I hate the Internet.

Perhaps a stronger and more emotionally evolved person would be able to treasure this newfound opportunity to revisit past relationships. I’d rather saw off my left thumb with a sea urchin. To each their own, I suppose.

2. Judgment of Character (professional liability)

I started using Facebook when I was 16. You remember being 16, right? No? Let me refresh your memory. You sucked. Like myself, you probably said a lot of dumb things trying to impress people or be funny. Perhaps you even discussed Wham! That’s expected of you. After all, you were a kid. Never fear - assuming you were born before the 90s, those silly notions are but distant memories, safely nestled away exactly where they belong: in the past.

My generation is less fortunate.

Our entire dopey adolescence is documented online in great detail. And since many of us – having grown into adults and young professionals - now have Friend Lists that include coworkers and even bosses, the availability of said conversations/photos/thoughts is alarming. Would you really want your supervisor or director leafing through a personal journal you kept in the tenth grade?

This is particularly distressing when you consider the increasing popularity of social media background checks as potential employers begin to sift through your online profiles with an increasing degree of attention and scrutiny. After all, they don’t want your social misdemeanors to shine poorly on their company. One can only imagine how difficult it would be to find a suitable candidate for prime minister had today’s politicians been tweeting since prepubescence.

The pixilated skeletons in your digital closet have never been easier to uncover. Perhaps it’s time to change the locks.

3. The Ability to Forget (psychological cancer)

In his book Delete: The Virtue Of Forgetting In The Digital Age, Viktor Mayer-Schonberger looks at the cumbersome mental effects that archival tech mediums have wrought upon us. Thanks to the digital revolution, our capacity to remember is as strong as our nearest internet connection. The distant past has become no further than a few clicks away, making our personal histories inescapable and clouding our ability to make unbiased contemporary decisions.

In other words, it’s difficult to focus on the present when it’s so easy to look back on what’s happened in the past.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for preserving memories. Matter of fact, it’s something I wish I could do a better job of. I wish I took more pictures or recorded a daily journal. The ability to continually revisit and learn from the past is one of the greatest blessings modern technology has provided us with. But I think recollection is far better when it happens on a macro-level. I much rather reminisce via the collective feelings and memories that have permanently burned themselves into my mind, as opposed to referencing an old wall-to-wall my friend and I had about 2 Fast 2 Furious five years ago. There’s a reason you remember certain things, right?

Analyzing your past will become a far more daunting experience when you can instantly wade through thousands of pristinely preserved conversations and exchanges. It’s sensory overload and it could hurt us. Wouldn’t it all be so much more genuine if we focused on what we remember vs. what we have archived? If we began to spend more time looking forward and less time curating what’s behind us? I have a feeling it just might make things a lot more enjoyable.

Then again, maybe I’m just petrified of my past.

Brook Johnston is a copywriter for FUSE Marketing Group in Toronto.

What is the future of digital marketing?

Not exactly the easiest question to answer. But with a deadline looming, here were some of my thoughts:

1. Explosion of smartphone penetration and increasing importance of mobile integration

Can you spell ‘OBVIOUSLY’? Felt I would be remiss not to mention this. Smartphone penetration in North America is often reported as high as 40%. This number is expected to climb significantly over the next few years. Understanding how to motivate consumers via this device and encourage interaction and brand advocacy will become more important than ever before.

2. In-bound vs out-bound marketing

The marketing/communication landscape continues to change - daily. In this business, the only constant IS change. One thing we can be sure of though is the evolution from out-bound marketing (where brands pushed out their message) to the increasingly omnipresent in-bound marketing. In-bound marketing includes:

• Interactive and two-way communication
• Customers seeking out brands via a multitude of channels and experiences
• Need for marketers to provide value exchange

The shift has happened. And the pressure to provide value and utility will only increase.

Check out this related infographic which I used as a source.

3. Heightened sensitivity around consumer privacy

With the explosion of social networks and related marketing applications that delve into consumer settings and preferences, we as a society are more cautious than ever before about protecting our privacy.

While consumers are hungry for laws that protect their information and private data, marketers are concerned with over zealous regulations that threaten to derail marketing and communication freedom (CASL anyone?). Striving for balance will be a key issue for marketers across North America.

One only needs to look to recent claims and action taken against Facebook to understand the depth and complexity of the issue. Giving consumers clear access to control their privacy while allowing marketers to build permission based programs will become a bigger challenge over the next few years.

4. “Phygital” marketing

Let me be clear on one thing. I detest the word ‘phygital’. But this isn’t about me. So let’s move on…. Phygital Marketing is often described as “ideas that extend brand engagement with consumers through the interplay of experiences in both the physical and digital spaces – in the Phygital space.”.

With increasing budgets in the digital space (from media to production to innovation in technology), blending our physical world with the online environment is now the cost of entry. Consumers no longer decipher between online sites and physical store locations. The brand persona – and brand experience – is one. Agencies will need to understand how to connect and deliver engaging and useful interactions.

5. Monetizing social engagement

It is no surprise that brands are clamoring to get on social networks such as Facebook (if they haven’t already arrived). Those who joined the party some time ago are constantly struggling with how to engage their fanbase while monetizing their ROMI. Herein lies the challenge….how to determine return on investment and furthermore, how to leverage the social sphere into a revenue generating channel. As social inevitably continues to evolve, we predict that the value will be less about ‘status’ and size of network and more about crowd sourced solutions and daily interaction.

Social media in the B2C space is not only about helping brands connect with consumers but also influencing awareness, interest and desire. Some brands have been able to directly monetize their social media efforts and are well on their way to turning this dynamic channel into another example of ‘phygital’ well done.

Robin Whalen

This process made sense in a world of mass media, but it is quickly becoming obsolete. With the rise of digital marketing, each step along the lifecycle of a campaign was changed as knowledge of the consumer increased and targeting options multiplied. Yet the concept of the campaigns still persists, though is now executed at a more granular level.

The start of the move to digital proved effective because it allowed marketing messages to be much more relevant to the individual consumer. Marketers didn’t have to think of their consumers in broad groups based on demographics, but could instead use far more detailed information to reach the right person with the right message.

I believe that the next iteration in this development will bring about the end of the campaign.

Marketing will become more fluid taking the shape of an ongoing relationship between brands and their consumers instead of distinct campaigns. Ad targeting and optimization technology will improve so that each consumer will receive their own message customized based on a multitude of factors.

Many direct marketers are already doing versions of this. The emails I get from Amazon are based on books that I have said that I like - things like my age, gender, and occupation don’t matter. This makes their marketing message more relevant to me than any TV commercial I have ever seen.

How do you prepare for a post-campaign marketing world?

The skills required from marketers will change. Data mining and optimization will become more important. Technology will drive more marketing dollars. Creative will always be important, but will have to become more flexible.

And the way you think about your brand will change too. Brands will become more conversational and rely more on earned media than paid media. Instead of thinking in campaigns, brands will think in terms of relationships.

Yet the fundamentals of your brand - the promise you make to your consumers - should stay the same. The end of the campaign should be an opportunity to make that more promise more meaningful to your consumers as you can customize its execution. It will be hard, but it will benefit consumers and brands alike it if is done properly.

Ben Wise

Perhaps it's because I'm writing this on a MacBook Pro. Perhaps it's because we have over a half dozen Apple devices in our home. Perhaps it's the way I see my 3 year old daughter effortlessly using an iPad and technology without a second thought. Or perhaps I still remember when I first used a computer (Apple IIE) and how it was a moment of 'child-like wonder'.

I'm sure you have heard, Steve Jobs the founder of Apple and until recently its CEO, passed away yesterday due to the scourge of cancer. He left behind a wife and young family. He also left behind a legacy as an innovator and someone who demanded excellence. Someone who never contented himself or his company with the status quo.

Indeed I had the privilege to work at Apple but I only saw him once from a distance when I travelled to headquarters in Cupertino, California. But let me tell you that you felt his presence throughout the Apple and it was firmly ingrained within the company DNA.

Words that come to mind as it relates to Steve Jobs and Apple as a former employee? Excellence. Drive. Innovation. Marketing. Simplicity. Financial Performance. Ruthlessness. Secrecy. Vision.

Now I'm not about to suggest that Steve Jobs was perfect. But really who amongst is? He was no deity but one would be naive to deny the tremendous impact Steve Jobs had on marketing, technology and perhaps our society at large especially in the past decade.

Whether it was the founding of Apple. Being later unceremoniously removed from the very company he founded. Returning back to Apple to help it rise like a phoenix from the ashes and the precipice of bankruptcy. Taking Pixar Studios to the next level and making it a blockbuster company in terms of computer animation. Steve Jobs consistently made his mark.

Steve Jobs took an almost bankrupt company (with financial help from Microsoft) and made it one of the largest companies in terms of market capitalization on the planet. He did so by launching innovative and revolutionary products such as the MacBook, iPod, iPhone and iPad. Each of which significantly raised the bar in terms of the quality of products that companies in the consumer electronics industry produced. Each also severely disrupting other established industries such as music and entertainment.

So here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. Like Steve.

Sulemaan Ahmed
Twitter @sulemaan

The most common learning style is visual. And most people prefer video to any other media. It requires less thought and can be done "lazily". As a marketer, it makes sense to cater to the audience.

Video is increasingly placing well in Google search results.

There was a time when creating a video meant thousands of dollars of equipment to shoot and thousands more to edit. Now video equipment is "included" free on such things as a Blackberry, iPhone and a normal cell phone. And editing software is pervasive and easy to use.

One side effect of cheap video cost is it can often be bad video. Just because anyone can do it, does not mean anyone should do it. As marketers we know we need quality.

The goal in video production is acceptably good. The cost to get perfect near TV quality video can be much more than acceptably good but the difference for the audience is small. Many people will watch your video on a small screen (perhaps even a device like a Blackberry). The smaller the screen and lower the resolution, the more forgiving the user will be to the quality. Blow it up to theatre size and imperfections are blatant.

8 Tips that can make video marketing easier:

1 - Spend a bit on a real video camera. A few hundred dollars does the trick. Buy a tripod as well. It is impossible to hold a camera still without one.

2 - Shorter is better. Most people will not even click on a video that says 10 minutes. Optimal length in our time starved, ADD society is 2 minutes. Of course this has the advantage to you. It takes less time to produce a short video.

3 - There is a reason why professionals use expensive lights. Video that is well lit looks better. It can be as simple as turning on all the lights to using cheap construction lights.

4 - Plan the story line. No video will be watched if the story line is poor. Video copy is like any other copy. Make it punchy, active, funny, and interesting to keep people's attention. Remember people always have their finger on their mouse waiting to click off your video. Videos that "go viral" always have a great story. The quality of the story beats the quality of the video any day.

5 - Consider adding music. Music adds to the interest and can add to the flow. Think of most TV and news shows. They all have intro/exit music.

6 - Consider doing a music video. I liked the one Organic Meadow produced. I do not know their production equipment or cost but the outcome was great.

7 - Promote your video in your other marketing. Producing the video is easy. But distribution is key. So cross reference it in your blogs, twitter, print, radio, business cards, signage, email it etc. It is the old story - distribution of marketing is key.

8 - Consider doing educational videos. American Health Journal does a great job of medical videos for example. By naming videos by the educational topic like "back pain", they will get good natural search traffic when people search for that term.

Video is easy and economical and deserves to be a part of any marketing program.

Jim Estill

Direct Marketing is the use of media to directly engage targeted audiences to drive profitable business results that can be tracked, recorded, analyzed and stored for future retrieval and use.

Marketers needed an updated framework for understanding a changing industry, particularly with the increased use and effectiveness of online and digital media, a shift toward insights based marketing as well as changes in consumer preferences and access to information.

To accompany this new framework, CMA’s DM Council put together a series of best practice documents (13) that cover the most common channels and media found in a comprehensive marketing plan. These documents are concise and include only the most important learnings; the tried tested and true direct marketing practices, written by DM subject matter experts.

The best practices are organized into three sections:
1. The Basics (recently published on the CMA website) – covers Direct Marketing Analytics, Offers, Branding from a Direct Marketing perspective, Creative, and Privacy Management.

2. Media and Channels - focuses on both traditional and emerging DM channels: Email Marketing, Direct Mail, DR Media, and SEM.

3. Improving Effectiveness - helps direct marketers leverage the basics to their greatest effect with complimentary tactics like Contests, Word of Mouth Marketing, Community Involvement and Cross-selling.

The DM Council has brought these practices together in a “Direct Marketing Digest”. Our target audience? Those direct marketers early in their career.

The complete DM Digest will be distributed to all attendees at CMA's Direct Marketing Conference September 21 in Toronto. Come and get yours and/or pass it on to a junior on your team.

Martha Turner

This is an often overlooked part of online market research. Before doing anything else, it is important to know exactly what your targeted market wants. How do you find that out? The best way is to spend some time with them. No, I don’t mean physically hanging out with them. I mean hanging out with them in online forums and blogs. Remember, there are online forums on just about every subject, and there is likely one where your target market likes to spend time.

Here’s an example. Suppose you want to market a dog training guide. You would simply do a Google search for “dog training forum” and look through the results. Then you would invest some quality time inside several of these forums. Look for popularly discussed topics and threads with lots of replies.

These will give you some great insight into what concerns your target market has. You may also choose to go one step further and register in these forums. If you register, you can become a contributor and at the same time subtly market your website. Be careful though not to be too blatant when doing forum marketing, or you may be accused of being a spammer.

Another place to get to know your market is at Yahoo! Answers. Go over there and do a search for frequently asked questions from your prospective buyers. If you find out what they want and what their concerns are, you are far more likely to build a site that will attract them and turn them into customers.

2. Search Engine Optimization

Now that you know where your target market is and what they want, it’s time to optimize your site so they will find you. While getting to know your market, you should be collecting a list of keyword phrases that reflect the types of questions or concerns they may have. Then, optimize your site to rank high in the search engines for these search phrases.

There are several factors that go into a successful search engine optimization strategy. They include:

On-site SEO: This is all the stuff you do on within your site to make it attractive to the search engines. This includes technical stuff like meta-tags, and the content of your site. With Google cracking down on low quality sites they call “content farms”, good quality content is more important than ever if you hope to rank well with Google.

Off-site SEO: These are all the things you do outside your site to get Google to rank it higher. Some of the methods used here will also bring in quality traffic outside of the search engines.
Critical components of off-site SEO are:

• Website Directory Submissions
• Building Blog/Forum Links
• Purchasing Links/Link Exchanges
• Article Marketing
• Press Releases
• Video/YouTube Marketing
• RSS Feeds
• Facebook/Twitter/Google +1 Marketing

If your budget permits it, you may want to purchase some paid search marketing on top of the free SEO methods you employ. The importance of knowing your market will come into play here as well, because you will again have the right keyword phrases to target so you are going after quality traffic. A word of caution; paid marketing can be tricky, and many a website owner has been known to lose lots of money if they don’t know what they’re doing. This is an area where it would definitely pay off to consult and hire a professional to set up your campaign.

These days, there are lots of places to purchase paid advertising. Here is a list of some of the better-known sources:

• Google Adwords
• Yahoo Search Marketing
• MSN Ad Center
• Facebook
• Stumble Upon
• Buying Banner Ads from Site Owners

Geoff Jackson

I'd also like to make it clear I'm not an employee of the company. I don’t own any stock in the company. Nor do I do receive any financial remuneration from the company.

What's the reason for this disclosure? Well I wanted to make that clear despite being a proponent given that LinkedIn has recently been in the news about their social ads. What happened was that LinkedIn was automatically opting-in its +100 million users into a social advertising program.

The way the social advertising worked was that when a LinkedIn user viewed a third-party advertisement on the social network, they would see others in their network who followed or recommended the promoted brands. So in a way it appears to be an endorsement of sorts.

Grab the pitchforks. Queue the outrage and threats to leave Linkedin from the commentariat on websites and blogs across the digital space. Indeed many people got annoyed by the social ads as it reminded some of the controversy surrounding Facebook a few years ago. Candidly, I first found out about this when someone I followed on Twitter flagged this blog post by Steve Woodruff which provided step-by-step instructions in how to unsubscribe from LinkedIn social ads.

Since I read Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing years ago I’ve always believed that as a best practice customers or users should opt-in to your marketing – as opposed to making them opt-out. That could have been a better way for LinkedIn where they could have avoided this controversy. However in fairness I’d also like to bring up a few points that come to mind:

(1) Years ago when Google started embeding advertising overlays in their videos, I tweeted my annoyance. I mean having the audacity to subject users to advertising! I was corrected by my friend David Jones who subtly noted “What do you expect when using a service for free?” I had to admit he was right. Doesn't the same principle apply with Linkedin? Most people use the basic service on LinkedIn which is free but as any company Linkedin has various operating, marketing and technology expenses. Revenue must come from somewhere such as advertising - especially when answerable to shareholders as a publicly-traded company.

(2) Very few people read the Terms of Service (TOS) when signing up for social networks. But LinkedIn does stipulate what happens when you sign-up for using this social network. No the TOS aren't as short and as simple as a blog post but they are there for anyone to review. So it’s not like they were nefarious and snuck something about social advertising under the cover of night.

(3) Speaking of cover of night, LinkedIn did post on their blog back in early June about changes to their privacy policy and also again in late June about their new social ads. So they were telling members what they planned to do.

(4) If LinkedIn were planning on burying this issue surrounding the issue of social ads, why would they continue to leave it on the homepage of most users and feature it as a top headline in the LinkedIn Today section? (Per screenshot below.) Does this strike you as a company trying not to be transparent?

(5) Lastly, LinkedIn quickly responded to the concerns of their members and modified some of the ‘social ads’ to reinforce that member’s trust was very important. They also showed how members could unsubscribe from social ads with one click.

Could LinkedIn have communicated more appropriately with members? Yes but beyond maybe making the service opt-in to begin with or communicating in the original blog post how people could opt-out, I’m unsure of what else people expect of them. Some have suggested LinkedIn could have emailed members but I can’t help but think some people would get outraged with spam in their inboxes.

At the end of the day LinkedIn could have improved a few things but they responded to the community. I’m also sure they learned their lesson. I don't believe one should judge based on a single error but rather what is done to correct it and ensure it doesn't repeat itself. So I won't quite be deleting my account or becoming LinkedOut from LinkedIn quite just yet.

Sulemaan Ahmed
Twitter @sulemaan

Q. CMA: Is social media good for business?

Joseph Carrabis (JC): One could consider that question flawed. However, the flaw is unrecognized and is the source of a problem in the current “social media” environment.

The question as stated implies a "one size fits all" response, something like "Yes, social media is good for business" and that's not correct (me thinks).

Q. CMA: Mea culpa. I was expecting you might say “It depends”. What are better questions, helpful questions?

JC: The better questions are:
1) "What types of social (whatever) are good for what types of businesses?"
2) "What types of social (whatever) are good for what types of business goals?"
And other questions in a similar, more specific vein.

This re-questioning allows for a logical development and implementation process with a self-creating evidentiary trail.

Should things go sour, one knows where, when, how, why and for accountability* purposes, who. Hence things are more easily fixable.

Right now we're seeing a one-size-fits-all methodology even though consultants and companies are "tailoring" the solutions. This methodology shows up in "best practice" manifestos that are either completely general (hence useless) or so siloed that nothing works outside that vertical. If "social media was good for business" then a solution in the automotive vertical would work perfectly well in the sportswear vertical, in the gourmet food vertical, ... and this isn’t true.

To use social media correctly as a marketing tool, you need to be able to use the tools to create truly specific solutions. Right now the "state of the art" is the equivalent of "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" and that's sad.

People aren't spending much time understanding their audience (at least in the terms I consider "understanding their audience") and the results are starting to show up as mass exoduses from various social platforms.

Understand your audience and you’ll know how to trigger loyalty responses rather than simple recency (with no offense intended to recency advocates. It's a reasonable metric that doesn't quite go far enough, in my opinion).

Q. CMA: If gaining audience understanding is so critical, but difficult, do you have any suggestions improvement?

Susan Carrabis (SC): Social Media, if used incorrectly, without understanding the audience and other Joseph words, is a dangerous tool. And please get away from one-size-fits-all.

We do a training based on the experiences of working with companies for seven years, a training based on how we actually work with clients. The whole focus of the training is to create marketing material that exactly targets your audience. You don't need NextStage tools or technology to do this but we learned how to do this by using our tools and technology. By the end of the day students are inside their consumers’ heads in ways they can’t get from just reading a book (except Joseph’s, of course). They look at material the way their audience looks at material, respond as their audience responds, see what their audience sees… It can be either fun or scary and we go for fun.

Q. CMA: So rather than seminars, is practical roll-your-sleeves-up, put your brain-to-work training part of understanding what’s needed?

JC: Seminars are (by my understanding) overview or summary in nature. We are true believers in "Understand the theory and you can apply it anywhere" and the best way to teach this is “Teach Application to Theory to Application”. This means take the student from the familiar to the new so that the new becomes familiar, start with something they’re doing in the real world, explain/demonstrate what’s going on, extract the key elements/principles, then have them apply those elements/principles to their current and similar problems. We taught the class mentioned above to about thirty marketing managers and they were blown away. They all knew the stuff, they simply hadn't 1) thought of it in the way we presented it or 2) performed their practice the way we were suggesting.

Part of that training is to develop a real-world campaign during the class. They were all doing social media campaigns -- the techniques will work for any kind of marketing (radio, tv, video, gaming, web, kiosk, print, down, up or sideload, ...) -- and it was exciting how many things were becoming obvious to them as opposed to their standard methods for campaign development. Not only understanding aspects of consumer psychology and how to reach consumers that they'd never considered, but which channels and media to use when.

This was a very rewarding experience. For us, and when we asked, for them, as well.
So for us it all comes back to knowing the correct question to ask.

Everybody knows I collect quotes and one I use is "It is perfectly useless to know the answer to the wrong question." Right now the majority of businesses are (in my opinion) asking the wrong question. I'll be sharing what I consider the correct question -- and answering it, or at least demonstrating ways to answer it -- in my CMA presentation.

CMA: Joseph, you’ve said that ‘sentiment’ is an exhausted term and the word has been so bastardized and mis-used such that it no longer has any real meaning. How do you define sentiment?

JC: There are lots of good psych and related definitions, all close and few metricable (ie. meaning they are reliably and repeatably measurable).

Following in the steps of Attention, Engagement and Trust: The Internet Trinity and Websites and Meet Online Engagement's Little Friend, Satisfaction and after a day’s research, "Sentiment" is the measure of emotional versus cognitive activity demonstrated by an individual when their attention is focused. This translates loosely to:

"Sentiment is demonstrated by behaviors that are caused more by emotion than they are caused by logic."

This is a definition that is a) accurate, b) metricable, c) teachable to any self-learning, social interaction system (Evolution Technology, for example) and d) repeatably metricable via that system within a reasonable +/- distribution.

This Sentiment definition can determine a visitor's sentiment in real-time while they're navigating your site. It won't matter if they write anything, post anything, comment or whatever. It won't even matter if they bounce. I now know what to have ET look for and we can make a tool that determines a) if sentiment exists, b) if it's positive or negative and c) the degree of that sentiment (companies interested in using such a tool should contact Susan).

Q. CMA: Has sentiment analysis evolved to the point that it can be relied upon? Do we have precision or accuracy, both or neither?

JC: I cannot comment on other company's tools or definitions of sentiment analysis because I only know about them from hearsay.

However, one of my favorite quotes is from a C level person at a major Canadian social media monitoring/analysis firm, "All we need to do is to score a handful of words and then assign polarity. It doesn't matter that different audiences use words differently."

This same individual and company arbitrarily (my opinion) decided that they could standardize their dictionary, meaning that words don't change meaning over time and within groups. I'm sure this company doesn't have any linguists or psycholinguists working for them because such a concept would drive them nuts.

But when that's what vendors are saying behind closed doors, how can what they offer be relied upon?

Take the "sentiment" metric I defined above.

NextStage has (at this point) twenty years of data we can look back on when we create a tool or test a definition.

We know, for example, whether or not people acted favorably or unfavorably -- had positive or negative sentiment -- to something going back twenty years, so when we come up with a possible definition we can test it against lots of historical information to determine its accuracy. When vendors knock on our door with referrals and references we ask for historical demonstrations of accuracy or ability. That’s when they go away.

I don’t know how a business can rely on tools without knowing how they came about, how they're tested, their accuracy and so on.

I also know that our clients -- all of whom want to test our suggestions via A/B and like testing in the beginning -- eventually stop testing and just start doing. There's also the aspect that many of our tools (our Sentiment Analysis tool being one) provide suggestions for better audience targeting. There's nothing quite like holding up a bullseye and saying "Here. Test this" to demonstrate confidence.

As for precision and accuracy, no comment about other tools because all I know of others is based on hearsay. If anything, I’ll go back to the bullseye concept. If anybody’s tool is either making or saving you money, it’s a useful tool. If it’s not doing either, why are you using it? There may be lots of other reasons, and that’s fine, just stop telling yourself you’re using a tool because it’s providing a business ROI.

Joseph Carrabis is speaking on "Measuring Emotional Response - Attaching Dollars to Sentiment Analysis" on June 23 at CMA’s Social Media Conference. During the afternoon “social media monitoring roundtable” session, attendees can ask Joseph directly about social media tools.

Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time there was advertising. ‘Advertising’ agencies created television ads, ads for newspapers and magazines and ads to run on the radio. Structured advertising agencies had different departments producing these advertisements, presenting them to a client and ‘putting them on the air’.

Around twenty years ago came the internet and hence ‘the digital space’. It lingered in its formative stage, mainly driving the emergence of e-commerce, for about a decade. Only about ten years ago, ‘advertising’ agencies decided that the internet could be a canvas for advertising. So advertising agencies started developing web sites and digital banner ads. They’d build these websites and banner ads and then ‘put them up’.

Maybe around five years ago, social media came to be. Suddenly all kinds of conversations were being had in the ‘digital space’; shared information was circulating among people without advertising agencies or their clients having anything to do with it.

And then mobile devices came to be which sped up all this communicating and commerce-related activity in the digital space to a lightning fast pace.

A Reality Check

Today, people everywhere - colleagues and friends, moms and dads, students, artists, technology gurus, teachers, policemen, investment bankers and academics – ‘live’ the internet. They access Google dozens of time every day and get their daily news updates online. Photos are shared and commented on via Facebook, Flickr or Instagram. Vacations are researched, planned and paid for online. Moms right now are circulating blog postings about some new organic pasta on the market. Grandparents are Skyping with their grandkids from continent to continent every day. Youtube is an entertainment channel for just about every single person I know, including my 67 year old father. New bands are born every day on MySpace. My mom lives by her iPhone as does my Dad; my niece and my daughter both carry their Nintendo DSi in one hand and their iPads in the other. This is not a minority report tech future; this is today, everyday, for more and more people as part of daily life.

When we step away from the language in communication circles about ‘the digital space’, ‘the social space’, ‘the mobile space’, this is the reality.

And so, The Inflection Point:

For all the decades past, we communication agencies and clients have considered traditional media to be king and digital media to be secondary, not even at queen status, but more so a court jester. I could go on separately about why: it’s cheaper to produce digital media so it doesn’t get as much attention as traditional media which is incredibly expensive still. And we don’t have good impact metrics yet around digital media to PROVE how much it is contributing to communications and brand health in the minds of our audiences.

But this has changed. Now, today, traditional media and digital media sit at the same table. They have rapidly come to be equals. And we communications agencies and clients are waking up to that reality. Brands are being built exclusively in the digital space in many cases. And among the new generation of consumers, traditional media may indeed be falling by the wayside.

Insert panic here.

If you accept that the above is true, because it is - now, today, traditional media and digital media sit at the same table - then what? Communications that happen in the digital, social and mobile space do not function like traditional media. You do not ‘put them on the air’ or ‘put them up’. They are ongoing, immediate and dynamic by their very nature. And this simple reality radically impacts everything.

We have to think about communications today as an eco-system: interconnected, always-on, living, and constantly evolving.

Impact 1: We can no longer think of communications development as projects that follow a straight path, each one in a separate lane, being developed in parallel. We need new ways of working: fluid, connected, nurturing. We need to ‘carry’ communications, constantly. This has radical implications for the mindset and consequently the processes of developing communications, evaluating communications, and maintaining communications.

Impact 2: This acknowledgement that communications is now an eco-system, requires by definition that the people charged with managing those communications understand ‘systems’ and this is not a common capability. Understanding systems means having an incredible ability to see the big picture – how everything is working together – productively, seamlessly, responsively. And yet it also means having an ability to go deep into any singular ‘node’ within the system to maximize its individual role in the system. This is complex thinking.

Impact 3: Communications producers – writers, art directors, technologists, etc… – need to truly work together to create. Which means they need to understand each other’s craft, in order to truly be able to integrate and build off of each other. This is not a skillset that has been nurtured or taught either through the education system or inside agencies historically.

Journey through the Inflection Point:

There is a mountain to climb to be able to really traverse this inflection point. It may seem straightforward, but it is anything but. It requires:

a) The acceptance that the digital space is seated at the table right next to the traditional media space and that the need to adjust to it is urgent.
b) The acknowledgement that communications today are not about ‘putting it on the air’ or ‘putting it up’; communications today are about creating and managing eco-systems of activity.
c) A change in communications agency processes and client review, ‘purchase’ and maintain processes.
d) An upgrading of communication producers skill sets – to foster a better cross-discipline understanding.

Insert easy button.

I, for one, believe that if brands want to continue to have a place in people’s lives in the future, traversing this inflection point is a must-do. Adjust or be left behind seems to me to be the harsh reality. But more optimistically, this required shift in communications could get us to a much better place on so many levels. This shift will get us communications that matter to people; by default that means brands that are engaging in ways that matter to people. And ladder that further to a place where communications (and brands) can be positive contributing forces in the world. This is free market dynamics at work. Best to acknowledge and understand what people want, and deliver it, because it’s those who will survive.

Heidi McCulloch