1. What conferences are worth your time?

    Thursday, 22 Oct 2009 View Comments Posted by: Sean McDonald

    I get asked often “what conferences should we attend?”. Easy, short answer is any conferences that bring together Great Content and Two groups: Peers and Captivators Why two groups? You learn different things from different people.

    Peers help you by sharing current business examples and provide you with good feedback and validation. The output is ideas which are usually adaptable back in your office when you return.

    Captivators are thought generators. They introduce you to something new – a new concept or fresh perspective on an established problem. They provoke thought, provide with you a lens to go back to your office and evaluate your operation and get you thinking.

    Now which conferences have these types of people? Well almost every single one. So now how do you filter the good from the mediocre? I look for conferences that are organized for ways to develop some immediate relationships that I can keep active once the conference ends. Marketing Profs Digital Mixer does a great job on this front. I am currently attending this event, and this is my second year – best testament for events is repeat customers.

    Some other events I enjoy attending: WOMMA Summit, Forum One, plus select company events like Bazaarvoice’s Social Commerce Summit

    Travel budgets and time are tight, so you have to make choices. Conferences can be valuable to instill new ideas back into your business. What conferences or summits have you attended and recommend? Why?

  2. How Do You Listen? I Use My Eyes

    Tuesday, 6 Oct 2009 View Comments Posted by: Jennifer Hughes

    I’ve had a number of conversations lately, where I have explained my new job at Ant’s Eye View.  Many people I’ve spoken to are interested in the technology used to listen for brand mentions and customer support needs.  I am interested in the technology too.  It’s often the starting place – the foundation to a good listening program.  I have used a number of great tools that help weed through the noise and lead you to the information you need to read.

    What I have learned is – online listening to your customers is about reading.  There is no tool that is going to eliminate the need for you to truly listen to your customers.  The tools just make it quicker, easier, and even a little fun!  Listening only to influencers will not tell you what your customers are saying.  You need to listen to all discussion on different media types (forums, blogs, tweets, tags).  Forum discussions can give you a very different view than blogs alone.  For example, forums can help you understand the pain-points for customers and where they are having to use the community to fill a void (questions not answered in user guides or problems with performance).  A blog mentioning the same product might take a look at features and compare to competitor products.  Both are valuable to someone in your organization.  Of course, these media types are not restricted to these roles and reverse often, making it imperative to listen to discussion on all media types.

    Comments are where a lot of the value resides – It’s more to read, but do not pass up on the comments.  They are a huge indicator to what people are thinking. A blog post may (or may not) be influential, but the comments tell you what other people are saying – sometimes in large numbers.  This is powerful stuff!  While not always negative, the 1oo+ comments to: Thousands of Hotmail passwords leaked online indicate that people are genuinely concerned about the security of their accounts and they value more details on the issue.  The post itself will not do that for you.

    Lesson for the day: A tool is anything used as a means of accomplishing a task or purpose.  Don’t expect a tool to listen to your customers without you.

  3. Ant’s Eye View Growth Report: Welcoming Steve Alter

    Monday, 5 Oct 2009 View Comments Posted by: Jake McKee

    Steve3.JPG

    When a research firm like Gartner writes about one of your projects as “a milestone in the maturity of crowdsourcing-based support models”, you know you’re doing something right. And Steve Alter, the Product Manager for the Microsoft Answers support community knows that feeling… since Gartner was writing about his project.

    Answers was launched in 2008 to support Windows Vista and now has nearly 50,000 solutions to users questions, with 80% of the answers coming from the community participants. The site is a giant, generating more than 13 million page views and more than 4 million unique users last quarter alone! Needless to say, Steve knows community.

    Which of course meant that we knew we had to add him to the Ant’s Eye View team! Please join me in welcoming out latest Ant, Steve Alter. Steve starts at AEV today as a Social Business Strategist, based in our Seattle office.

    Steve’s background is impressive and diverse. In addition to Steve’s work on Answers, he also managed engagement opportunities between Microsoft and community influencers through the Microsoft Valuable Professional (MVP) program, driving feedback, advocacy, and participation in peer-to-peer support to achieve business results.

    And of course he’s the only Ant with a background in the theater. Steve has always claimed that his passion for community and crowdsourcing was forged during a decade as a producer and director in professional theaters across the country.

    Please help give Steve a warm welcome to the Anthill!

    UPDATE: If you’re going to be at Community 2.0, Steve is a speaker. Say hi and it’s likely he’ll buy you a drink.