Several bloggers have been talking about industry analysts and high tech startups. Brings back the dotcom days, when startups rolled down 101 in their stretch limos, on their VC and analyst tours. Everybody needed a nod from Gartner or Forrester to clinch that next round of funding. Much has changed. Some suggest the changes include a more mature view of where analysts fit in startup strategies:

Carter Lusher suggests the analysts as more important than PR for startups. He sees analysts as almost a sales lead generation/conversion resource. He’s got a case study where the entire marketing budget went to Gartner to Gartner and a customer reference program.

Raj Kanaya and John Oh advise startups to look to at least two customer-focused advisory analysts — smaller firms in particular — to help offset the typical bootstrap shortage of product marketing expertise as well as market data. (Hat tip to Duncan Chapple for pointing to their blog.)

It’s good advice, but analyst sales reps should size up the obstacles. The biggest: getting startups to look past the nearest Gartner Magic Quadrant or Cool Vendors list. The other biggest: convincing startups and their boards/VCs that they should part with cold cash for analyst services.

Free is a very attractive idea. Selling analyst services to startups is not a walk in the park. There are lots of indicators out there that the “zero marketing budget” mindset of the old open source software crowd is about to come back even stronger on the wings of social media and community based conversation.

Of course, analysts could turn this momentum to their advantage. Chris Kelley suggests that analysts interested in the early adopter markets could use microblogging tools like Twitter to slash overhead and boost loyalty.

Interesting ideas.

Jen McClure issued a friendly challenge at the New Comm Forum: turn to the person nearest you who hasn’t used Twitter, and show them the ropes. (Twitter launched at the 2007 New Comm Forum.)

One thing led to another, and here I am, setting myself up on Twitter this afternoon. I couldn’t be doing this with any kind of immediate work benefit at all, were it not for Carter Lusher’s and Dave Eckert’s Analyst Twitter Directory.

With their directory, I was able to start following some favorite analysts in a matter of minutes. Interesting trivia: most of the analysts listed there also blog. Don’t see any other obvious common denominators, except that Charlene Li is the only female so far.

Also found in their directory 3 firms new to me: Accendor, Bathwick Group and SiriusDecisions.

Very cool. Carter and Dave are developing a specialty around new comms tools and analyst relations. This Twitter directory is a great example of their community spirit.

It’s the perfect solution for me for two reasons. First, I wouldn’t take the time to send emails to a bunch of people asking for their Twitter name. Let alone cause the interruption.

Second, I’m interested in following, versus being followed. That makes this ready-to-use list of Twitter names a comfortable, low key approach to adding analysts to follow.

Twitter seems like an interesting way to incubate many of the new professional relationships I started this week at New Comm Forum. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that Twitter is another reason to spend more time using my newest shiny thing, a Nokia N95.

The analyst relations organization based in the UK, Institute of Industry Analyst Relations, is gearing up to name this year’s most popular industry analysts, analyst blogs, and research companies, as determined by online votes from analyst relations professionals. You can also name the 3 companies that lost the most mojo over the last year. If you believe you perform analyst relations as part of your job, you can vote by filling out the IIAR’s Analyst of the Year survey. You don’t need to join the IIAR to participate, however you must include registration info with your votes — no anonymous cowards.

This is not quite American Idol. Only one vote per person (unlimited people per company, as long as each voter works in AR. Plus, no independent 3rd party is counting/rejecting the votes and validating results — the IIAR is doing this inhouse. Finally, you won’t be voting analysts off the stage. At least, not directly.

Voting closes at the end of April.

The program raises some interesting questions for industry analysts as well as vendors and agencies. For example, is it a good thing for an analyst to be identified as a favorite by vendor/agency analyst relations people? If you are analyst, what do you do about being named an idol, or having your company named a loser? If you are an analyst relations person, do you tell your favorite analysts you’ve voted for them? Do you console those who are not voted as idol? Do you treat this kind of information as competitive intel, or share it with your professional peer group?

Brian Clark, who writes Copyblogger, put together a great post on The 5 Immutable Laws of Persuasive Blogging. It’s good advice. It reminds us that there’s more to an influential blog than a famous author or a Technorati ranking.

Brian also touches on a point about persuasion that deserves attention: whether the style of writing prompts action.

By tradition, analysts who address best practices write copy intended to prompt action. Analysts focused on market and technology analysis are less likely to do so. Instead, these analysts write copy designed to educate readers or persuade readers to agree with their opinion, be it positive, negative, or neutral. Both types can be influential. The difference is the outcome.

Blogs eliminate many traditions, including analyst writing styles. Like everyone else, analysts can exercise greater personal choice in how they express themselves in their blogs. Their blogging voice is not determined by their employer or their other publication channels. There’s only one way to figure out what kind of persuasion — if any — is at work in an analyst blog: you read it.

For more on persuasive writing techniques, check out Clark’s other post, Ten Timeless Persuasive Writing Techniques. It summarizes techniques associated with personality as much as style.

What do you think? I’d like to develop this idea further. I’ll come back from the New Communications Forum (April 22-25 in Sonoma) with more on this idea. Catch up with me there (contact me for special Tekrati discounts), or link/share your thoughts here.

Analyst relations managers can make good use of the social media release, as shown this week by Visible Technologies. The company announced on Tuesday that it has been selected as one of Gartner’s Cool Vendors for 2008, in the High Performance Workplace category. They also pushed the news through the company blog.

For comparison, check out LucidEra’s traditional press release. They were named a Gartner Cool Vendor in the Business Intelligence and Performance Management category.

Both releases are written well. Both conform to strict Gartner requirements. Both go beyond the bare bones minimum for approved content. Yet, the formats make the releases come across quite differently.

I’ll be pigeonbuttonholing some of the A-listers on using new media for industry analyst relations and industry research promotion at the New Communications Forum, beginning April 22nd in Sonoma. If you’re interested in learning more too, why not attend? Contact me for info on my special media sponsor discount.

Hot off the H&K press feed:

Peggy O’Neill, former head of Oracle’s analyst relations program, has joined Hill & Knowlton as SVP, US Director Industry Analyst Relations. She will be responsible for leading and growing Hill & Knowlton’s US AR practice, reporting directly to Joshua Reynolds, SVP of messaging, positioning and analyst relations for the global technology practice… O’Neill will also contribute strategic thinking and direction to H&K’s global analyst relations practice, which has grown to include more than 14 full-time analyst relations professionals in the US, Europe and Asia.

According to the press release, the appointment is being formally announced right now, during a speech Joshua Reynolds is making at the Gartner AR Forum, being held in conjunction with the U.S. and European Gartner Symposium events.

I’ve always admired Peggy’s moxie. She helped establish the VP level as a valid title for in-house analyst relations management. That was no small task here in Silicon Valley. I suspect she also helped eradicate any lingering local stereotypes of analyst relations as “pink collar” jobs.

This should be an interesting change for Peggy. Likewise, it should be an interesting change for the H&K AR and accounts teams and clients. I’ve worked directly with several of the H&K AR people — and with some of their clients — and came away with the highest respect for each.

Join me in wishing Peggy the best.

Check out Johnny B’s April 1st post, ““IDG to merge IDC with Gartner?”

I’d put money on the global analyst relations community reacting something like this.

451 Group security guru Nick Selby has packed in his personal blog, in light of the additional expectations of his recent promotion and the launch of a new company blog on security.

It’s funny how you get attached to some blogs. I was partial to that one. Nick, I’ll miss your waggish wit. I trust we’ll see hints of it surface in your posts at the new blog.

Meawhile, I’m dutifully adding two 451 blogs to the directory: one on security and one on information management.

I’ll summarize all the blog directory adds and deletes in the normal monthly update post, right around April Fool’s day.

Dave Rossiter has navigated the Institute of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR) blog into an ongoing discussion about analyst ethics and independence. The post more or less recounts the usual assortment of issues and war stories, and then poses the perennial question:

“As analyst relations professionals, we face a challenge. What responsibility do we have for ensuring these practices are stamped out? Are we proactive or do we just refuse to support them? Do we have a ‘quiet word’ in the right ear? Do we out the bad apples in public?”

Whether the IIAR is truly sinking its teeth into the issue — or simply jumping the shark — remains to be seen.

The IIAR needs to focus attention on where it can make a positive impact. If you look closely, David does bring up one area where the IIAR could make an impact: the misuse of briefings as sales calls.

This is actionable because it’s a specific business practice, it’s commonplace, each occurrence is obvious, and each occurrence is easily documented. As an added bonus, there’s no “objectivity” rhetoric around it to make AR practitioners uneasy: an analyst sales pitch is attached, or it’s not.

Plus, a precedent exists. ESOMAR’s guideline, “Maintaining Distinctions between Marketing Research and Direct Marketing,” addresses similar issues within the context of consumer market research:

“Whenever researchers are acting in their capacity as researchers they must not be involved in carrying out direct marketing or other non-research activities. Such activities are by definition incompatible with Rule 4 of the International Code which safeguards the confidentiality of respondents’ personal data which have been collected for marketing research purposes and prevents these from being used for any non-research purpose.

“This Rule does not prevent researchers, when they are acting in a different capacity (e.g. as a general information manager), from being involved with the operation of marketing databases. However, in such a case they must clearly differentiate such an activity from their work as a marketing researcher and avoid any confusion arising between the
two types of activity.”

Of course, the IIAR would need to clean up some questionable AR practices around briefings, as well.

I’ve finally defined the new, improved “blogroll logic” for the Tekrati analyst blogs directory. The first rule going into effect disqualifies all blogs that have not had at least two posts per month for the last four months. These blogs will be gone by Monday morning, San Francisco time.

The complete qualification logic with regards to positing activity:
* Blogs have at least two original posts per month for the last four calendar months.
* Newly minted blogs get a four-month honeymoon, starting with their inaugural posting.
* Blog deletions will be listed in the monthly “directory update” post, here in the Keeping Tabs blog.
* Send requests for inclusion/re-listing in the blogs directory to me at editor, here at tekrati.

Grab the OPML today, if you want your own personal archive of those sleepers.

Your thoughts on this policy are most welcome.