Duncan Brown raises some good points about the evolution of blogs and microblogs (i.e. Twitter). Blogging is becoming the online publishing platform of choice in many industries, from politics to pharma. This has a couple of implications for influencer programs in 2009.

Top of my list, is that 2009 should see the end of consternation over classifying influencers as “bloggers” or in terms of their other roles in a market or community, be it their job title, employer, profession or expertise.

The crossover point started to become clear in mainstream tech media relations when you could no longer distinguish between columnists and bloggers at ZDNet and other top-10 media networks.

In analyst relations, Gartner brought the point home a few months ago with the launch of the Gartner Blog Network.Trust me, no one is dithering over whether to reclassify Gartner employees from analysts to bloggers.

Sure, some people will be best classified as “bloggers”, just as we still have syndicated columnists from the hardcopy print days. In general though, the confusion over doctor-lawyer-blogger man-thief should die down.Republished from my Influencer50 blog, Sway.

I’ve been remiss in sharing updates to Tekrati’s Directory of Analyst Blogs. Here are the blogs added during March, April and May. Check back tomorrow (night) for a lis of the blogs deleted.

As always, some of these blogs are new, some have authors new to the analyst ranks, and others are simply new to me. Those with valid feeds are also included in Tekrati’s blog rolls and the directory OPML.

The Tekrati Directory of Analyst Blogs and OPML is a freely available service. No one pays to get listed here, no one pays to use the directory or OPML. Your help is much appreciated. Please help as you can, by sharing tips on blogs/bloggers that are missing, acknowledging your use of the directory/OPML as appropriate, and spreading the word.

Thanks!
Barbara

Tekrati’s Analyst Blogs Directory - Adds during March, April and May 2008

Company: BKI Media
Bena Roberts’ group publishes two blogs: GoMo News, and Mobile Insight and Search.

Company: Burton Group
Burton Group launched a new service and a new blog: Data Management Strategies features Chris Haddad, Joe Maguire, and Peter O’Kelly. The Executive Advisory Blog completes the service-blog alignment and features Chris Howard and Mike Rollings. Two personal blogs new to me: Kirk Knoernschild’s kirkk.com and Larry Cannell’s Cannell.org.

Company: CCS Insight
Geoff Blaber, Tom Byrd, Paolo Pescatore, and Ben Wood blog at CCS Insight Blog.

Company: Data Mobility Group
Joe Martins blogs at The Saltworks, while Robin Harris blogs at Storage Bits (at ZDNet).

Company: Enterprise Mobility Matters
Philippe Winthrop is working independently since departing Aberdeen Group. His blog is his business site, Enterprise Mobility Matters.

Company: Enterprise Strategy Group
ESG has fired up a few more employee blogs: Brian Babineau’s IT BULLETins, and Mark Bowker’s Liquefying IT. Heidi Biggar returned to blogging at Driven to Tiers, then left the building, all during this 3-month window.

Company: Forrester Research
Mary Beth Kemp and Peter Kim launched Forrester - The Future Of Agencies Blog.

Company: Gartner
Thomas Otter, of Vendorprisey blog fame, joined Gartner. Meanwhile, news to me: Jeffrey Mann has been publishing a personal blog, Jeff and Hennie’s Stuff. Hat tip to his Twitter profile.

Company: IDC
New to me: Rachel Happe’s personal blog, The Social Organization. Hat tip to Jay Andersen at Blanc & Otis.

Company: Nemertes Research
Irwin Lazar is participating in TechWeb’s Enterprise 2.0 Blog, the replacement for the Collaboration Loop blog.

Company: NPD Group
Sam Bhavnani shares a different kind of expertise at his personal blog, Got Tannins?

Company: Premonvision
Carl Gressum is blogging and doing business as Premonvision, following his departure from Ovum. Hat tip to Jonny Bentwood, Edelman.

Company: RedMonk
Finally added the RedMonk Radio Podcast, and two blogs by the newest ‘Monk, Tom Raftery: Lower (Carbon) Footprint and Tom Raftery’s Social Media. Drop by to wish Tom good beginnings at Greenmonk and his new diggs in Spain.

Company: Sandy Kemsley
New to me but well established in enterprise circles: Column 2 by Sandy Kemsley. She’s also posts occasionally to Enterprise Irregular.

Company: SharpBrains
If you plan on using your brain for several years, get it on a regular maintenance program. It’s as easy as reading a blog. Alvaro Fernandez offers links and insights at the SharpBrains blog.

Company: Society for New Communications Research
Jen McClure publishes SNCR’s New Communications Review and on occasion updates a personal blog, Jen McClure’s Ruminations.

Company: The 451 Group
Two blogs debuted: The 451 Take on on information management, Too much information (yes, that’s the title) by Nick Patience and Kathleen Reidy. Also, Plausible Deniability by Steve Coplan, Paul Roberts, and Nick Selby.

Company: The Kelsey Group
Peter Krasilovsky rejoined TKG. He maintains his personal blog on local meida, Local Onliner, and also contributes to The Kelsey Group company blog.

Company: Yankee Group
In February, Carl Howe and Andrew Jaquith began publishing Notes from Anywhere. Since then, the Yankee Group Blog has further transformed from an Emily Green CEO blog into a group blog. Carl and Andrew cross-post at both blogs. Read and comment where you like.

Cisco was one of the first vendors to experiment with blogging as an analyst relations tool. This month, the Cisco Analyst Relations Blog is showing signs of life again, thanks to the efforts of Terry Anderson, vice president of corporate communications at Cisco.

The Cisco AR blog was launched in mid-2007 by Skip MacAskill, then director of industry analyst relations, and Blair Christie, then vice president of corporate communications and investor relations. Skip seems to have returned to Nortel Networks, as Director of Global Analyst Relations.

Best wishes all around.

I’ve started my summer reading early this year, with a round of books on social media and influencer marketing. Please speak up, if you can recommend other books in these areas.

Groundswell - Winning in a world transformed by social technologies, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. “It’s a book by two Forrester analysts with practical, data-based strategies for companies that want to harness the power of social technologies like blogs, social networks, and YouTube. Featuring 25 full case studies, a complete road map for social strategy, and data from around the world.” - excerpt from the book microsite

The New Influencers - A Marketer’s Guide to Social Media, by Paul Gillen. “The New Influencers is a book for corporate marketers and executives who want to understand and engage with the vast new channels of influence that are emerging online.” - excerpt from the book microsite

Influencer Marketing - Who Really Influences Your Customers, by Nick Hayes and Duncan Brown. “The book demonstrates clearly, authoritatively and with numerous real examples Seth Godin’s widely accepted view that it’s ‘useless to advertise to anyone except connectors with influence’… For all those involved in marketing and sales this book will be an essential analysis of how to identify who has influence, how they apply it, and how you can turn it to your advantage.” - excerpt from the book microsite

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.

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.

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.

During February, I added 9 blogs to Tekrati’s Directory of Analyst Blogs, and archived 1.

February adds

Some are new, some are newly discovered.

Company: FAO Research
Lisa Ross formally announced her first blog, Outsourcing Perspectives. It debuted with quite a bit of content and comment.

Company: Forrester Research
The title says it all: George F. Colony’s Blog: Counterintuitive. He launched the blog with several posts about Davos — personal takes on the who and why, a bit about his own agenda there. The blog will feel familiar to fans of his long-running “My View” columns and newsletters.

At this point, Green IT Sourcing by Euan Davis and Christopher Mines, is added as a vote of encouragement. Don’t let this one die.

Also, check out Wicked Flavory, a personal blog on local/organic foods, by Kerry Bodine. Hat tip on that one to Jeremiah Owyang, who solicited coworker blogs and faves for submission to Jonny Bentwood’s Top Analyst Blogs.

Company: Greentech Media
Scott Clavenna and (primarily) editor Daniel Englander have been busy blogging at Green Light, an extension to the company’s cleantech/greentech industry media and research.

Company: Guidewire Group
The original company blog has been replaced with The Guidewire, written by CEO Chris Shipley and analyst Carla Thompson. Also, check out Carla’s personal blog, Sharp Skirts.

Company: Jupiter Research
At last, a Jup analyst with a personal blog. John Lovett’s personal blog, Musings on Web Site Technologies and Operations, came to my attention when he criticized and linked to one of my posts.

Company: RedMonk
Greenmonk Associates, a blog by RedMonk James Governor. Hat tip to Jonny Bentwood’s Top 100 Analyst Blogs, for finding this one.

Blogs archived in February

Just one: Chris Shipley’s Guidewire Connection, replaced by the new blog.

This is a community directory. Please help.

On February 29th, the directory contained 267 blog listings. Those with valid feeds are also included in Tekrati’s blog rolls and the directory OPML.

The Tekrati Directory of Analyst Blogs and OPML is a freely available service.

Please support this effort by sharing tips on blogs/bloggers that are missing, acknowledging your use of the directory/OPML as appropriate, and spreading the word.

Thanks!
Barbara

I’m a fan of analyst firms that market their data through interactive tools. Examples include interactive calculators and animated trending charts embedded into websites. These kinds of web apps can make research data relevant and easy to understand.

Plus, adding an interactive research tool to a web page is about as close to “sticky” and “viral” marketing as most industry analysts can get, short of donning a chicken suit.

Interactive technologies are already finding their way into the research products. You’ve seen them as weighted vendor short listing tables and other decision support tools. By comparison, adding simple interactive web apps to websites and blogs is easy. So, why isn’t everybody all over this as a marketing tactic?

Analysts I’ve spoken with generally share the same 3 challenges:
1. What to aim for (concept)
2. How to build it (design, program, test)
3. Finding time for #1 and #2

A quick way to start tackling the first challenge — concept — is to spend a few minutes reading UIE expert Jared Spool’s post, “Playgrounds for Data: Inspiration from NYTimes.com”. Spool highlights what he likes best about the New York Times’ recent use of web apps. An excerpt:

… represented as a table, this data would have hundreds of rows and dozens of columns. It wouldn’t be interesting and it would be hard to discern interesting patterns.

Yet, as an interactive map, it becomes a different story … Using color, shape, location, and a clever fly-over display, the team has taken a ton of variables and presented them in a more useful format.

It seems likely that interactive web apps also deliver benefits beyond the data presentation itself. What about attracting more inbound links, reader comments, and reader ratings? Improving visitor conversion rates? Or, giving RSS readers a compelling reason to click through to the mothership.