There Is No Information Overload

Finding a Signal In the Noise

InboundMarketingSummitSan Francisco2009

louisgray@mac.com Twitter: louisgray FriendFeed: louisgray

“Break through the datatsunami and become a

chief signal officer.”

Situation Analysis As Marketers, You Are Expected:

• To monitor everything instantly, 24 by 7.• To be everywhere and participate.• To deliver a consistent message to all people,

including prospects, customers, partners, press, analysts, investors & employees.

There is More Data Out There Than Ever• You get hundreds of e-mails a day.• You are subscribed to hundreds of RSS feeds.• You are connected to thousands on social sites.• Do you ever get to blink?

1. Learn the tools

2. Face the mountain

3. Engage appropriately

The quality and speed of your informationmakes you a super hero.

Let The Tools Do the Work What Makes More Sense – Reading 1,000 posts in

the chance somebody mentions your company, or instead, getting an e-mail every time they do?

You probably know about Google News Alerts.

But did you know…• You can get e-mails when your keywords

come up on Twitter?• You can get e-mails when your keywords are

mentioned in blog comments around the Web, from WordPress to Blogger to FriendFeed?

• You can search aggregators to find all mentions across multiple services at once?

Y

You don’t have to live in the haystackto find the needle.

1. Be Aware2. Watch3. Act

Tools That Search & Find For You BackType – Comment keyword search

across blogs, including Trends that show velocity over time, with e-mail alerts. (www.backtype.com)

TweetBeep – Twitter search results for keywords or domain linkage, around the clock, to your e-mail. (www.tweetbeep.com)

State of the artdiscovery is abeautiful thing.

Go beyondGoogle when itcomes to search.

Search & Find: BackType

Monitor termsby e-mail or throughthe Web site

Backtype followsblog comments, Digg, Reddit,FriendFeed, etc.

Search & Find: TweetBeep

Monitor one ormore terms by e-mailvia Twitter Search

TweetBeep takesTwitter search toyour inbox,including links.

Aggregation and Blog Search Google Blog Search – scouring blogs for

keywords and offering RSS feeds to Google Reader or any other similar software. (blogsearch.google.com)

FriendFeed – Search across blogs, Twitter, Flickr and 50 other social services, including native comments, posts. (www.friendfeed.com/search)

State of the artdiscovery is abeautiful thing.

Why just look inone place whenyou can try manyat once?

Search & Find: FriendFeed

A powerful searchableaggregator of social Web activity.

Search 50 socialsites at once.Save searches, orsend to RSS.

You Control the Volume Have You Ever Said…

• Every time I log in to Google Reader I have 1,000+ items to read?

• Do you have any idea how many unread e-mails I have in my in box?

• I am so far behind in reading everybody’s Tweets!• How did I get on this e-mail list? I didn’t subscribe!• By the time I finish an e-mail, I have three new ones!

It is 100% your fault. So let’s fix it. Marking all as“Read” means youhave failed.

Right?

Want more data?Just turn it up.Want less? Up to you.

You Control the Volume Who Created This Mess?

• Did somebody else sign up to all those RSS feeds?• Wasn’t it you who put yourself on that list, or started that

e-mail chain?• Didn’t you choose to follow those people on Twitter and

FriendFeed?

You Can Turn Down the Noise• Unsubscribe from lists.• Reduce e-mail in by reducing e-mail out.• Remove less relevant feeds in favor of search.• Leverage recommendations from friends or from

aggregation sites that filter for you.• Skim like mad.

Marking all as“Read” means youhave failed.

Right?

Want more data?Just turn it up.Want less? Up to you.

Climbing the Mountain of Data I Didn’t Say Unsubscribe from Everything…

• RSS feeds can be the fastest way to find what your peers and prospects are talking about.

• Find the trusted ones in your market and always be listening. Participate where it makes sense.

But You Don’t Need to Read Every Word• Learn who the authors are. Are they friends or

foes? Could they be future customers?• Speed read and get your time back. Read

headlines, skim the first few paragraphs and move on if it’s not 100% relevant.

It is possible toread hundredsof blog posts a dayand not die.

There’s a reasonhard disk densitiesare increasing rapidly.

Not All Data Is Equal Do you treat e-mail from your boss the same

way as your spouse or vendor or subordinate?• Why don’t you?

1. Influence2. Impact

Not every blog, Tweet or e-mail is equal• People have accrued and earned influence and

impact in their own micro-communities.• You don’t need to read every single feed, blog,

tweet or e-mail to be an information ninja.• Learn to prioritize, filter and leverage trusted

discovery tools.• Don’t be afraid to unsubscribe if signal decreases.

Weigh the impact andvisibility of the dataas you go.

1. Who?2. Why?3. What?

Assessing Influence If not every source is equal, what determines

influence and how is that measured?

• Blogging– Established tenure and pace (Visible in Typepad, Blogger, Wordpress...)– Activity in comments– Frequency of links to content (Technorati, etc.)– # of reported subscribers (FeedBurner, FeedBlitz, etc.)

• Twitter– Frequency of Retweets and Mentions– # of Followers

• FriendFeed– # of Subscribers– Frequency of Likes & Comments on their activity

Simple: Do people see the activity and respond?There is no oneright answer, butthere are a ton ofclues. Use themwisely.

Solving the puzzleof influence andimpact is a challenge.

Solve The Puzzle “Information Overload” is caused by:

• Trying to not miss a thing, and not relying on software that can be your aid.

• Not being able to anticipate influence, and therefore erring by seeing all.

You Hold the Key• Increase the quality of your data by increasing

the quality of your sources. Eliminate junk.• Use smart filtering, search tools to find you the

right data at the right time in the right place.• Own your data. Own your process.

Find the rightdata fast, andyou beat thecompetition cold.

The new world ofmedia and marketing canfit together seamlessly

Find My Signal

www.louisgray.com

InboundMarketingSummitSan Francisco2009

louisgray@mac.com Twitter: louisgray FriendFeed: louisgray

A Silicon Valley Blog forearly adopters,

technology geeks,RSS addicts and Mac freaks