Syncapse, a digital technology agency, recently release a new whitepaper on Tuesday called A Guerilla Experiment in Sentiment Analysis
The summarization of large amounts of information into a single digestible Key Performance Indicator is a major problem in social media measurement. The dominant paradigm in social listening tools is to rate all content with a positive, neutral, or negative value. We call this the Generic Sentiment Score. A major source of dissatisfaction among marketers and PR professionals is the overall accuracy generated by this score and the machines that try to approximate this value. This experiment proves that there are many versions of truth among humans when asked to score the same content. The authors conclude that the Generic Sentiment Score is not enough and that a more comprehensive approach is required.
Read the report this week and it’s an interesting look at one aspect of social media monitoring that defiantly needs more work and research into.
Ambassador vs Advocate: Which do you want for your company?
I had a stimulating conversation this past week with a colleague about the difference between an ambassador and an advocate….. well more to the point if there was a difference. There are some who believe they are one and the same but I don’t believe there are. There is a subtle difference and that difference is important for a company to know.
Advocate: They are the people who defend a company against all odds. They can be considered the vocal few. Apple is a perfect example of a company that has many advocates working for the brand. Advocates love the brand, follow new product releases and general show their support for the brand. However, advocates are not sanctioned by the company as an official company spokesperson.
Ambassador: Are exactly the same as an advocate but are sanctioned by the company as an official company spokesperson. In a community there is the majority of the community, then advocates and then ambassadors and after that comes moderators/ director of community and finally the company.
To get back to the title of this post. I think a company needs a healthy balance of both in order to survive in this environment. Apple does seem to make it work with only advocates but Apple is a rare exception. I don’t think many company’s can operate like Apple does in this day and age.