Not So-So Blog

There’s a lot of buzz on MetaTale.
Quoting Metatale: “Metatale is not a buzztracker, it is a tool which allows you to predict the buzz Blogger x can generate when he/she writes on y”. I’ve worked years as a marketing consultants and it’s of course “bon ton” to sell ROM (Return on Marketing) to a marketeer, especially when it’s packaged in a tool.

Imagine, I am marketing director of Amarula and I decide I want to boost my ‘awareness’ through Bloggers. So, here I start my tool and analyse which Blogs could be most influencal with regards to Amarula. Abracadabra… there’s the list.
Influence is a strange animal; Cindy’s arguments are right-on. Luc writes a lot on US politics and he has a lot of visitors, comments and trackbacks; but is his blog influental when it comes to US politics?

Je vraag over goed/slecht is er weer een van buzztracking; invloed is invloed, negatief of positief. Dit neemt uiteraard weer niet weg dat we buzztracking zouden kunnen doen. En dan is het goed/slecht spreken een uitdaging die we niet uit de weg zullen gaan.

Ask yourself: which is the most influencable posting Peter ever wrote on?
Answer: NAS storage. I had an SC101T in backorder 3 weeks ago and cancelled it when I remembered Peter’s post; especially when I read another Blog, which was as eclectical as Peter’s, that it is not compliant with Vista.
So here I am, D-Link, wanting to find the most influenceable Blogs for promoting my new D323 NAS, which is Vista capable. Would Metatale rank Peter’s blog as number 1? I don’t think so.

You cannot trace ‘influence’ in the wide open. It has been a marketeers’ dream for centuries; yet it remains a wet dream: cold and sticky in the morning.
If Isolée wants to promote it’s new record, which Blog should it turn to? If you have the most nifty algorythms working for you; it will probably point you to Blogs writing about The Orb and the like. Isolée is minimalistic music, and last.fm statistics will associate The Orb as a case-example of minimal. Nothing wrong with that. The real question is if all those thousands of people listening to The Orb, even when they have zillions of visitors on their blog are influential when it comes to minimal music? Of course not.
Who is then? Gani of Milk Radio is. In the tracks of this eclectic podcast you’ll find a minimal mix of Four Tet. He can push new minimal beats out; last.fm can’t ‘awaken’ them.

Which is why I’m sceptical. The whole process of ’seeding’ a buzz, is much more complex then just measuring the ‘weight’ of a Blogger and then sniffing through his tags.
Michael is building the tool Metatale is selling; a very big challenge, with the big advantaged that their data is containered and structurized.

Enough, I’m going to buy my new bike, a Bianchi MTB after the recommendation on this Blog dedicated to biking -cynical exclamation mark-.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 10:50 am and is filed under Features, Technical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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