Deirdre Breckenridge, author of "PR 2.0: New Media, New Tools, New Audiences.":  When is the best time for a company to analyze its social network?

Neal Gorenflo, FAS.research:  If we are talking about the social networks within a company, a good time is often before dramatic organizational change like a merger.  Mergers are risky.  It’s well known that mergers frequently fail to deliver the expected benefits.  One common mistake is that companies focus on the formal structure and ignore the informal social relations that are so important to innovation, problem solving, and just getting work done.  These informal ties cross management levels and functional areas and are critical to an organization’s health.  Social network analysis can make these networks visible and quantify their value so that they can be considered in the new organizational design.

If we are talking about social networks in the customer base, then there is a constant need because these networks are dynamic.  New opportunities and threats emerge constantly.  The sooner you get started, the sooner you can innovate a new sales and marketing model to obsolete your competitors’ model.  And if you read the advertising trades, the pain marketers feel in trying to extend direct marketing models is palpable.  These magazines sometimes read like a long complaint about declining returns. 

The source of the pain is no mystery.  Direct channels are flooded and customers don’t trust corporate messages.  Time is ripe for change.  Systematically scaling and measuring authentic word-of-mouth is part of the new paradigm.    Unlike direct channels, the word-of-mouth channel is open, trusted, and more effective. 

This channel is not without its challenges, however.  For instance, the most popular word-of-mouth model does not scale.  It’s limited by the size of proprietary agent networks – groups of people recruited by service providers or companies to voluntarily buzz about products. 

Our approach, on the other hand, does scale.  Like direct marketing, the only limit is the size of your customer base or list.  And despite what Malcolm Gladwell would have you believe, our research shows that everyone is a maven to some degree.  Our approach does not rely on recruiting uber-mavens, it’s more granular than that.  Everyone talks about products, but when and how much depends on the person and the product. 

Using science, we help companies find where and when high concentrations of brand conversations are likely to happen and design marketing strategies to leverage this knowledge. 

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