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Tweetdeck

According to Mashable, The Social Media Guide, Twitter saw a 752% growth in 2008. It’s no wonder everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon.

There are many benefits that come with proper Twitter usage:

• Reinforce your brand and increase awareness by linking your Twitter account with all of your other web outlets.

• Check your Google Analytics; Twitter is a direct source of traffic.

• Network with like minded professionals, potential customers, and other local businesses.

• Tweets are now indexed in Google; we smell potential for organic Google traffic!

What a lot of people don’t realize are the practical uses of this valuable tool. Many businesses recognize the potential with this platform and yet after creating an account, have no clue what to do. It’s important to know about Twitter etiquette, hashtags, practical applications, and more.

Before getting started, there are a few things to remember.

Does your Twitter engage your customers?

The first instinct of many business owners using Twitter is to just spam deals and promotions thinking it will draw in more customers. Steve Schwartz, the creator of the How To Use Twitter for Business Video Series, makes a good analogy. In Part One of Steve’s Three Part video series, he says to think of Twitter like a cocktail party. You wouldn’t stand there yelling out promotions for your business, but you would engage people by talking to them. That leads to the three steps of successfully using Twitter for business which are Listen, Follow, and then Engage.

The first thing Steve’s videos recommend is to install a third party platform to manage your Twitter account. We recommend TweetDeck or HootSuite; the video refers to TweetDeck however, which makes it more convenient to reference. Tweetdeck makes the Twitter interface much more user friendly, it’s free, it automatically shortens your URLs (good to stay within the 140 character limit), and it links your pictures to a hosting service. Everything mentioned here is further elaborated upon in Steve’s awesome videos.

Tweetdeck Interface

A few more things to remember that will help Twitter success include:

• Make your Twitter profile design and name similar to your main website’s design; this is important for branding.

• Advertise your Twitter on your web site in a visible location, as well as for your blog and other social media sites.

• Consider making your updates cross platform, so all of your profiles are updated at once.  There are trade offs to this approach, however, so make sure that it’s the correct approach for your business if you pursue it.

Once you jump start your Twitter account, the next step is to measure it’s impact. There are many analytic software programs out there similar to Google Analytics. I’d recommend checking out Quantcast or Twitter Analyzer.

Once you get some followers and become more comfortable with the tweeting lifestyle, you should consider other third party applications. Here are a few you should check out.  Please comment with any others you find!

• Klout – You can measure your Twitter influence with your Klout score, see what people are talking the most about, and keep an eye on trends.

• TweetSpinner – This site offers effective tools such as profile rotation, anti-spam software, Customer Relationship Management, scheduling with automatic updates, and much more.

These basics will help you capitalize on Twitter and in time you’ll see the benefits that social media can deliver.

The upcoming Media Convergence Conference in New York City, put on by The Economist, launched a video called Shift Happens, that helps put these changes in context.  They posted a fascinating video about the event here:

My favorite statistic: The average American teen sends 2272 text messages a month.

With numbers like that, and the often quoted 2008 NAR study that shows 87% of home buyers use the internet when making a purchase, I wonder how much longer people will continue to disproportionately spend money offline?

Presidential candidates travel the country to gain exposure and voice their platforms; your business should be traveling the Internet to spread the name and message of your business. In the political world we hear speeches, in the online world we read blogs. Just as your neighbor has an Obama ‘08 bumper sticker on his Subaru, a client of yours may link to your site on their Facebook page.

In the end the candidate with the most relevant policies, best speeches and most bumper stickers will usually take the White House. The website with the most inbound links and popular blog posts will rocket to the top of a Google search result page.

Step 1: Make sure campaign headquarters is staffed and ready. You want to promote a site that is appealing, useful, promotes your business objectives, and is full of good content. This is about the functionality of the site. It doesn’t matter how many people go to your site if it doesn’t convert them, a bad site with good visibility will promote your brand as “the guy everyone knows but no one uses.”

Step 2: Hit the campaign trail. Not only should you host a blog and post often but respond to comments. Be an authority! Be friendly! Be helpful! It is important to gain presence “on the road”; be sure to comment on related blogs, this will give you presence and help you start developing inbound links. As we all hear, inbound links are crucial to your internet marketing.

Step 3: Diversify, Web 2.0 style. Besides blogging there is a whole country full of social media voters. Get to know and use Facebook, Twitter, Localism, YouTube etc. All these keep your audience in tune with you and all provide inbound links as well. This is huge because as the demographic of social media users grows and ages more and more of your audience will be using social media tools. For some insightful tips on blogging as related to social media, check out Chris Brogan’s blog.

Online visibility is a cornerstone of your internet marketing, without it your website will fail to reach the critical mass required to make you President. Or whatever it is you’re after.

So let’s bring this into focus: Twitter has been dealing with this exact issue of late.

Recently, the instant-message/text-message/headline-syndication tool Twitter has received some significant critical press relating to the internal workings of their technical architecture. When faced with some pretty direct questions from a pretty influential personality about why their service goes through periods of downtime pretty often, they took the time to respond to each question in a reasonable fashion.

There are some lessons in this, probably related to the Web 2.0 education post I wrote earlier, about transparency and reputation management. Here’s some thoughts on what they did:

• Timeliness: they responded publicly within one day of the critical post.
• Controlled Media: their response was posted on their own blog, giving them greater freedom in formatting and illustrating their points as well as making their message the primary focus for the discussion that follows in the comment thread. “Participating in the conversation” is great, but comment threads that are heated up to shouting level don’t really make good locations to grow your message.
• Grown-Up Voice: by responding with sincere answers to a series of questions which were, by most accounts, pretty snarky, the Twitter crew end up looking like class-acts. That’s huge branding points right there.
• Acknowledging the Problem: this one is almost always the hardest, but the most satisfying for everyone. Once everyone agrees that something isn’t right, then it’s easier for all to start focusing on fixing things.

[And if you don't know about Twitter check out the Twitter for Real Estate or Other Business page.]

The other is more of a thinking and strategic issue surrounding online marketing, interlocking ecosystems of information and reputation management. This is where a lot of the heated discussions take place. While you read them here, however, please try to look beyond the specific companies and personalities and consider the systems (personal, technological and economic) involved and how they rely on each other.]

As I recently let loose in Twitter, there’s an entire education to be had in the comment thread on Galen Ward’s post about Trulia and their linking policy over at the Bloodhound Blog. This post was created to back up that statement. Consider this a pivot-table applied to qualitative data.

I’ve prepared a syllabus for you. Please note that not all of the answers to the exam questions will be found directly in the comment threads, but enough clues for you to determine the majority of the answers are present. Some questions (particularly in the second semester) will require creative thinking and problem solving extending beyond the comment thread on the Ward’s post. Outside resources are encouraged in all semesters.

• The first semester is a practical one, with hands-on worthwhile info on which you may be able to act. There are a few though-pieces in there, but it is primarily a “lab” class.
• The second semester is more of a seminar where you examine a controversial issue not for it’s controversy but for its structure.
• A laid back summer session has been assigned as well.

Enjoy. And if you post your answers to the exams publicly, let me know so I can send you a certificate of some sort.

First Semester: Search Engine Optimization

A wide variety of excellent SEO concepts are discussed in this comment thread by people both in the trenches and expert.

Coursework:

• Matt McGee explains the importance of some key technical aspects of SEO: trusted domains, URL age and inbound links.
• Greg Swann confirm’s Zillow’s SEO tips for using Zillow.
• Link purchasing is not an effective SEO tool.
• Do like Tony Sena and avoid linking to your SERP competitors.
• Become aware of the “onclick” issue for Page Rank passing links. This is yet to be resolved and needs to take into account your site traffic analysis needs.
• Given that you are unable to have immediate effect on Trulia (or anyone else’s) code practice, this advice from Matt McGee is worth investigating. But also keep in mind Eric Bramlett’s caveat.
• Eric Bramlett’s 10 places to optimize for your name to improve SEO.
• Consider researching the topic of PR Sculpting. Yes you heard that right, Page Sculpting
• Greg Swann posts a comparative assessment of Zillow and Trulia’s linking practices and what it may reveal about underlying business theories and SEO. I had a hard time deciding which semester to put this in, so consider it a nice segue into the next course.
• In Greg’s post mentioned above Matt McGee tells us about how different search engines handle “no follow” coding practices.
• Eric Bramlett provides a link to an interview with Google’s Matt Cutts (for those new to GoogleWatching, Matt Cutts is final authority on what Google does in its search practice, defending a practice against what Matt Cutts says is like defending a legal case against a station wagon full of nuns).
• Eric Bramlett makes his own post on the BHB that goes into detail on widgets and how to prevent passing page rank to a perceived competitor.
• Halfdeck brings up branding in relation to marketing efforts and SEO, citing it as a larger reason for Trulia’s success. Later, he mentions the high number of indexed pages on Trulia as a more important factor than widgets.
• Eric Bramlett comes through with a nice SEOmoz article about widgetbait.

First Semester Exam:

1. What is the relationship between trusted domains and inbound links?
2. Outline some SEO strategies for making use of social media.
3. Is PR Sculpting an on-site or off-site marketing tactic?
4. How would you find an answer to theory of “onclick” not passing Page Rank?
5. When is it good use a widget on your site? When is it potentially harmful? How might you decide whether to install one on your site?

Second Semester: Reputation Management and Social Media

The majority of the conversations in the comment thread of Ward’s post are about one company, Trulia, and how it treats individuals with whom it interacts/effects. Wherever you read the word “Trulia” insert your own company and try see how you might react or engage the conversation if it were your brand. This semester requires broad-based thinking about specific problems of online community engagement.

Initial Lecture:

Galen’s original inspiration is a to look into why Trulia does well on street address searches. He comes up with two compelling reasons:

…the original source doesn’t even display the address on the page..

and (emphasis his):

Trulia blocks Google from following their links.

This of course gets the ball rolling very quickly. The importance of this statement is that Trulia’s coding practice prevents Google from finding the original listing’s source by way of Trulia; basically Trulia isn’t being as SEO friendly to the original source as it could perhaps be.

A possible example of the results of this are are put forth in the comments to Galen’s post by Kevin Boer. Cheryl Johnson provides another search result that may be effected by this.

The follow up from there is a discussion of why Trulia might block Google from following links on Trulia to the original source and why the original source would give the listings data to Trulia, given that disparity.

Glenn Roberts Jr. made a good assessment of the situation over at Inman News.

Here is the link to the Official Google Blog post about “no follow” coding practices. Also, SearchEngineWatch has an article about how other search engines deal with “no follow” coding practices.

Coursework

As you review the comments please note that I have presented some of them slightly out of order so that they will connect better with related comments. Also, please note that I am attempting to present these comments as a way for all of us to understand how issues unfold and change online. The vast majority of these comments were made within 24 hours of the original post.

The conversation initiated by Ward spread to a variety of sources. Currently, the best method to track these conversation is via a widget developed by Greg Swann at the Bloodhound Blog. The irony of a widget to track a conversation about the widgets of another company is not lost on anyone. Below, you can view this widget and follow the conversation further than the items in the coursework.

Comments and reasoning critical of Trulia’s “no follow” code practice

• Tim O’Keefe calls the situation “the great real estate giveaway” and suggests that Trulia is trying to hoard Page Rank (a component of Google’s ranking algorithm that determines a site’s credibility).
• An anonymous user notes that Trulia’s coding practice displays an attitude of competitiveness vs the original sources of data and also that “MLSs will never get to this level of sophistication to compete against Trulia’s 5 in-house SEO wonks.”
• Eric Blackwell does a fine job of summing up some of the frustrations of real estate professionals when he says “If we 1) Give them our listings 2) Give them link juice and 3) Give them content (TV, et al). Ummm how can we gripe when they bite us (rank well in Google)?”
• Tim O’Keefe preempts conversations about duplicate content (Google doesn’t like to see the same stuff on multiple pages and so penalizes one of the duplicators) by explaining that “if they have the most page rank on that content then they do not have to worry about dupe content.”
• Ryan Ward mentions the practice of widgets as promotional items that further enhance the SEO of the sites to which they link, while providing “woefully inaccurate” market stats.
• Laurie Manny brings up an issue she has about agreeing to blog for Trulia accusing Pete Flint of breaking his word in regards to the “no follow” coding practice.
• Teri Lussier notes that “after 21 comments and no one from Trulia has chimed in.”
• Ryan Ward claims that Trulia’s is “a 3rd party site that wants in on a very lucrative piece of pie” and then speculates about a possible strategy that they are pursuing.
• Galen responds to the practice of “no follow” being used to prevent spam (see Pete Flint below) by stating: “There is no reason to limit outbound links on listings except to push agents out of the top results… .”
• Mike Taylor, in reference to the spam rationale for “no follow” says “I give you (Trulia) my listings and you give me no follow link as a way to control spam? I don’t think so. Get bent.”
• Eric Bramlett gives a technical assessment of the strategic value of choosing to implement or not implement “no follow” code practices. He believes the reason Trulia doesn’t allow Google to follow outbound links is because “because they [Trulia] consider them [agents/brokers] SERP competitors.”
• Eric Bramlett is “offended that all the Trulia spin doctors came over here so quickly to play damage control.”
• James Boyer sums up sentiment expressed in several comments with: “What Trulia does is get in the way, and make it harder to get the word out about our listings in a way that gets consumers to contact us.”
• Galen Ward clarifies a statement by saying that the issue is one of thinking you are getting relevant inbound links from Trulia, when in fact you are not (at least for SEO purposes).

Comments defending or further refining the understanding of Trulia’s “no follow” code practice (and other aspects of their business model)

• Kevin Boer outlines two reasons why Trulia’s practice may be better for agents focusing primarily on the fact that Trulia has Search Engine Friendly URLs (SEF URLs are actually more human readable in the form of http://www.yourdomain.com/your-headline vs http://www.yourdomain.com/p=12l3jkldll)
• Rick NHS, while agreeing with the premise of the post mentions that “Trulia isn’t doing anything illegal and as far as the average agent is concerned, they aren’t doing anything unethical either.”
• Mike Taylor says that Trulia “manage[s] to dupe agents to into giving them content for their site so they can then outrank those very agents that supplied them the content to outrank them.”
• 23 hours after the original post is made, Rudy from Trulia offers the following: The page redirect is being used for tracking, they focus the use of Google links on profiles, the individuals who arrive from Trulia are of high quality even if Google isn’t following the link.
• Pete Flint from Trulia reiterates some of Rudy’s points and then responds to Laurie’s accusation of him not keeping his word by stating “I do remember our telephone conversation. I explained at the time that links that exist within your profile on Trulia Voices are for link love.” He also clarifies the way that Trulia passes Google-aware links: “We channel all the link love to your profile where you can manage the link text and url.”
• Ines gives a Trulia success story and notes that the more important issue may become a “question will become an issue of ‘exposure’ not leads” but also states that she needs more from Trulia: “If I’m giving you my listings, I better get more than just a profile.”
• Pete Flint says he’s listening and that there will be updates and changes to help with Ines’ issues in the near future.
• Rudy notes that “Wikipedia and flickr put no-follow on all external links and, as far as I can tell the same goes for Realtor.com and Yahoo Real Estate. We follow the industry standard.” He then comments right afterward and says “like it or not, we are connecting consumers and agents together everyday.“
• Rudy makes the following statement: “Let’s think about what’s in the best interest of your client. Isn’t that to sell their home? I haven’t heard anyone mention that here.” [Note, I've read all the comments to the point at which he makes this statement and he is correct.]
• Rudy notes that he is in a conundrum: “Some said I didn’t respond soon enough, now you say I respond too quickly.“
• Ryan Ward notes “Trulia has put together an excellent package that does in fact provide quality content and most people I talk about this with feel that their search capabilities are more intuitive than realtor.com.“
• Rudy outlines who is a customer for Trulia.
• The Trulia blog pings back to BHB with a response about 3 1/2 days after the initial post.
• As the conversation spills out across the web to Iman News, Vito Boscaino describes his approach to online marketing for his office and says “Trulia has outperformed every other real estate dedicated portal that handles listings. Only Craigslist drives more traffic to our sites.”
• Trulia outlines it’s value proposition on their blog. It focuses heavily on delivering customers who are presumably (given that they are arriving via a real estate search site) well along in their purchase decision-making process.

The situation in relation to other businesses

• Your’s truly notes that Googlebase is also a player in this realm and that things will likely get more interesting “as syndication gets more prevalent.”
• Eric Blackwell (comment also referenced above) drags Zillow into the conversation by noting that “adding content or listings or links to folks like Trulia, Zillow and others is ‘feeding the hand that bites us’”
• Zillow reluctantly wades in and mentions how its coding practice is different from Trulia’s, packaging it as SEO tips.
• Thomas Johnson describes reasons he prefers Zillow, but also wonders whether it is because Zillow is moving slower than Trulia in some way. His feelings appear to be based on aspects of authenticity or sincerity. He describes David G. from Zillow as “a class act” while considering Truliatown “a bit contrived.”
• Overland Park Real Estate references Prudential’s decision to push its listings to Trulia.
• The BlueRoof blog submits a trackback that compares Trulia’s practices to MLS practices.
• Ines mentions vFlyer and it’s integration with Trulia.
• Eric Blackwell thanks Zillow for not engaging in “no follow” code practices.
• Ryan Ward compares Trulia’s Alexa rank with Realtor.com.
• David from Zillow is required to state, once again: “All links from your listings on Zillow are followed by search engines.“
• David from Zillow notes that an earlier comment about Zillow link using “no follow” was correct and vows to have it fixed immediately.
• Google is mentioned as a potential competitor in the same vein as other real-estate-as-content sites.
• Kevin Warmath, responding to Zillow’s immediate fix summarizes his feelings: “Can you see why a strong listing agent would be bitter, particularly in this market? Great thread, though, i learned a lot…I think. ;->”
• Louis from Homegain.com wades in which allows Eric Blackwell to ask “Are any of the 3rd party bots being transparent (read: honest) with REALTORS?” Louis responds by describing how homegain.com works.
• Mark A. mentions that he is “done syndicating my future listings to [Trulia] (through vFlyer).
• Flickr and Wikipedia are mentioned, in particular, in relation to how they use or don’t use “no follow” coding practice by Galen Ward.
• David G. from Zillow confirms that the no-follow issue is resolved for Zillow.
• Eric Bramlett notes that Number1Agent is creating backlinks to Trulia in their template sets. Halfdeck suggests a response for Number1Agent.
• Eric Blackwell creates a post researching the impact of widgets on SERP. He reserves special attention for Number One Expert.

Recommended reading:

• Kevin Boer, inspired by the initial conversation and its ongoing spurs, presents a description of co-opetition in relation to the real estate industry, including some hypothetical examples.

The Outcome of the Situation

The immediate outcome of the situation is that Trulia developed new technologies for their site as reported over at the Future of Real Estate Marketing.

Second Semester Exam:

1. How many organizations and brands are brought into this conversation? Which brands participate willingly and why? Which ones unwillingly and why?
2. How many topics/grievances/frustrations beyond the original “no follow” coding practice are discussed?
3. Where does the “no follow” coding practice fall within the spectrum of online business development? Is there a difference between perceived value and actual value?
4. What needs are being served by the “no follow” coding practice? What damage is the practice doing, if any?
5. If you drew a map showing “customer/client” and “vendor/provider” relationships based on financial transactions what would it look like? This question was first broached in the comment thread about 2 1/2 days after the initial post.
6. If you were developing a social media marketing plan how might you balance your efforts between sites that have a “no follow” coding practice with those who don’t? Is it always clear-cut how the coding-practice will effect your marketing plan?
7. Who has the most to gain or lose by inserting themselves into this conversation (and yes, this post is my conscious effort to insert Union Street into this conversation so feel free to help me justify this post to my boss. )
8. Write a brief essay on any aspect of this online reputation management exercise that strikes your fancy and adds to the wealth of knowledge on this topic

Summer Session: Spare bits of good info.

There are a number of random bits of information scattered throughout the comment thread as well.

Coursework:

Pete Flint gives a link to the official Google blog that describes the “no follow” issue in relation to comment and wiki spam.

Continue to add content to your site, even if you participate in social media, says Rudy.

Greg Swann’s breakdown of PR, “no follow” coding practices and number of outbounds from several top real estate blogs.

Chris McKeever notes that many of the real-estate-as-content sites are built using excellent technology which “unfortunately, is increasingly hard for the individual agent to achieve.”

Greg Swann says: “the bottom line is that we make money from conversions, not from our SERPs.”

Greg Swann, James Boyer, Mary McKnight, Eric Bramlett, Kevin Boer and Teri Lussier have seen searches for street addresses, neighborhoods or MLS numbers.

The future of real estate marketing technology is the $9,000 business card.

Summer Session Exam:

1. Create a work of art that expresses your feelings/emotions/thoughts on the variety of knowledge that can be gained in reading an comment thread discussion that contains high-caliber thinking on a tricky business or technical issue.

Long Tail, myth and mystery

Mary McKnight shook up the blogosphere by claiming the Long Tail is a bunch of bunk and not worth targetting. Ok, that’s not what she really said but that’s how people interpreted it (probably because her headline was “Wake up, real estate bloggers, there is no money in the long tail of search for niche blogs so stop chasing it”). What she really said, inspired by SEOFastStart was:

[B]y always targeting your key terms and writing rich content, you would by default get long tail search traffic too. Kind of blows the roof of targeting long tail traffic, doesnt it?

Joseph Ferrara over at the Sellsius Real Estate Blog first clarifies the concept of a transactional visitor (a visitor who is actually in the market to buy what you’re selling) and then he gives us some nice actionable steps for dealing with the long tail (I did a little bit of minor formatting on this quote).

Generally, since there are less overall visitors coming to your blog via long tail search phrases, and, therefore, less transactional visitors to convert, do not chase (focus on) the long tail unless:

1. you can cover it in all or most of your market (I don’t think the addresses of your listings is enough.) or
2. your transactional visitors are using long tail search terms (those hot new developments or new condos) or
3. your market niche lives in the long tail (”earthships off the power grid”).

I’m pretty sure I’ll wade into this topic sometime in the near future as well.

Who’s increasing their print ad budget?

On a tear last week, Joseph Ferrara then drops “Why Technology Will Lead to More Print Advertising.” A great post on how changing use of technology (i.e. increase mobile usage) will lead to increased effectiveness of traditional marketing (cross-pollination between web and online via the physical environment will yield greater results). Here’s the pullquote:

As the world becomes Wi-fied-ultra-portable-mobile-iPhonish, consumers will be able to easily access online resources from anywhere. If that be the case, consumers can be reading a newspaper, waiting at a bus stop or sitting on a subway, see an ad for your cool online resource, whip out their iPhone, check you out on the spot and sign up.

(As an obligatory marketing side-note, I might add the Union Street Media makes mobile real estate websites.)

Strategy Strategy Strategy

Now that you’ve got a few things to think about, how do you plan? How do you determine what to do? TransparentRE (currently testing variations of it’s template so do be sure to enjoy it) blogger Pat Kitano brings us “Strategic Planning for Real Estate Startups.” Starting with a criticism of in-depth scenario planning (familiar to Art of the Long View readers), Kitano then gives us some requirements for start-up planning:

1. Creativity to develop solutions that have never been seen before.
2. Broad based business knowledge to understand that real estate is getting closer to a data delivery and media business and farther from mom & pop brokerages.
3. Fluid management skills to act decisively and intuitively in the correct direction, and to shift strategies on a dime in an emergency (like Google entering the market).
4. Industry understanding to see the world from the perspectives of buyer, seller and real estate professional.

Hmmm… sounds a little like scenario planning doesn’t it? The difference? Kitano says to apply it all on “a monthly or quarterly term basis.”

If you’re new to Zillow or haven’t started using it yet, check out Maggie’s intro to Zillow post.

I took a few minutes to draw it up when I got home, and this is what I came up with. It’s far from complete, but seems useful in explaining how firms like ours use “web 2.0″ technologies to get traffic to our client’s sites. I thought it might be useful in providing a visual framework to illustrate the process. Personally, I needed something to organize the constant flow of information, ideas, sites, tools, etc., that constantly cross my desk/inbox/RSS feed.

Do you think this is a useful and/or accurate way to represent this?

We’re spending a lot of time at Union Street Media thinking about how to help our clients in the real estate industry leverage the new opportunities that are available online. This article at vFlyer does a great job of providing an overview of what’s out there and I highly recommend it as an introduction to all of this.

One of the resources mentioned is a real estate social networking site called ActiveRain. Realtors can set up a free profile there, connect with other real estate professionals, create a blog, and join discussions. You can visit my profile at activerain.com/andyvota and Union Street Media founder Ted Adler’s at activerain.com/tedadler.

There is a good overview of the site at activerain.com/action/default/welcome. One other bonus of being on ActiveRain is that the search engine pickup of the site is quite good — things posted there seem to show up on Google and other search engines very quickly.

Another post of interest is at Inman.

Participation in all of this new social media (blogs, social networks, wikis etc.) is difficult to gauge but several recent attempts have been made to try and measure audience participation. The latest is Forrester’s new Social Technographics report – which came up with this fascinating segmentation.