Monitoring The Conversation Of Tribes

By Jason Cronkhite on June 11, 2009 in Social Media Marketing

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The other day I had a meeting with a local TV personality — Tanji Patton — and her husband Mike. We discussed a few things about where she is headed with her site and web show, Good Taste With Tanji. I was happy to find out how much respect she has for the web and value she see’s in the internet as a distribution medium for her content.

We talked about many things from Search, to Social Media to Online Video Sydnication and other things as well. Even though Tanji has years of experience as a TV anchor and producer, she was very open about what she does not know and I was encouraged to learn this. Knowing your expertise and domain focus is the sign of a great leader and I know she will go far.

One thing we touched on in the conversation was identifying and leading your tribe, Seth Godin‘s principle. Tanji certainly has the ability to garner a following and the capability to lead her tribe and I told her I would refer her to the video below but, I thought it was important for others that may be reading this to see it.

Watch this and then read below about monitoring the conversation.

Tools for Monitoring The Conversation

Picking back up from the conversation with Mike & Tanji, Twitter came up and blogging in general came up. Tanji made the comment about how much time it takes to use Twitter and she’s openly stated this on her site. Yet, most people that are new to it have the same reaction – I did too when Evan & Biz introduced it at SXSW a couple of years ago.

Twitter is great for connecting with people of all walks of life that have the same interests but, it takes some getting used to and there is a learning curve to understand how to listen. Since so many others have talked about this already, here are three links to dig into it more: 10 Listening Tools , On Twitter & Listening , Twitter Is All About Listening .

Taking it a step further are companies like Sysomos & Radian6. I had the chance to visit with Blair Cummings & Aubrey Podolsky with Sysomos yesterday who provided me with an in-depth demo of their MAP and Hearth Beat products. Man, are these products amazing!

If you are trying to lead a Tribe, I highly encourage you to look at companies like Sysomos, Radian6 or ScoutLabs as the intelligence they can provide you about what is happening in web conversations is extremely revealing and valuable to your strategic business planning efforts.

For someone like Tanji Patton, these products could help her significantly grow her following. By analyzing where the conversation is that’s relative to her Tribe, she could go there and jump right in and offer her opinion and value thus increasing her awareness and building new connections with people of similar interest and influence.

So, who’s your tribe – are you listening to them?