Every year The Semmys nominates the best posts in marketing. Last year, the Social Media Manifesto was recognized and this year, The Conversation Prism was spotlighted.

Thank you!

When Jesse Thomas of JESS3 and I started to lay the foundation for the Conversation Prism, we realized that it was a much larger task then simply categorizing social networks and placing them within a visually-rich graphic or chart. My goal was to observe, analyze, dissect, and present the dynamics of conversations, how and where they transpired. It is a living, breathing representation of Social Media and will evolve as services and conversation channels emerge, fuse, and dissipate.

As conversations are increasingly distributed, everything begins with listening and observing. Doing so, will help you identify exactly where relevant discussions are taking place, as well as their scale and frequency. This dialog can be charted into a targeted social map that’s unique to your brand. In the example below, I created a Social Map using MindJet to represent the communities where I either need to or currently contribute based on my initial research.

Perhaps most importantly, the process of listening and observing will reveal the cultures of the very communities you may wish to engage.

Remember, participating in Social Media is more meaningful when you have a deeper understanding of anthropology and sociology and not just the social tools that facilitate interaction. This is about creating and cultivating relationships with people, online and in the real world, and these relationships are defined by mutual value and benefits.

In the social economy, relationships are the new currency.
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The Social Media Manifesto was released in April of 2007 and was greeted by strong support from both new and traditional PR practitioners. I wrote it as a way of showcasing the tools, philosophies, strategies, and reasons for companies to learn how and why to engage with their community of customers and prospects.

Monologue has given way to dialog.

I’ve been observing Dan Zarrella‘s work from a distance for some time and this is the first post dedicated to his work. However, he is someone whom I also hope to collaborate with in the near-term.

Zarrella recently announced TweetSuite, a plugin for WordPress that integrates tweetback functionality into blogs. Much in the same way that trackbacks or linkbacks showcase inbound blogs linking to respective posts, tweetbacks monitor and display individual tweets that also feature links to specific blog content.

TweetSuite also offers the ability for people to directly tweet the post from your blog as well as retweet (RT) the specific tweets listed in the tweetback directory.

The suite provides several widget options to showcase most-tweeted posts, recently-tweeted, and the most favorited tweets.

It’s the seamless fusion between the blogosphere and twitterville, tying conversations across two of the most prominent properties defining the Social Web.

Zarrella’s work is poignant as it is timely. The conversation continues to migrate and evolve beyond the blogosphere and Twitter is the catalyst for the organic and rapidly multiplying interaction within micro communities. Facebook, FriendFeed, among others are also fueling the proliferation of distributed conversations and tools such as TweetSuite centralize dispersed dialog into one central location for context and perspective.

Related reading on PR 2.0:

- The Poetry of Social Networking to Court Customers and Invest in Relationships
- Top 40 Must Read Posts on PR 2.0 in 2008
- Twitter Tools for Community and Communications Professionals
- The Socialization of Your Personal Brand Parts I – III
- In the Social Web, We Are All Brand Managers
- The State of Social Media 2008
- The Social Revolution is Our Industrial Revolution
- The Essential Guide to Social Media
- The Social Media Manifesto
- Introducing The Conversation Prism
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When Jesse Thomas of JESS3 and I started to lay the foundation for the Conversation Prism, we realized that it was a much larger task then simply categorizing social networks and placing them within a visually-rich graphic or chart. My goal was to observe, analyze, dissect, and present the dynamics of conversations, how and where they transpired.

We immediately realized that V1 would be short-lived and the need for continual iteration in order to document the evolving conversation online would emerge inevitable. As we work diligently on V2, as well as developing a supporting, scalable ecosystem, friends all over the world are simultaneously documenting the language and architecture of global online conversations.

In advance of our impending announcement, I wanted to spotlight the valuable work of those around the world. The Conversation Prism is now available in French, Chinese, and Japanese, with each localized to visually demonstrate the unique channels of online discussions materializing respectively.

France

Introductory Post

Japan

Introductory Post 1
Introductory Post 2

China

Introductory Post

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Related reading on PR 2.0:

- The Essential Guide to Social Media Translated into French
- Social Media Manifesto Translated into Russian
- The Socialization of Your Personal Brand
- The State of Social Media 2008
- The Social Revolution is Our Industrial Revolution
- The Essential Guide to Social Media
- The Social Media Manifesto
- Introducing The Conversation Prism
- Now is Gone (Available on Amazon)
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