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General Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Who is BuzzLogic?A. Founded in 2004, BuzzLogic is an on-demand software company that drives performance within the social media channel by helping both businesses and bloggers harness online influence to improve their bottom lines. (top) Q. What problem is BuzzLogic solving?A. Social media is a chaotic tangle of passionate opinion and dialogue. Today, there is no accurate method for targeting the most influential online opinion leaders when it matters most, then engaging with those people or their content in a meaningful way. Existing mechanisms, like free blog search and brand monitoring tools, merely scratch the surface. Neither can calculate and surface topic-specific online influence in an actionable way for marketers and communications professionals. BuzzLogic makes it easier for its customers to develop and execute on a social media strategy with influence as the under-pinning—and influencer relations, marketing and advertising as key methods for capitalizing on social media’s explosive growth. (top) Q: What are BuzzLogic’s products?A: BuzzLogic’s enterprise application has been commercially available since April 2007. This software as a service system allows marketers and communications professionals to identify, and engage with online influencers, then track the impact of those actions. The system also enables marketers and advertisers to identify influential social media sites that perform from an advertising perspective. Click here for more details and case studies. (top) Q. How does BuzzLogic work?A. BuzzLogic customers log on to the system dashboard from any Web connection. They then set up a “workspace”—an individual’s defined area that can also be shared across a department or entire company. Within that workspace, a user sets up a “conversation query” which is similar to setting up a keyword search. Once individuals define specifically what they are looking for, the system jumps into action, continuously crawling the Conversation Index to identify influential hot spots, producing results within minutes. The outcome is a highly-defined list of both influential bloggers—and influential posts—with corresponding social maps and metrics. Users can alert colleagues to specific developments, or engage directly with bloggers and/or posts through the system, track results and produce reports. (top) Q: What kinds of job functions can take advantage of BuzzLogic?A: Though BuzzLogic can produce useful information relevant to almost anyone, we see our customers engaging in three primary disciplines: influencer relations, influencer marketing and influencer advertising. This includes public relations and corporate communications professionals, direct marketing/lead generation and brand marketing professionals, and those in charge of online advertising campaigns. (top) Q. How does BuzzLogic determine influence?A. BuzzLogic’s “secret sauce” is a combination of its patented influence algorithms (which take more than a dozen factors into consideration when determining influence) and its Conversation Index, which is designed specifically to monitor the dynamic, fluid nature of social media dialogue. Please click here for more detail on our technology. (top) Q: How does BuzzLogic define a conversation?A. We view a conversation as a dialogue between multiple social media websites. The “dialogue” is demonstrated by linking behavior; for example, one blogger linking to and “talking back to” another blogger’s post. A conversation query is a search string BuzzLogic customers set up within our application, enabling them to surface specific influencers within a particular conversation. (top) Q. Is a “popularity” or “authority” ranking basically the same thing as being influential?A. No, popularity is one factor of many in determining a person, or post’s, influence. On its own, popularity is useful for understanding the volume of activity around a topic. However, an accurate measurement of influence requires analysis of linking behaviors and contextual analysis of the page and overall site content, as well as other criteria, including popularity and credibility (for example, the number of times a particular blogger has posted on a specific topic). (top) Q. Does BuzzLogic search across the entire Internet, including social sites such as MySpace and YouTube?A. While BuzzLogic doesn’t analyze the actual video or audio content itself, it does monitor the influence of this content, taking into account the influence of others who link to it. Both YouTube and MySpace—as well as millions of blogs and social network sites—are incorporated into the Conversation Index, with more being added every day. (top) Q: What about traditional media?A: While the Conversation Index does not independently monitor traditional, mainstream media, it does incorporate those outlets if they become influential on a particular subject, or enter the conversation and impact the influence of a particular blogger. (top) Q: How many different kinds of sites are in your index?A: Today, BuzzLogic’s Conversation Index counts millions of blogs, social networks and other social media, as well as corporate sites and approximately 8,000 mainstream media sites. (top) Q: How often does the BuzzLogic Conversation Index get updated/refreshed?A: The Conversation Index is constantly being crawled for new information. Individual conversations get updated with new analysis and data on a daily basis. (top) Q: When I put a URL into the “WatchList” section, how long do I have to wait to see an analysis?A: Depending on whether the URL is already featured in the Conversation Index, an analysis can appear anywhere from immediately, to one day later. (top) Q: Is this the same thing as “brand monitoring”<A: No. The BuzzLogic view is that “monitoring” is a means to an end. Our customers want to cut through the clutter and get to the content that requires action. Traditionally, brand monitoring and analysis services tell marketers what a sample of bloggers was thinking a few weeks ago, via dense reports, not what is happening right now. Also, brand monitoring typically involves human analysis, which makes it more costly, and monitoring solutions do not have methods for engagement and reporting baked in to their systems. (top) Q: Do you rate tone to determine whether content is negative or positive? Do you use Natural Language Processing (NLP)?A: During our beta period, our customers shared that the automated nature of NLP rarely was able to detect nuance or sarcasm in posts—so the results were often inaccurate. BuzzLogic enables customers to rate the tonality of content themselves and run reports to see how their actions impact the sentiment of influential bloggers over time. (top) Q: Do you offer any tools for bloggers?A: Though BuzzLogic’s first product focus is on the needs of marketers, the dual nature of the social media environment means that those producing influential content will be affected by marketers’ collective actions. BuzzLogic’s mission includes helping those behind the influential content to become more visible, driving more impressions and click-throughs to their blogs and accompanying text ads. In the near future, BuzzLogic will make available tools that will help brands foster partnerships with influential bloggers and online reviewers—and allow these bloggers to enjoy more consumer traffic and be better rewarded for their ability to create quality content. Stay tuned. (top) Q: How much does a BuzzLogic subscription cost, and what is included in the price?A: BuzzLogic is a fully-automated on-demand software application, sold on a subscription basis, per conversation query. Entry level pricing starts at $12,000 per year and can scale up based on the customer’s implementation. Included in the entry-level cost are 10 conversation queries, which can be changed or modified at any time, unlimited reporting features, user training, and customer support. (top) |
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