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POINT OF VIEW Lions and Tigers and Tweets, Oh My!
I’ve been exploring the material that’s written about competitive intelligence for some time now, and recently directed my attention to the content delivered through blogs and tweets. In many cases, I’ve been exposed to interesting perspectives, particularly from individuals who are not focused full time on competitive intelligence. But I have found that I waste considerable time viewing redundant or old information (particularly in tweets). Here’s a sample of my experiences and how you can learn from them. Blogs Some very talented individuals take the time to share their knowledge and experience through their blog posts. The majority are consultants (try convincing your corporate management to let you write about your competitive intelligence experiences), but most gained their intelligence insight by working on the practitioner side. (You can view a list of intelligence blogs in a SCIP LinkedIn group discussion.) I have also seen interesting commentary posted by individuals who are developing intelligence functions for law firms. I regularly look for new “competitive intelligence” postings and use Google Blogs search as one of the main ways to identify entries for the “news” section of the SCIP website. But during the last year or so, the search results have returned more and more “junk.” The fastest-growing trend is copying (full or partially) a posting (old or new) from another site and passing it off as your own. I’ve found some quick ways to evaluate the validity of blog entries found through the various blog search engines, including Google Blogs, Twingly blog search, etc. Here are some things to look for: A date. Just because an item was posted on a specific date, doesn’t mean that it was written then. The absence of a date, either when it was written or posted is a red flag. An author. Look for a byline to the text, a name not just “admin” (An admin listed as author is almost always a copied blog). Also check to see if the blog lists a specific person as the owner. Comments on the posting. Not only does this almost always identify the date on which the blog was posted, it will verify that the person who wrote the blog is being followed by individuals. Press release wording. If it sounds like a press release, it probably is. Other content on the site. I’ve noticed a marked increase of websites that just scrape miscellaneous blog postings and load onto their site, all to get the clicks that make their ad income increase. Look at whether or not the other material on the site is related to the blog posting. If they’re also talking about tai chi, it’s not their material. Google duplicates. Google’s ability to search on phrases is a quick and easy way to check for plagiarism. (If you blog, you might want to do this regularly for your own material.) Just copy the first sentence or title. I find better results with the first sentence since people who copy are more likely to change the title but not the first sentence. Information at the end. When some people copy the content of an article or blog, they may note at the bottom something along the lines of “obtained from ezinearticles.com”. This is one of several free share text sites where individuals post their own work for sharing. So the blog posting may have today’s date, but show an article several years old. Why should you spend time checking for this information? Your reputation or the accuracy of your output (such as an email, report or newsletter) could be in jeopardy, and it’s worth identifying which sites/people to trust. Tweets I have a love/hate relationship with tweets. On one hand, they can highlight new information and thinking; on the other, they create insane amounts of duplication. (Not everyone credits the original tweet source—try using Twitter’s advanced search to see examples.) I’ve noticed that more tweets are including links to other full-text sources, such as articles and blogs. One software of this type is accurately called “Addict-o-matic,” which claims to “instantly create a custom page with the latest buzz on any topic.” I’m experimenting with an interesting software called paper.li. This product “organizes links shared on Twitter and Facebook into an easy to read newspaper-style format.” While it has potential, the software’s search limitations seem to simply provide a faster way to package and read duplicate and old information. I’ve created a few experimental “papers” using different search strategies. “Competitive Intelligence” (http://paper.li/hohhof/1294416761) selects tweets which contain the words “competitive” and “intelligence” and a link. (Note to tweeters: if you use the abbreviation “CI” your tweet won’t be found. #CI isn’t much better.) The software automatically generates an attractive paper but the linked content often presents the repetitive and old information found through blog searches (See previous section.) A slightly more focused approach is to limit the paper to a specific hashtag. (See “The #SCIP Daily” at http://paper.li/tag/SCIP.) However, you’re relying on people to add this tag to their tweet and to use consistent tags, so the entries are very limited (for #SCIP) or exceedingly large (#CI, which means many different things to many different people). So far, the best approach I’ve identified that develops a paper with both a tighter focus on a topic and a reasonable number of postings, is to limit the paper’s content to a specific Twitter account and the accounts that initial account follows. The “Hohhof’s Twitter Daily” consists of tweets from both my Twitter account and the limited number of people I follow (http://paper.li/hohhof). The automatic paper generation still results in some odd organization, but it has potential. When tweeting, blogging or website stuffing, people are creatures of habit. When you find questionable material or pure self promotion, try keeping a log of “banned people/sources.” Or just look at the URL before you waste your time reading it. But there are gems out there, both people and material. Spend some time identifying them, and consistently use them as a focused source of interesting (always) and useful (mostly) information and ideas. Just don’t let the tweets get you down.
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