Democratic Tag Clouds

This may seem off topic from global CRM issues, but bear with me.

Pollster.com posted an analysis recently of the language used by Democratic candidates in a Spring debate. The analysis was represented as tag clouds. (Janet Harris, a friend of Pollster.com, posted the analysis. I think but I'm not sure that this is the same Janet Harris who founded and runs Upstream Analysis, a consultancy that does media monitoring.) Tag clouds are most often used to represent the relative popularity of words on a given topic by making popular words larger and/or heavier in typeface. Common words such as "the" and "and" can be removed.

In fact, some services don't actually look at the words, but at the way people like you and me tag them. Britney Spears might be the phrase, but "doofus" might be the tag applied to her by some number of people. If you doubt that people would be so rude in tagging content, check out the user tags describing Britney Spears albums on Amazon.com. (When folks like you and me tag things, those tags make up a "folksonomy" -- not a taxonomy.)

Check out Janet's analysis here, and then come back for the global CRM point. [UPDATE: In the interests of bipartisanshipnessicity, here's a link to a Republican debate tag cloud.]

(fingers thrumming on the table)

OK, you back? Interesting, huh?

OK, the idea is this. When determining your value proposition in a given local market for your products and services, you had better get some savvy market intelligence, especially about how your target audiences will value/assess your offering. You can do focus groups, surveys ... and you can actually get prospects and customers to tag your offerings on your home page.

If you look at these tags across cultures, what do you think you'll discover? Will it matter? Will you be able to act on it?

If you doubt that tag clouds, presented to your chief marketing and sales people, won't make an impact, take a look again at Janet's analysis, and pretend you are a campaign strategist for Chris Dodd (Senator from Connecticut, and a decent guy from all accounts, including from personal experience). You want to bet that Senator Dodd has already seen this information?

The trick always is to find out what your market thinks and feels about you. If you can, exploit the power of the Internet to give you that insight: consider tag clouds.

Hey, and here's something cool: a tag cloud for this blog posting:

analysis applied bear blogs candidates clouds com common crm debate democratic doofus fact fingers folks friend given global harris heavier http janet language larger making monitoring number ok people php pollster popular posted relative removed represent services spears spring sure table tag things think thrumming topic typeface upstream used words

created at TagCrowd.com