By Nancy Sharon Collins from DesignEnvy:
New Orleans has two seasons: hurricane and festival. That’s it. Take your pick. Zehnder Communications—my favorite cross-media agency here—has recently announced “State of the Listen” (#TheStateOfTheListen or SOTL) to track social media buzz for everything from festivals, such as Tales of the Cocktail and New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, to worldwide events like the Olympics.
SOTL pulls data from social media hits—including Twitter, Facebook, industry-specific forums and blogs—and compiles it into useful, colorful and visually compelling information. For instance, when the annual cocktail extravaganza, Tales of the Cocktail, came to town last year, SOTL could tell who was the most popular sponsor or what was the most Tweeted cocktail ingredient. (Hint: it wasn’t bacon. Bacon was sixth.) In a nutshell, Zehnder’s new SOTL collects raw data, aggregates it and makes it pretty.
