Next Tuesday, August 31, Jim Reynolds ( @jimmyrey ) will be presenting an Alterian SM2 Analysis of some of the more colorful political commentators to find out who is the most “talkable brand” on Cable News.

We’re tracking Fox’s Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer, and Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

So far, Fox’s Glenn Beck is generating more buzz than expected and CNN’s correspondents fairing not as well as expected. It also looks like Prop 8 and Sarah Palin are among some of the 5 hottest topics being discussed in relation to the commentators.

The graph below shows incredibly uniform pattern in the number of conversations surrounding the Political Commentators.

Join us next Tuesday, August 31^st for the “Battle of the Talking Heads” to see the results.

Who do you think will win?

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UPDATE:

The results are in! Some of the results are as polarizing as their subject matter – with Glenn Beck crowned both the “The Most Loved” and “The Most Hated” on Social Media. The number of negative conversations around Glenn Beck did outnumber positive conversations, but Glenn Beck took the crown for most mentions ; winning 54% of the conversations.

Guest Blog Post by Hareesh Tibrewala, Joint CEO, Social Wavelength.

The word “Global Village” has been on top of the charts for many years now. You can’t be at an IT conference and not hear this word at least a few times in the day. But we are truly becoming a global village only now…with the advent of Social Networking Sites.

One huge shift that I see on account of social networking sites, will be an overall shift towards more honesty in general human behavior. That is a very bold statement to make and I rest my case on the following:

• In the good old times, when we lived in villages, it was difficult for someone to cheat another person…. simply because everyone “knew” or was “connected” everyone. In a megapolis like Mumbai, where neighbors are strangers, it is very easy to get away with fraud and deceit. But Social Networks are again making us a village …where a lot of people are connected to a lot of people…and that is going to force more discipline and honesty.

• In any society there will be honest people and there will be dishonest people. If we do a plot of honesty levels on the x-axis and number of people on the y-axis. We will see a bell curve emerge. Extreme ends of the bell curve will represent very honest people and very dishonest people. It is my contention that the middle portion of the bell curve will move more towards honesty…thanks to SNS.

Let me share some examples to substantiate my argument:

• Fudging of resumes is known to be routine practice. Besides fudging names of places where one has worked and the duration of work, candidates also routinely keep 3-4 “versions” of their resume ready. Depending on the job opening, a particular version is put out. Hence a person will have one version of the resume which brings him out as a branding expert (to be used for Brand Manager openings) while there is another version which talks about his expertise in setting up sales and distribution networks (to be used for VP-sales kind of openings). Now both of these are actually 2 different job profiles which require 2 different sets of experiences and skills. Now with something like LinkedIn, the “flexibility” of having multiple versions of “myself” is lost…there has to be one and only one me! I need to be on LinkedIn (that is where people will find me) and I need to be myself (else I will get caught).
• Avinash, who works in the office as sales-in-charge, applies for an emergency leave since “his mother has taken ill and needs to be hospitalized”. Actually Avinash wants to take the opportunity to meet up with his college buddy Rohan who has dropped in from out-of-town announced. While Rohan and Avinash are making merry at a restaurant at lunch time, Rohan goes ahead and posts of picture of him and Avinash at the restaurant on his Facebook page. Little does Rohan realise that Avinash’s boss is actually connected to Rohan (through some earlier interaction) and will also have access to this posting. Imagine Avinash’s condition when he shows up at office next day morning!

With GPS tracking built into SNS platforms or emergence of sites like foursquare.com, even more transparency is going to get imposed on us. Can’t tell my wife “I am at office”, if I am actually out a nearby pub hanging out with friends anymore!

Do you think social networks will enhance the honesty quotient?

Hareesh Tibrewala is a social media evangelist and a thought-leader in the social media space. His company, Social Wavelength based out of India, manages and monitors social media communication for numerous international brands. Hareesh received his master of science from University of Southern California and is a serial entrepreneur. Having created a management consultancy business and a e-commerce venture, Social Wavelength is now is his 3^rd entrepreneurial venture.

What I mean by that is that social media is maturing and starting to develop definable disciplines. As once Online grew into email, search, display, etc. specialties so too is social today. Many of the pundits have picked up this theme and have started to lay claims around the emerging areas, most notably with the good folks over at Altimeter and their 18 practical uses of social media.

While there is clearly value and great insight in this broader thinking, as a marketer I really only care about what’s going to directly impact me on a daily basis. Reflecting on our experience using social for our own marketing at Alterian I think there is a slightly different bucketing that more closely aligns with the way marketers work and is thus more actionable.

Content Syndication: The cost of distribution is approaching zero. Thank you Mr. Anderson “Long Tail” / “Free”. Previously we had to pay to have our messages distributed. Now we can do it for free. Advertising is moving from the periphery of the page to the center. Except we no longer call it advertising, we now call it content. The etiquette of this advertising is clearly different and what we used to pay for the placement is now being spent on content creation.

While this may be a “social” approach it hails from the same roots as traditional marketing. Get out there and plant the seeds. Hit your reach and frequency and drive someone into deeper, more engaged interactions. This is a bandwagon you’ve got to get on. Looking to the near term future, this is going to become the number one channel for awareness and acquisition.

Community Engagement: “Engagement” as a concept can rapidly become a rabbit hole in social media marketing concept. Without getting into a life skills conversation about building relationships or an academic one about viral network patterns there are some fairly pragmatic approaches that can be applied.

Identify relevant, active communities for your brand and begin to make yourself visible. Comment, contribute content, and anything else you can do to be a productive member of the community. Don’t be shy about intentions, but use good manners relative to the form of communication.

Social Intelligence: As a whole most marketers need to figure out how to become more data driven. Social media amplifies this need. The amount of data now available in our digital begot social world can be overwhelming. The key is to develop the skills and approach needed to convert this data into knowledge.

Zach Hofer Shall over at Forrester has done some good work in this area and has coined the term social intelligence. As a starting point you need to be using social media monitoring for improved targeting. This is the low hanging fruit and the core to successful content syndication and community engagement strategies. Next is the incorporation social campaign promotional history into media performance models. When you start to bump all the interaction data up against one another you can generate new customer insights, but also begin to find new ways to optimize your media mix.

To make social media actionable and relevant you need to break it down into manageable chunks. The intent of content syndication, community engagement, and social intelligence is to present marketers with those chunks in a form that resembles many current day activities. A social media strategy doesn’t begin with one giant leap, but rather a number of small, orderly steps.