Even further, that knowledge can better inform all aspects of business practice, often making operations more efficient and effective.

Really appreciate the insight!

Content is technically not as valuable without brand essence, personality and purpose. We garner perspective in order to inject meaning and relevance into the content we create and distribute. In the process, we convert content into social objects.

Make sense? I think we’re saying the same thing, but it today’s world of “confusion,” it’s better to be literal. Rock on.

I’m so glad that you had a chance to read the post and even more thrilled that you left a comment.

Thanks for fleshing out just what it is that the prism can do for brands looking to engage in the social media space.

The only point of yours I might challenge is that it’s not about content. I believe it is. You put the brand at the heart of the prism. However, if you put content there, all of a sudden the brand is focused less on immediate gain and more on how IT can contribute. While gain might make more business sense, if content is at the center, the resultant trust will be of greater brand value, long term.

Does that make sense? Or am I not understanding something? It’s totally possible.

Thanks again for the contribution to the discussion! Looking forward to further insight.

Brad

Initially, the conversation prism (conversationprism.com) was designed as a map of the social web to remind experts that there is more to the proverbial conversation than twitter and facebook. What’s missing in this post however, is the keystone to the prism and the main reason why we had to write a pseudo instruction manual for it…people tend to take graphics at graphical value without seeing the bigger picture.

As you say, “But this is where the prism falls a touch short: these ideas get lost in translation to the prism, and we need a bridge from the prism to the practical.”

It is for that reason that I wrote the following guides:

http://www.briansolis.com/2009/03/conversation-prism-v20/

and…

http://www.briansolis.com/2009/04/conversation-index/

These two posts instruct any brand on how to listen using the prism to define a specific social map that does the opposite of carpet bombing the web, it creates a detailed and accurate index and set of directions on where to focus specifically. Each brand map, as a result, will differ.

This is not about chatter, conversations, or content. It’s about focus and identifying paths to influence by understanding everything from relevant communities to sentiment to opportunities for influence. Once you have that intelligence you can embark on an “informed” New Media Life Cycle process.