Webmetricsguru is Marshall Sponder, ed.
I have never been a fan of Forrester Research - but they produce a lot of good research. By the way, have you noticed a lot of the research firms have been acquired or are merging of late. So, it wasn't entirely surprising to me Forrester Research would tell it's own analysts they can't have blogs of their own any longer. As reported in SageCircle
Forrester CEO George Colony is well aware of that savvy analysts can build their personal brands via their positions as Forrester analysts amplified by social media (see the post on "Altimeter Envy"). As a consequence, a Forrester policy that tries to restrict analysts' personally-branded research blogs works to reduce the possibility that the analysts will build a valuable personal brand leading to their departure. In addition, forcing analysts to only blog on Forrester-branded blogs concentrates intellectual property onto Forrester properties increasing the value of the Forrester brand.
My understanding is the average analyst gets burnt out with all the travel, writing (writing several research papers each quarter) and consulting ,within 3 years.
Forrester Analysts have a tough life and maybe, one of the reasons why it's worth putting up with less than optimal pay and frequent travel is to build your own brand - in fact, that's probably the main reason why people sign up to become a Forrester Analyst in the first place. Well, no more of that.
All things being equal, if your a Forrester analyst and you can't build your own brand - what's the point of being an analyst for them?
I don't care about Forrester analysts that much - but what if it's not just about Forrester - what if more and more employers decide they want to own all the intellectual IP while you work for them, including your personal blog? Is that in our future?
Reading more closely, it turns out Forrester Analysts can continue to blog outside of Forrester if it is on a subject not related to their role at Forrester - in other words, you can blog about music, travel, art, cooking, even politics, but you can't say anything on a subject Forrester is paying the analyst for.
".....Make no mistake: Forrester is committed to social media, and the number of our analyst bloggers is increasing, not decreasing. Analysts will still have the ability to blog outside of Forrester on topics not related to their coverage areas."
What, if in 5 years, most employers decide to feel this way ?
Anyway, decided to try to make sense of this action by exploring Social Media and using Sysomos MAP (here's the query - Forrester AND Research AND blog AND analyst).
Here's the popular phrases around the decision of Forrester to ban blogging in most cases
Here's the Key Conversations that happened in the last 3 days around this subject in blogs:
Forrester is investing in building social tools and associated best-practice training for our analysts so that more of them get involved.
In addition, forcing analysts to only blog on Forrester-branded blogs concentrates intellectual property onto Forrester properties increasing the value of the Forrester brand.
Sagecircle shared rumors that a change to Forrester blogging policies would prevent analysts from having personal blogs and would aggregate analysts' posts into Forrester-branded role-based blogs..
The research we write for clients has always depended on a rich two-way conversation with experts and practitioners in the marketplace.
Blogging is an extension of the other work we do â€" doing research, writing reports, working with clients, and giving speeches, for example..
Blogging is an extension of the other work we do â€" doing research, writing reports, working with clients, and giving speeches, for example.
There is only one augie, and the thoughts i share on my blog are now based Upon the research i do, the people i meet, and the information i am given access to thanks to my role at Forrester.
So it was interesting to read of Forrester research's directive to analysts using their own personally branded research blogs: take them down or re-direct them to the Forrester site.
If Forrester is worried Analysts will build their own brands and then leave - instead of punishing Analysts, I suggest they make it more enticing for them to remain. Here's some ideas - bet I'm not the first to think of them, either.
- For any paper that an Analyst writes for Forrester, let the analyst get 10% of the sales money added to their salary every time they're paid.
- Provide free education to expensive college and graduate courses if you remain an employee.
- Cut down on billable travel by 25% and replace it with virtual meetings at a similar billing rate.
- Allow Analysts to use 10% of their own time for a project of their choosing (and let them get 20% of any sales coming from that work).
That is some of the ideas I had today -let's think of rewarding employees, not punishing them, for taking initiative.
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