Stats from the Association of Technology Influencers

As you can see the demographics point to a heavily bias towards senior roles.

The leading roles were Owner, VP, Director, Manager and Senior accounting for 93% of members.

A surprising 10% in the Greater Boston Area driven largely by the concentration of analyst firms in that locale.

For more details visit: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=54516

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Visit us today to browse our new research store and find the tools and research you need to stay ahead.

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Top analyst firms - where to start?

For those new to the analyst industry the first steps toward seeing value are often unclear. Understanding the analyst landscape in any particular sector is a difficult process even for those working in the industry on a daily basis.

Technology evolves ever faster, with markets that were utterly separate converging, sometimes almost overnight. Then no sooner have markets consolidated than disruptive technologies redefine the space with new start-ups springing up.

Keeping abreast of these changes is of course an analysts job but exactly which changes to keep abreast of is not straight forward. The expertise of individual analysts changes over time as they investigate new topic areas. They may become interested in more commercial topics or simply move firm and find they have to focus in another area. Research firms themselves also see change and strategy can diversify as clients needs grow.

For those completely new to the analyst or influencer industry all these factors can of course make the analyst world incredibly confusing. For this reason clear goals are necessary to understand exactly what you expect to achieve.

Draw up a list of what you want and who you think can deliver it. Look at a list of major analyst firms and identify those relevant to you. Do your own research to understand who is writing things that make sense from your strategy perspective.

The figure below shows a list of the major analyst firms by search results. This gives a rough indication of share of voice or mindshare for the main companies. There are numerous other factors that effect the dominance of any particular firm such as revenues, sector coverage, number of analysts, sales activities, presence at events...

For many people who do not recognize the names of any analyst firms the best first step is to find out what other people are reading and the reach of the various companies out there. For those interested in finding out more ATA Research has published a report: Engaging with Analysts

Age of analysts

Analyst Firm	Median Age (years)
Gartner	36
AMR Research	36
Burton	35
ABI	34
Ovum	33
CCS Insight	33
IDC	33
Yankee Group	32
Forrester	31
Frost & Sullivan	27

A quick search on linkedin provides some interesting numbers regarding the average age of employees at analyst firms. As can be seen there is nearly a ten year gap between Gartner with the highest average age of the major firms at 36 and the lowest average age of 27 at Frost & Sullivan.

Obviously there are a lot of factors affecting these figures as there are numerous other employees besides analysts at each firm but with most businesses at present seeking experienced advisers who have been through previous recessions and weathered the storm the age factor is undoubtedly important.

Online influence in the credit crunch

With the turmoil in the global markets today the stakes have been raised across all enterprises in the tech sector. With the situation looking positively life threatening for a lot of companies the need to act has never been more important and enterprises need to ensure they make the right choices now if they want to weather the storm.

Small and medium businesses are being hit hardest and traditionally they have the least resources available to interact with analysts. With budgets being slashed there is a need to do more with less and the latest report from ATA Research looks at how to improve ROI. 'Online Influence in the Credit Crunch' outlines the key steps to a successful and low cost influencer strategy.

The chart below, taken from the report, illustrates the huge differences in how users work with analysts. The audience that an analyst is delivering to effects the influence exerted and this must inform decisions.
The report provides rankings of the top analyst firms and individual analysts in terms of online news, blog and search presence and looks at how keyword searches shape analyst agendas. An example of the rankings for blog citations is below.
For more details visit us at http://ataresearch.allthenalysts.com