Author, blogger, photographer and PR firm founder Brian Solis announced yesterday that he has joined boutique technology marketing analyst firm Altimeter Group. Solis will accompany founder Charlene Li, partners Lora Cecere, Jeremiah Owyang, Alan Webber and fellows Marcia Conner and Deborah Shultz in helping global corporations define strategies concerning social media and more.
Altimeter is one of the most high-profile of a growing number of boutique analyst firms that use production of free content on platforms like blogs and Twitter in order to generate consulting leads with big clients. Solis rounds out a leadership team now consisting of some of the most prominent social strategists on the web, all in one small shop. Other examples of boutique firms making putting heavy emphasis on social media content production include technical developer analysts RedMonk and analyst industry analysts Sage Circle.
Solis by the Numbers
Brian Solis is a prolific writer. His most recently published book is titled Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web. He’s posted more than 300 times to his blog BrianSolis.com over the last 18 months, averaging a remarkable 4.5 posts per week. For what it’s worth, Solis’s long time friend and now co-worker at Altimeter Jeremiah Owyang is also a prolific blogger. Owyang has posted more than 200 times in the last 18 months, an average of 3 posts per week. We covered Owyang’s August, 2009 departure from large analyst firm Forrester (and what it said about the analyst industry) in depth.
In addition to blogging, the Altimeter team is unusually active on Twitter. Solis now owns the team’s longest running account on that service, having joined just two days before Deborah Shultz in November, 2006. (4 months before the service blew up at SXSW 2007.)
In a recent analysis of the social media habits of more than 140 people responsible for social strategy at corporations around the world, Brian Solis was the 3rd most commonly followed individual Twitter user among members of that group. Owyang was #1 and Charlene Li was #2, meaning that the Altimeter team now includes all 3 of the 3 most-followed individuals on Twitter in the corporate social strategy world.
