How do you know what matters and what you can ignore when it comes to online reputation? With Sam Michelson, Founder & CEO, Five Blocks

Data Malarkey - the podcast about using data smarter

In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles talks to Sam Michelson, Founder & CEO of Five Blocks – a technology and a consulting firm specialising in digital reputation management. He and his team of more than 50 truly do make smarter use of data to understand what the world says and thinks about companies, brands, and corporate executives – and if their opinions really matter or are just froth, bluster, and noise. The company is based in both Jerusalem, Israel, and New York City.

A psychology graduate from Yeshiva University, New York, Sam is also a Master of Science in Management from Boston University. He founded Five Blocks in 2009, and says that the company uses “proprietary technology and big data analysis … to empower top brands and prominent individuals to tell their best story, via search, to the audiences that matter most”.

Sam believes it’s very easy for corporations and their leaders to get very hung up on signals and content online that don’t matter. His company collects time series data from Google (and Bing) search results in dozens of markets all round the world, covering more than 100,000 companies. It also collects Wikipedia data, not least because Wikipedia searches often rank so highly in natural search, plus also – recently – Bing AI, ChatGPT, and Google’s Bard. The data is ingested into Five Blocks’ proprietary IMPACT tool which gives search data proper context, comparing ongoing results with those from peers and what’s normal, what’s exceptional, and what’s volatile.

Five Blocks’ clients tend to engage with the company when there’s an opportunity or a threat. Sam and his team don’t have data quality challenges so much as data over-abundance issues. They’re like “kids in a candy store”, he notes. But it’s the firm’s data-driven approach that takes the emotion out of digital reputation management.

Because the business was boot-strapped and not venture-backed, this has given Five Blocks the opportunity to test and learn and move more slowly than it might otherwise have been forced to. It also started early (2009) and benefits from having no team members with a big consultancy background – though unusually in this market, Five Blocks is both a technology AND a consultancy business.

When looking for insight, Sam is an advocate of mapping out the current situation, identifying what you’d expect to see, and then zeroing in on what’s missing. Like a great forensic scientist, he’s as keen to explore “when the dogs don’t bark” – as the forensic scientist of her generation, Professor Angela Gallop put it in the title of her 2019 book – as when they do.

Sam finds distraction, centres himself, and finds time for reflection away from Five Blocks through his eight (yes, eight) children – not all of whom are still at home – a daily prayer service, and mountain biking in the countryside outside Jerusalem.

EXTERNAL LINKS

Five Blocks – https://www.fiveblocks.com

Sam’s LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/sammichelson/

Five Blocks on Twitter – https://twitter.com/5blocks

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