We love talking about Best Practices here at the Bivings Report, and today we’re offering up a very meta look at best practices in company blogs. Every business has a point of view or way of delivering their products and services – and what better way to share that with the world than on their sites? At last night’s June Social Media Club DC event, the panel discussed the strategies and challenges of their respective companies’ blogs.The speakers ranged from AARP, to Jess3 to the Nature Conservancy and their wise words (along with our perspective) could be distilled in the following list:

DO

• Leverage your company’s unique point of view to create great content. There’s a reason your company does what it does: so share it with the world
• Be Authentic. Chances are – if a reader is checking out your company’s blog – it’s because they care about your products, services, or brand. Or maybe they just think the colors are pretty. Regardless, your blog isn’t a sales pitch, it’s a way to share your organization’s perspective about relevant topics.
• Blogging takes a sustained and concerted effort. This means posting content on a regular basis, and not expecting your first 300 word post to get picked up by Mashable. Your blog WILL find its voice and niche audience,but getting there will take work and dedication.
• Great content leads to great SEO (not the other way around). Don’t spend so much time worrying about keywords, and more about what you’re actually writing. Sure, its nice when google picks up your content, but the content itself is what will drive traffic (as well as fame, fortune, and new business leads) to your site.
• Get lots of people in the mix. Allow all types of employees to have a voice. The programmers probably have good advice, as do the upper management. Involving many different authors also allows for more even workload distribution.
• Measure. Web analytics can help you see the full picture when it comes to traffic. Tracking the data over time can show valuable trends. Are old posts still getting lots of pageviews? Maybe that’s a good opportunity to revamp them.

DON’T

• Stop posting if the blog isn’t an overnight success.
• Forget to share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets.
• Aim to sound like your competitors.
• Forget to make sure any guest posts/cross-posted content is OK with your lawyers

In comparing the Facebook pages of the top 86 magazines by circulation, while those with the highest circulations generally had the highest number of Facebook fans, much like our newspaper study this presents a problem when trying to quantify engagement. In short, how do you avoid biasing your results towards magazines with a small, but engaged numbers of Facebook fans.

For a magazine like Playboy with 2.3 million fans, what is the best approach  to compare engagement on their Facebook page to engagement on Time’s which has over 2 million fewer members? While there are some  statistical methods can compensate, at the end of the day we believe  it’s going to come down to a qualitative, rather than quantitative judgment. In this respect, we present our own views as to the top ten magazines on Facebook. If you agree / disagree or have a better method please let us know in the comments!

Please feel free to share or embed this image on your blog w/ attribution: Download at http://bivin.gs/i93iiJ.

See the speadsheet of our raw data after the jump -

Here at ImpactWatch, we’re not only interested in what people are saying on Twitter, but also the means by which they are saying it.  This week, we took a look at some statistics gleaned by our SLURP140 tool from the State of the Union address as well as the WhatsNextDC conference that happened in Foggy bottom a couple of days ago.

The audience sample size in the SOTU address was much larger, but it was also very clear that many more citizens were tweeting from mobile devices and on-the-go. While many DC social-media-types are using stationary applications such as tweet deck on their laptops and smart phones.  Using the twitter.com web interface was not even listed in the top 10 sources of tweets during the SOTU, but it ranked third during the conference.

These are a couple of those statistics pages that we pulled from other SLURP140 sites.

Greater Greater Washington - This blog has over 40 editors who contribute at least 4 lengthy articles to the site every weekday. GGW often features graphs, charts, and research conducted by the authors themselves (as opposed to aggregated data from other news outlets). Likewise, many of the pictures of the site are ones that the authors take using their own cell phones or cameras. GGW also provides handy links to useful (smaller) community pages that even allowed members of the TBG staff to sign up for a Glover Park email listserv.

Prince of Petworth – This hyper-local blog, run by Dan Silverman, focuses on the news, real estate, and events happening in Petworth, Columbia Heights, Park View, Adams Morgan, Pleasant Plains, U Street,  Logan Circle, and Mt. Pleasant neighborhoods. Unlike the DCist, PoP talks quite a bit about area real estate and development issues – while letting their commenter run wild with other topics and open questions.

TBD (for it’s aggregation capabilities) – We know that TBD is affiliated in a local news service (ABC 7), but their focus on the social media information aggregation in the DC community is pretty commendable. The make google maps of cool bars, link to community news, and allow you to create a user account and customize your TBD news experience. We’re also HUGE fans of the @TBDCommute twitter account – which you can follow to get up-to-the-minute tweets about escalator outages, traffic accidents, and other WMATA issues.

DCIst - We may not be breaking any ground here by mentioning a blog in the city-ist sphere. However, DCist can always be relied upon to not only provide relevant news, events, and links that keep us entertained throughout the week.

Also honorable mentions: FamousDC and FishBowlDC which both feature great content.

Curious about other things that are popular in DC nowadays? Check out the Washington Post’s DC Tweeps 2011 list – which recently held a vote to determine the most popular twitter users in a number of categories.

Did we forget to mention your favorite DC blog? Let us know in the comments below

While we do encourage our clients to create and maintain blogs for their  organizations as a way of reaching out to clientele and discussing topics of mutual interest, those topics should still be related to your organization’s mission and profile. Or if nothing else, always follow rule #1 and “do no harm,” and be especially wary of bringing up divisive topics like politics or religion tends. In short, leave the commentary to the commentators and keep your blog on topic. In this case, The Black Squirrel appears to be swimming far outside their assigned lane as many on Twitter are outraged over this line which has a particularly divisive opinion about undocumented workers. Commenting on the fact that  the man convicted of murdering Leavy was an illegal immigrant:

While the author attempts to walk back this generalization about undocumented workers, the last line of the last paragraph does not help: 

“Well-meaning souls on both sides of the political aisle can wax eloquently in favor or against illegal aliens. This is not to take a position on that. That is to suggest that it should not be played to cheap laughs, not when too many Americans have been vicitimized [sic] by it or live in fear of it.”  Emphasis here is my own. 

After this first broke on Twitter, it was soon picked up by the very popular Washington D.C. based political satire blog Wonkette, where in a short time it picked up another 847 views, 36 comments and 10 re-tweets.

Update: since I started writing this the Washington Post has also picked up on the story!

Of course, we created a instance of Slurp140 to track the buzz.

Given that I created this 30 minutes ago, we did not capture some older Tweets about the topic, but nevertheless the vast majority of these comments are very much negative in sentiment against the Black Squirrel. So far we have tracked at least 92+ people who say they will not be going back to drink or dine at the Black Squirrel. 

To sum it all up, when thinking of topics for your businesses’ next blog post, do no harm, consider the cost / benefit of swimming outside your lane and of course, check your spelling.

1. Nevada: 19,736 tweets by 4,827 people.
2. California: 15,459 tweets by 5,406 people
3. Washington: 12,152 tweets by 2,600 people
4. Illinois: 6,206  tweets by 1,145 people
5. West Virginia: 3,851 tweets by 1,251 people

In examining the graphs, you can see the spikes in chatter correlate to major news stories, new television ads and perceived gaffs by the candidates:

California:

Nevada:

The WOW10 conference held a TwitPic contest after the conference closed wherein attendees submitted their favorite conference pictures and notable phrases scribbled on note pads. Overall, more than a thousand tweets with the hashtag #WOW10 were shared, many people sharing quotes from the speakers and talking about the wine.

Below are some of the statistics that we were able to glean from the one-day conference in California.


]]> http://www.impactwatch.com/2010/slurp140-and-the-wisdom-of-we-conference/feed/ 0 http://www.impactwatch.com/2010/lets-get-real-time-live-twitter-streams-in-impactwatch/ http://www.impactwatch.com/2010/lets-get-real-time-live-twitter-streams-in-impactwatch/#comments Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:32:46 +0000 Chuck Fitzpatrick http://www.impactwatch.com/?p=1139 ImpactWatch now displays a real-time feed of custom filtered tweets right on your dashboard.

Based on Slurp140 technology, the new Twitter stream updates automatically to display new tweets, a leaderboard of most frequent tweeters, and stats on your tweets over time.

Best of all, you can instantly reply to or retweet any mention right from your tweet stream!

The new Twitter tool complements ImpactWatch’s existing range of feed sources which includes print, online or broadcast news, and social media sources. Depending on your monitoring and measurement needs we can customize your platform with the sources that are important to you.

Graphs and statistics also update in real-time on the Dashboard page, so you can see the who, when and what of your Twitter coverage.

We have a lot of features on the way in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for more. Sign up for a Demo Account now to check it out!

Last Friday I was fortunate to spend 30 minutes talking with Jack Dorsey, who in addition to co-founding Twitter recently launched a product & service called Square. As an electronic device, Square is a mobile credit card reader that plugs into the audio port of compatible smart phones and laptops. As a service, Square is a downloadable application that verifies sellers and provides buyers a measure of security about the transaction itself. From small businesses to political campaigns, the potential applications for Square are virtually unlimited.

A few highlights and then the interview after the jump. Also strongly recommended: Friday Coffee with Square on Ustream

1. Why we were better off without Twitter on September 11th 2001: “One thing I was really inspired by after 9/11, especially in NYC is how people gathered and really sought each other out face to face…. My concern with relying on the technology would be that it would potentially abstract some of that humanness, and make it a little bit easier not to go out in the streets and not to go out meet your neighbors and really support each other.”
2. What Wired.com Got Wrong: No PayPal v. Square Deathmatch: “We want to be completely payment network agnostic, so if you’re really comfortable using PayPal and you want to pay (or receive) with it… but you still want the Square front end experience, that is something we would be interested in implementing and maintaining.”
   
   
3. Top Politicos on Twitter: Barham Salih, Cory Booker,  Mike Bloomberg, Francis Slay.
4. Why ‘Social Media Experts’ using Auto-Follow Services Have No Souls: While Jack was more diplomatic in his phrasing, if you’re doing something against the “fundamental spirit of the technology,” for me, that is red flag. That is not to say paid advertising of an organizations account is a bad idea, but the whole idea of paying for followers / friends is somewhat repugnant: “I think any sort of automation or any sort of aspect like that really takes away from the spirit of the technology which is to really share what you think, what your experiencing, what is happening around you. I think there is a lot of people in the social media space that are trying to consult against that, and I am fully supportive or that.”
5. Advice for Entrepreneurs: Communicate, Build Something People Need: In response to a question about production delays and software issues, Jack said his biggest challenge since starting Square has been: “Communicating in the right way what is actually out there today, what works and what still needs some work” In regards to supply problems with Square, I asked Jack if he had considered domestic supplies  “The only reason we picked China is because we could not find anyone in the U.S. to do it…”

Q1: Can you tell us about inspiration for starting Square- Biggest challenge or unexpected surprise?

“The whole thing has been rather challenging because it is a new industry, something we are learning, and not just learning but learning how to simplify. That has been the biggest challenge. There is a lot of complexity in this industry and when we remove a bit of it, some more just pops up. Our focus is to build an experience that hides all that complexity or does away with it in some way. That has been a challenge to first of all recognize (the complexity)  where it is and then get rid of it. There has not been any one particular thing that has really been challenging, it has been all of it.”

Q2: Square is available for Apple and Android Devices. Is there something the mobile phone services providers or manufactures could do to make things easier for developers?

“It seems all the platforms are doing their best to make it easy, in particular Windows and Blackberry. They are right in the middle of a transition, they’re reworking their API, their SDK to make it easy to address all their hardware platforms instead of having to program for each one. I think it will take some time to get there, but it is something we are definitely excited to participate in once they do get there.”

Q3: You outsourced the manufacturing of Square, if you had to do it again, would a domestic supplier been able to meet demand for the cost and what you needed, or was China still the best way to go?

“The only reason we picked China is because we could not find anyone in the U.S. to do it. There are very few people who make things anymore in this country, especially small electronics like that. We actually went out and tried for many months to find people in the United States to do it. Not really even considering the cost aspect, but we couldn’t find it. If we do find it, we would still love to turn that on in the U.S. We just could not find anyone who could meet the demands. “

Q4: You recently sent email to Square users apologizing and explaining the delays in hardware and transaction limits. What has been the overall tone of the response been like?

“It has actually been really constructive. We do have a lot of people who are frustrated with the amount of time it has taken. And I think a lot of that is just our fault in terms of communicating in the right way what is actually out there today, what works and what still needs some work. So that’s definitely been a challenge, but I think what we learn in all these things is that as long as you are talking to people, it minimizes a lot of the frustrations and the issues. So were just intending to do a lot more talking to people and making sure that everyone has a sense of where we are with our application and with the service and what that means for everyone.”

Q5: PayPal recently introduced an updated application allowing iPhone users to fist bump payments. Can you talk about what sets Square apart from that as well as past and future mobile credit card processing tools?

“In order to do the bump technology with PayPal, it does require a PayPal account, and there are a number of people who have PayPal accounts and that is definitely a clever way to go about transferring money, but it is just not our focus. Our focus is really speaking to that 90% of what people are using, they’re using plastic cards. Our intention is to turn on that other side and really enable those face to face transactions with devices that everyone has in their pocket. So we see ourselves a little bit differently in that light because we do not require any sort of account to actually pay someone. You just use the plastic card in your pocket. And that is really our focus. At the same time, we want to be completely payment network agnostic, so if your really comfortable using PayPal and you want to pay with it, or you want to receive payments through PayPal, but you still want the Square front end experience, that is something we would be interested in implementing and maintaining.”

Q6:  Act Blue allows you to donate to their candidates with a specifically phrased Tweet. There is a Facebook application called “SquareUp with PayPal” that is geared for collecting money for Facebook events. Any plans for integrating Square with Facebook, Twitter or YouTube?

“Right now were focused purely on the face to face interactions. Once you start getting more into the Internet and virtual interactions you start to lose more identity. We want to make sure that we get the face to face stuff right, because 90% of commerce is still offline, only 10% of it has moved online and we want to address that 90%. There are definitely models on how to extend that to the online and there are obvious integration points, but we are talking this bit first.”

Q7: What are your thoughts on politicians use of Twitter? Is it something that is more effective on the state or local level where the representatives themselves actually respond and engage or is there a politician you know who is doing it very well?

“I am really fascinated by this usage, and I love to see it. I went over to Baghdad with the State Department in March of last year and we managed to get the Deputy Prime Minister (Barham Salih) on Twitter and his usage of it was really, really inspiring. It was very frank, it was very direct and it was very transparent and it was him directly. I think in terms of other politicians in the U.S., I am most impressed with three Mayors: Cory Booker of Newark, who has really taken to all these technologies, including Twitter to talk about the issues that his city is facing. He is a champion, he is out at 3am on police beats, walking the streets, reporting. And most importantly, he is replying to people, and he is replying to people in real time that communicate with him… He has been awesome. Mayor Mike Bloomberg has also gotten into it a lot more. He used it very heavily during his campaign run and has started back up in using it during in day to day, which I am really excited to see. For a city like New York it just creates a lot more transparency and connection to, someone who is often removed from the normal citizen’s particular day to day, so now he is a lot more approachable and accessible. In my hometown of St. Louis Missouri, Mayor Slay has been using the technology extremely effectively. He has really funny and clever Tweets, but he also really engages the St. Louis community and replies real time. (He is) using it as a way to point out very interesting things about St. Louis that normally people might look over.

Q8: Earlier this month at the Personal Democracy Forum, there was some speculation about the impact of Twitter if it had been around on September 11th. I recall you mentioning that there might be some instances where instant communication like that might be a negative, so I was wondering if you had any follow up thoughts.

“It’s a really good question, and I honestly don’t know what effect Twitter would have in that situation, if any. My particular worry, is that the one thing I was really inspired by after 9/11, especially in NYC is how people gathered and really sought each other out face to face. People were just walking the streets and it really united the city in a way no other event has ever done. My concern with relying on the technology would be that it would potentially abstract some of that humanness, and kind of make it a little bit easier not to go out in the streets and not to go out meet your neighbors and really support each other. I think that was a defining moment for NY, New Yorkers and thereby rest of the nation. That would be my only concern in introducing a technology like that…. Certainly technologies were used at that time, IM was huge, and we definitely had cell phones, but I think the most important thing in that situation is that people left their technologies and really focused on their face to face interaction.”

Q9: Is there a particularly surprising or innovative use of Twitter you have seen? Any thoughts on self described ‘gurus’ or social networking ‘experts’ using automated tools to follow tons of people?

“I am surprised everyday on how people use Twitter. There is a different account that springs to my attention on a daily basis. I have a rotating set of favorites but on the latter point, I think any sort of automation or any sort of aspect like that really takes away from the spirit of the technology which is to really share what you think, what your experiencing, what is happening around you, and when we get into more and more automation we get back to these abstractions that Twitter effectively removes. So I don’t really appreciate that sort of automation. I think there is a lot of people in the social media space that are trying to consult against that, and I am fully supportive or that. And being more of an effective communicator, using the technology, using the constraints, but it changes on a daily basis.

Q10: What is the best Twitter analytics tool for tracking reach or ranking users?

“I think it is wide open right now, I can’t say I have spent a lot of time looking at firms doing that just yet, I think there is something there and it needs to be done. I don’t know who is the strongest at the moment or even what they are looking at, I think it is one of the most fascinating things of Twitter is getting an understanding of reach. There is a lot of work there and it is going to be coming from a lot of different folks. Not just one in particular, so I am excited to see what people come up with.”

Head over to The Bivings Report to download or listen to the interview

In November 2009, Google had 65.4% of the share, meaning that the company has gained almost two whole percentage points of the overall search market.  Yahoo! and Microsoft are going to have use their new deal on the offensive if they don’t want to continue losing the market.  I personally love the notion to name the combined search engine “Bing-hoo!”.

In other news, our parent company’s blog reported yesterday about the text campaign for Haiti relief.  According to the official American Red Cross Twitter account, texters have donated over $3 million in aid.  That’s an amazing combination of compassion and technology!  As they said, keep it up!