ImpactWatch Blog

Cross posted from The Bivings Report

Anyone that has been to a tech conference the last few years knows that there is a huge amount of back channel communication that occurs on Twitter.   People provide live coverage of the talks they go to.  People organize dinner plans.  People stage revolts against panelists.  The conversation is constant, unfiltered and takes place in real time.

The preeminent poli-tech conference, Personal Democracy Forum, takes place next Monday and Tuesday in New York City.  Since we are a sponsor and partner of the Personal Democracy Forum, we decided to launch a tool that will aggregate conversation around the conference.  Check out Twitterslurp for #pdf2009.

We are finishing up details, but here is a list of Twitterslurp’s key features:

• The site will ingest any posts tagged as “#pdf09″, “#pdf2009″ or “Personal Democracy Forum” onto our main page in real time.  We can expand the words we track if other phrases/tags are used.  This will allow us to ingest the entire conversation, and not limit us to only pulling in mentions of a single hashtag.
• Twitterslurp features a leaderboard listing the top Twitter users at the conference based on volume.  Later today, we are going to expand this to feature a fuller leaderboard.  Our hope is that this directory of people tweeting about the conference will make it easy for people to make connections with others at the conference.
• Twitterslurp features a stats page that analyzes the volume of tweets that are coming in.
• We’ll be able to use our backend system to filter out spammers.  At the end of the conference, we’ll also have a database of all the relevant tweets which will allow us to do a full analysis of the conversation post-conference.

Most importantly, we’ll be releasing the code behind Twitterslurp to the open source community next so that other conferences/organizations can use the tool.

Check out Twitterslurp, and follow @bivings for the latest about the release of the tool.

Last week, when Twitter decided to remove then partially reinstate @reply visibility, I basically ignored the entire conversation.

I could not have cared less that Twitter would be hiding messages from one Twitter user to another. I had my user settings safely set to “No @replies”. I didn’t want to see other people’s conversations. If they wanted my opinion, they would have asked for it.

Which is why I was dumbfounded, days later, to discover @replies in my Twitterstream.

Here’s what happened.

There were originally three options for @replies in Notice settings:

All @replies allowed you to see all messages from everyone you follow. You then had the option to reduce visible @replies to only those directed TO the people you follow. So, you could see what your friends were saying to mutual friends. Then there was the option to see no messages that began with @username.

Based on a variety of issues, Twitter decided to completely remove @replies from everyone’s twitterstream – great for me, not so much for the thousands of people who complained via blogs and twitter.

Twitter says that only 3% of users had ever modified this setting from the default – which was to include @replies to followed – but not surprisingly, those 3% were the most engaged (and vocal) of Twitter’s user base. And all of them (except me) wanted to stay in the loop.

To compromise, Twitter has decided to reinstate @replies that are not created using the “reply” function in twitter (little backwards curving arrow button).

So, now all of us get to see @replies to people whose usernames are easy to memorize? Who are responding to a tweet in a platform where there’s no direct reply button? Twitter claims it is trying to reduce confusion regarding how @replies work. I’m not so confident that they have achieved that.

Twitter is now working on a user-specific setting. No details yet, but I’m really looking forward to individually setting @replies for the 2,800 people I follow. Good times.

Am I the only anti-social tweeter who doesn’t want to see @replies?

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TwitScoop is a website that shows recent spikes on Twitter and links to users’ postings. In addition, the trends are supplemented with visual data representing mentions over the past few hours. Another cool feature is an animated word cloud, shrinking/enlarging words gradually as they fade in and out of popularity.

I know most people are probably tired of reading about Twitter remixes, but this one is particularly well designed. It’s simple and functional, providing me with informatoin that very well may be relevant to my interests (the now).

In addition, there is a search tool and more information available for trends directly from the home page. Your Twitter credentials will suffice as an account login for TwitScoop. If only their API supported exporting these visualizations, or creating animated word clouds with terms of your choosing — there’d be some real value in that. So far it appears to restrict the API for hot trends (from their home page) only.

Well not me, but Save Chuck! That’s the call to action that fans of the NBC television show Chuck are promoting on the Internet. With Jay Leno taking up five hours of prime time this fall there isn’t much room for shows that are on the ratings bubble. NBC announced their lineup of new fall shows on Monday but didn’t say which shows were going to be canceled.

Enter the Internet.

There’s a SaveChuck Twitter account. There are at least nine Facebook groups trying to save the show from being canceled, with the largest group boasting a membership of 18,014 currently and an online petition with 11992 signatures. Interestingly, the online campaigning is working in concert with offline campaigns as well. One effort encouraged Chuck fans to go to Subway, one of the shows biggest sponsors, and buy a footlong and put in a comment card asking for the show to be saved. Folks from TheWB.com drove around L.A. in Nerd Herd cars, if you spotted one and sent a tweet to @thewbdocom with the #savechuck and #chuck hashtags you had a chance to win prizes. The candy maker WONKA even sent Nerds candy to NBC execs as well.

Another idea that is just plain awesome was to donate to the American Heart Association in the name of Chuck Bartowski, the star character of the show, and acknowledge Ben Silverman, an NBC executive in the donation. In just three days there are almost $4,000 in donations. Have a Heart – Renew Chuck!

There seems to be a lot of momentum, show actors Zach Levi and Josh Gomez were even on CNN yesterday to talk about the shows renewal possibilities. Hopefully that momentum will carry over into increased viewership in the fall as well.

Save Chuck campaigns on CNN

This is going to get messy.

Tomorrow, Facebook will radically shift its gatekeeping policies and allow for Twitter-like access to its data stream. The immediate effects: Facebook support in Twitter apps, a social networking giant declaring the need for connectivity, and a flood of Facebook apps, remixes, mashups, thawed and reheated in the morning.

The huge implications for Twitter aside, it’s also a significant step towards real-time interconnectivity. What’s in the right now — the derivative — definitely seems to be the way things are progressing. A good indicator could be the largest player in social networking blatantly declaring through action, “I will give you all of my data. Right now.”

I am quite sure that other services and networks will morph towards this trend (many already have), and soon the different “genres” of services will all congeal into desktop or mobile based mega apps, supporting dozens of communications services, from e-mail to messaging to Facebook to the next big thing. You can quote me on that. It’s coming.

This is of course a logical move for Facebook, and analysts have seen it coming — avoid the costs of developing various interfaces, but still grow out the user base garnered by third-party developers.

Will Facebook be able to get past its reputation as a more personal experience and dip into Twitter’s celebrity, news, debate, and networking share of the market? Nobody can say for sure, but I suspect it has more than a fighting chance to become a huge participant. Considering the figures for Facebook’s growth demographics, Zuckerberg and his associates have surveyed a nice set of trends by which to gauge their investment.

Over the coming weeks, more details and trends will materialize and the races will commence — I’ve already got my tickets.

Last week was an interesting week to be monitoring social media. There were several examples of consumers’ feedback running rampant on the social web and companies scrambling to keep up. Here are the big ones.

• Amazon.com delisted thousands of books from general search results, including many gay and lesbian themed books, prompting accusations of sudden policy change against such topics.
• Employees of Domino’s Pizza posted a video on YouTube of them defiling food while making it.
• Time Warner Cable revealed the details of its metered internet usage plans being tested in four major cities.
• Ashton Kutcher and CNN were involved in a challenge to be the first to reach 1,000,000 followers on Twitter. Only it turns out CNN didn’t even operate the CNNBrk Twitter account that was in the race.

All of these events created a massive amount of social media buzz, and the companies involved varied in their responses.

Amazon apologized and basically said the problem was “a glitch” but since then seems to be hoping that the buzz will go away leaving all of those who were outraged without much satisfaction.

Domino’s created a YouTube video response and set up a Twitter account of their own to answer any questions people might have showing that while they might not have been ready for something like this, they can certainly roll with the punches and respond appropriately.

Time Warner Cable backed off and has delayed plans to implement metered billing, presumably to polish up their PR and marketing machine before giving it another go. We’ll have to wait and see what the final outcome is.

CNN embraced the idea of the race to 1,000,000 followers while behind the scenes they hired James Cox, the owner of the CNNBrk account, as a consultant to run it for them. This well-played maneuver was a great way to make the best of the situation and let the hype about the race overshadow the possible branding nightmare.

The speed at which these story lines unfolded illustrates just how important it is to be monitoring your brand. But that’s only going to give you a fighting chance. The way you address the concerns of your consumers is going to mean the success or demise of your reputation in the long run.

If you’re looking to capitalize on Oprah’s show last week as well as the publicity generated by Kutcher’s million user showdown with CNN, then you’re probably interested in getting involved with Twitter — a great place to increase your exposure to the social media savvy.

The trick to Twitter is to keep things targeted, and only Tweet with real “value” — snippets or links that people will actually find insightful or useful. Let’s face it, Kutcher and Oprah have an overwhelming advantage when it comes to Twitter — their own celebrity — and making the platform work for your organization is going to take some strategy, patience, and a bit of luck.

While is is nice to achieve a following of epic proportions, Twitter really won’t do anything for you unless the relationships you make on the site add value to your organization. The first step here is to identify influential Twitterers within our target niche (your organization’s target market) and begin conversing with them. Use Twitter’s search features to find content that relates to your niche or industry. While these people will certainly appreciate a ReTweet, adding insight to their postings and pointing them to relevant, undiscovered slices of the web will be the most direct way to get noticed.

How much  should one Tweet? There’s no straightforward way to answer this, and there are multiple correct responses. An account that has dozens of Tweets a day will annoy users and come off as “spammy”, but an inactive account won’t do you much good either. I would let quality be the barometer for what you should or shouldn’t Tweet; quotas might encourage lackluster Tweeting, or conversely curb quality conversation. As a general rule, if a Tweet doesn’t contain original insight, perspective, or content, I tend to pass on posting it.

Twitter is all about conversation. Responding to direct messages, Tweets, and mentions should become a daily occurrence.  Using a Twitter App might streamline your Twitter-related workflow.

Facebook is a completely different game. While they’ve recently been making efforts towards joining the real-time conversation, Facebook is more about a static presence and providing a reference for addicted users rather than the “here and now” of Twitter. Provide real contact details, and make sure your organization’s page looks friendly and professional. If you prefer, you can integrate Facebook to distribute your Twitter announcements — more on this in part 5, when we orchestrate our social media to work together as a well-oiled machine.

At this point, we’ve begun creating our own original social media with an overall strategy in mind, keeping good etiquette practices in mind. The next step will consist of expanding readership and exposure through news sharing services such as Digg and Delicious, and finally we’ll wrap things up in an involved, step-by-step example of integrating all of these web layers into our home URL.

There are lots of differing opinions on who is best suited to analyze media coverage. Some say it must be done in-house as company employees are the experts on their own issues and initiatives. Others say PR firms are best because they understand how to track and analyze media and public outreach efforts. Then you have analysts from your monitoring firm who may have the most objective perspective.

Each of these options comes with a unique set of pros and cons. But I believe that the “who” in media analysis is less important than the “how”. Quality media analysis can be ensured through two steps.

1. Make the rules

We have a written protocol for every single client. These instructions outline:

- Features of the system and how to use them.
- A list of article tags.
- An explanation or definition of each tag.
- Instructions on how to apply to the tag.
- Examples of how (and how not) to apply the tag.

We have protocols that are 2 pages long and some that are more than 100. They are a valuable tool regardless of the project’s scope:

- As a reference for analyzing media coverage that is unusual or complex.
- As training material for new media analysts.
- As a reference for performing quality control.
- As a means of communication between client and analyst – so the client understands how their coverage is being analyzed and can provide feedback.

2. Enforce the rules

Quality control on media analysis is essential. Even the best analyst will occasionally misread a mention or click the wrong tag button. So it’s important to have a system in place to catch these mistakes.

Your quality control procedure will depend on a number of variables but, in general, we follow these guidelines:

- Daily quality control checks ensure corrections are timely.
- Documented corrections allow the analyst to review their mistakes, and allow the supervisor to determine if there is an ongoing issue. If a mistake is made repeatedly, re-training on part of the protocol may be necessary.
- Special coverage needs special handling. We keep track of any publication, tag or other coverage attribute that is consistently challenging (or especially important), search these out and ensure thorough quality control.
- More opinions help reduce subjectivity. For “borderline” tag situations, we consult a group of analysts for opinion. This is especially useful on tags such as sentiment where objectivity is more difficult.

Creating guidelines for analysis and ensuring those guidelines are followed will get you pretty far in developing meaningful media analysis. But let me throw a few more buzzwords at you.

1. Training

Analysts need to be experts on their client’s protocol. Depending on the complexity of the coverage and the frequency of tag changes, refresher training may also be warranted. Thorough training also reduces the time required to complete quality control procedures by reducing mistakes.

2. Consistency

The absolute most important quality in a media analyst is consistency. Obviously, it’s important to analyze each mention accurately, but far more important is to analyze each mention as all comparable mentions have been analyzed.

Consistency ensures that you can compare data points – this quarter to last quarter, this year to last year, this year to 5 years ago – and know that you are drawing accurate conclusions.

3. Transparency

The end client should have access to the protocol, the analysis reports and the underlying data. This transparency ensures that the analysts are accurately analyzing the data and faithfully translating the information into reports.

Follow Hannah on Twitter for more rules and/or regulations.

Photo courtesy of: Banalities

Last week, we took a look at creating a home URL and covered good starting practices for a bit of internet marketing. This would have been adequate as recently as 2006, but the internet has become more modular and intricate since then. Social media portals have become mini networks themselves — this guide was written to help readers use these mini networks to drive traffic to their home URL, thereby increasing revenue and message spread. Let’s get started.

A good starting place for any organization is Check Usernames. At this website, you will be able to check for user name availability at a plethora of social media websites. This will aid us in choosing an appropriate username for professional use. Your username should be the name of your organization or a recognizable variation. I find Check Usernames to be a very convenient tool, because I prefer usernames to be more or less consistent from site to site in attempts to create a consistent online presence. Make sure to use your top level domain e-mail contact (the e-mail service provided by your home page URL) or create one in Gmail.

First, let’s create a shortlist of social media sites that are appropriate for your organization. Twitter is currently universal, and a Facebook page is easy to make. Unless you’re a twenty year old DJ or in a local alt rock band, it would be advisable to steer clear of MySpace, which lacks proper quality control suitable for a professional organization. Social news sharing sites like Digg and del.icio.us (now just delicious.com) can be used to promote home URL blog posts. These four websites will be a good starting point for our purposes:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Digg
• Delicious

With just registering for these four networks, we’ve already begun our process of using social media traffic to increase our exposure. Make sure to use strong passwords, as company or organizational social media accounts are valuable to hackers. After you’ve registered, take a moment to read through the website FAQ to get an idea about how each functions.

We’ll begin our strategic use of these social media profiles next week, but it could be useful to blog about your newly registered accounts. For a complete newcomer to the social media scene, take a while (more than a day) to peruse the various networks to see how other individuals and organizations are using them. Take notice of any differences you see between professional organizations and individual internet users, especially on Twitter and Facebook.

In the next round of our guide, the raw content will commence. I will take you through Twitter and Facebook etiquette, strategies, and optimization tips. Part four will focus on blog and website promotion through social news sharing websites (mainly Digg and Delicious, though much of the information will apply to others as well). In the last installment of the series, we’ll bring it all full circle and tie our social media accounts back into our home URL using plug-ins and blogging strategies.

This is a little late because, well, I was in Acapulco. But I was thinking about measurement the ENTIRE time. I swear.

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Some question payoff of social media efforts – BtoB Magazine

How to get started in social media – Ragan

Social Media Measurement – Are We Staring at the Stones? – Social Computing Journal

[Social Media] The missing metrics: actions after words – Torley Lives

Assessing free social media metrics tools – iMedia Connections and Rob Gonda’s Free Social Media Monitoring Techniques

When ROI Measurement And Actual Effectiveness Are Mutually Exclusive – Fast Company

Social Media and Car Insurance: A Match Made in Heaven? – Mashable

Who’s Worth Listening to? – Successful Blog

This Machine Eats Tweets: The System Behind @Comcast and Others – ReadWriteWeb – and response from Dave Fleet, Social Media Monitoring -Disturbing Or Useful?

The Obscure Art of Measurement – All About Branding

Share of Voice: A Key Metric That Has Lost Its Place? Marketing Spectrum

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