|
|||
|
This presentation, slightly modified from another deck I use, was delivered to 4th year Marketing students at Laurentian University in Sudbury. Here’s an overview of the presentation:
Defining your success on twitter from Jean-Paul Rains was a presentation delivered to the #PSEWEB conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
With nearly all PSE institutions on Twitter, we’ve established that it is important to have a presence. That presence has differing levels of dedicated resources, different goals and varying measures of success. Like Ornithology, this presentation will cover the study of behaviours, effectiveness, and measurements of PSE Twitter presences.
Defining your success on Twitter can be difficult, even more difficult when trying to explain it to someone who is Twilliterate. If being on Twitter is merely a way for your organization to check a box, that’s fine. But, if you are interested in taking that check box and turning it into an easily attained performance measure, this presentation is for you. Like any dedicated birdwatcher, we took a look at some of the more successful Canadian PSE Twitter accounts and aimed to find commonalities in their behaviours and how that translated to their successes. Finally, after searching for ways to define success from # of followers, % breakdowns of interactions to 3rd party measurements, we take a look at the different ways (free!) for you to measure your success. Look past your number of followers and turn that check box into a CEO friendly success story. First of all, I’m a numbers guy. When I saw a post from Fraser Strategies saying that my former MP had left Twitter, I wanted to crunch the numbers. The NDP member of parliament for Timmins-James Bay, Charlie Angus, had in fact, left Twitter. I’m not disappointed in Angus, or his advisors, but I am disappointed for the 4,441 (and growing!) of us who followed him on Twitter. Here are a few numbers on what this means. 4,441 : followers on Twitter 54 : people he was following on Twitter 81,957 : population of the Timmins-James Bay riding 246,275.67 : square kilometers in the riding 24 : number of people he visited during a 90 minute town hall meeting Expanding on some of these numbers, if Angus is to allow his constituents to ask him questions directly, in groups of 24 participants, it would take him roughly 3,415 visits. In 90 minute meetings, working 12 hour days, it would take him roughly 426 days to meet with these constituents. Now, I commend Angus for joining Twitter and representing his constituents and especially, for the awareness he built through Twitter for the residents in Attawapiskat. However, the irony in his leaving Twitter,I will leave as fodder for the Twitterverse. Finally, for anyone participating in Twitter, it serves as a reminder that Twitter is not a megaphone on top of a hill, it’s a really big church basement. Recently, when asked by a client how they could properly measure their success versus competitors on Twitter, I defaulted to my typical answer, but then thought it out a little more. Initially I thought of Klout.com or Kred.com. After my cursory view of both the client and their competitor I noticed that, although the client had a much more thought out content strategy, the competitor scored higher on Klout and Kred. After my first look, this made me think of the obvious issues that already exist in measuring Twitter success (I have reluctantly relied on these sites). Of course, they provide at least some input on the matter; they have ever improving analytics of true reach and amplification. However I have yet to see a site be able to provide a strong measurement reflecting content effectiveness. It is my hope that Klout, while integrated with Facebook, may be able to integrate with link shortening applications to measure engagement and click throughs on content. The actual consumption of the content can be easy to measure if you own the short links however it is quite difficult to know whether or not your RTs are being read or not. Most will contend that these will receive more RTs, however that’s likely an assumption of consumption. No matter how you slice it, we are currently missing a big piece of the analytical pie on Twitter. The question is, which service will fill the gap first? The most recent Ontario election has left me wondering whether or not the results were impacted by the activities of the candidates on Social Media. With that, I decided to take a look at 3 races where an underdog came up to take the win in a close race. This will hopefully give us an idea as to whether social media may have had a positive influence on voters. Through these 3 races, I’ve tabled the social score of Facebook fans/friends + Twitter Klout score in order to establish which candidate is interacting more effectively with constituents online.
Trinity-Spadina It’s easy to see in this case who had the handle on their “handles” with Thomson dominating social media. This landslide was explained by Marchese’s Facebook presence with his high privacy settings on his profile and he had linked his Twitter account to auto-update his Facebook status – classic mistake, no one wants to chat with a robot. Meanwhile, Thomson’s efforts of engaging posts and interactions were impressive. While this didn’t translate to a seat in office, the race was much closer than the anticipated result of Marchese doubling up on Thomson.
Ottawa Centre
Northumberland-Quinte West
In conclusion, the results have shown that the social media presences of these underdogs had a tangible impact on the end result of the elections. It is safe to assume that social media in general has a positive impact on ridings but may be further influential for city centre ridings. For me, what has been proven here, is that the impact of social media must be measured by political campaigns in order to properly gauge their polls.
Time will tell whether the winners of the election can properly use these tools in order to keep listening to their voters, or at least make the voters feel like they are
I presented this topic to the #pseweb conference in Toronto recently. It did spark some debate among colleagues and it was great to see people really start to consider what they want to post on their own social media pages. We took 10 Canadian University and College pages from accross Canada and analyzed their levels of interactions per post on Facebook. The results were very interesting and correlated nicely to the overall impact of the Facebook page. Have a look. King content : A social media audit
View more presentations from Jean-Paul Rains
Why you should get Twitter. Let your news come to you: Twitter brings the information you want directly to you. No waiting until 6pm for the daily news, or waiting for the journalist to have the IT guys update the website. Twitter’s trending topics can quickly show you what everyone around the virtual water cooler is talking about, right now. Never before has communication on world shaping events (think Haiti earthquakes etc.) happend so instantaneously. The stories are happening right now, go to one application and hear from all the sources. You can create topical lists in order to keep track of certain contacts or follow a search term (similar to Google Alerts, but on demand). Connect with industry leaders: whether work, play, interest or hobby; odds are Twitter has your industry leader. Whether that is Justin Bieber ( ~8M followers), Biz Stone (~1.5M followers), or Martha Stewart ( ~2M followers) they all hold something of value to specific audiences. You get direct access to their sought after ideas and have the ability to add to their conversation. Most of all, you create friendships, well, at the very least, acquaintances. To some luddites this can be scary, but don’t worry; unless you have a “please rob me sign” you’re safe. Just check out UnMarketing`s Scott Stratten and you’ll understand. Be up to the second:Twitter can send notifications to your mobile device the second your most sacred source updates (for me, TSN’s Bob McKenzie). This doesn’t have to be activated, but it sure helps you when you’re waiting to hear something (hockey’s trade deadline). This is a wonderful tool if you are at any major events or conferences. Using a search term or a Twittter #hashtag you can find other members of the conference and get their opinions on the subject quickly (great for speakers or event managers). After all, if Charlie Sheen can get one million followers in just over 24 hours, why can’t you #win as well and find some of your own followers. Chances are you know someone who doesn’t value Twitter yet (or that’s you?), send them this post and help out this lost soul With the Super Bowl representing Television’s biggest event, ever, it creates an advertising platform that makes marketers salivate. How could I resist talking about it? A few stats to establish the reach; 30-second spots averaged 3M$ (roughly 100,000$/second) and the game that was watched by 100M people. Of those commercials, only 17% included Social Media influence – baffling. OK, some brands like Telecomm companies don’t want to have a social presence (can you imagine the volume of complaints?). I think the take away here is of that 17%, who did it well? Here’s a look at the auto-industry. Volkswagen Chrysler and Eminem To me this commercial dwarfed Lipton’s Brisk lengthy spot by focusing on a sense of community and featuring the story for the underdog. Their measured up favorably online as their spot was cited nearly 20,000 times online in the first hour it aired. It didn’t have built in social media, however it was rock solid it didn’t need a tweet push. Ford Motor Company Can’t remember or YouTube Ford’s commercial? You won’t. They sat out the Super Bowl in favor of reaching out to bloggers and engage over the landscape. Winner. If you think Chev did a better job, remember they friended someone before a first date and read an audio facebook feed, give me a break. Chevrolet I went back and forth a couple times on this one. On the one hand, they did have some solid spots but I just can’t get past their facebook feed being read by the car. This ad just ruined their commercials for me To see these ads visit Ad Age . One last note, why can’t advertisers make it easy for us and provide their Facebook URLs or Twitter addresses instead of “find us on Twitter” – no way I am searching for your name from my BB The recent emergencies in Canadian Universities and Colleges have received a lot of attention within their local spheres. In the last two weeks, the University of Western Ontario, Georgian College and now more recently York University and Acadia University, have all been shut down to due unforeseen emergencies. In the cases of Western, Georgian and Acadia, the campuses were closed due to extreme weather conditions. For York University, a fire in the central heating building shut down their Keele campus. These shut downs were primarily announced via community e-mails, web news items and finally social media updates. The latter, is my point of interest. All post-secondary institutions have some sort of Emergency Management plan, like this one from the University of Windsor, for example. Within these policies, processes are outlined to respond to emergencies. However, very few of them touch on communicating the messages to stakeholders past e-mail or web updates. With students quickly consuming any messages provided, they will continue to look for instant access to information and they are turning to social media for answers. Are we ready for them? In the most recent example, Western updated their 11,000+ Facebook community instantly on their official page and was able to address the issue head on. They received 55 likes and only 8 comments on a post updated at 5:14am announcing the school’s closure. Their feedback from students was largely positive and their community was informed before their morning coffee. In other cases, infrequent updates can lead to unrest among students, confusion and many questions pilling up on official pages. With extra time on their hands and a topic in mind, students can get creative and having your institution on the right end of the joke can be crucial. In a most recent case, a shutdown became fodder for Twitter’s #1 trending topic in Toronto. South of the border, our American counterparts have experienced this already. In September, Jessica Krywosa of http://doteduguru.com/ wrote about the #utshooter experience of the University of Texas at Austin. The University was able to quickly respond to an emergency and left many schools asking the question “Does your Campus Security Have a Place in Social Media?”. In social media we always talk about providing value and being transparent, but in these cases being prepared and providing instant information to stakeholders is critical. Is your institution or company ready to respond to emergencies through social media? Here’s a look at the newest presentation that was created by Rains Media in conjunction with Matthew Melnyk of Brock University.It was first delivered to the management of student focused services of Fleming College in Peterborough, Ontario. The presentation is an introduction to the Millennial (Generation-Y) generation entering the work force and the changes in technology that have shaped this generation. The characteristics of the Millennials along with techniques for working with and hiring them combine for the first part of the presentation. The second part focuses on policies and techniques to mitigate the risk and manage opportunities provided by social networking within higher education. View more presentations from Jean-Paul Rains.
|
|||
|
Copyright © 2013 Rains Media - All Rights Reserved Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa |
Naidoo held a 12 point lead however was trounced it the polls, similarly, in Klout score. As for Facebook, Naidoo had no updates to his personal profile close to election time and few interactive posts on his Facebook page. Naqvi was not much better on Facebook, with few updates but a much higher response rate on his page. Where Naqvi separated himself was in his use of Twitter, with a true reach of over 1K (175 for Naidoo) his tweets were focused and influential. In this case, again, use of social media was a pre-cursor for an unexpected result.
This 10 point lead for Rinaldi disappeared quickly on election night as he was supplanted by teacher and beef farmer Rob Milligan. Rinaldi was non-existent on Facebook but did have a small presence on Twitter with a true reach of 148. His handle was the unassuming @VoteLouRinaldi and he rarely had tweets of any relevance, other than when he congratulated his competitor @RobMilliganPC. While Milligan’s usage of Twitter was not impressive either, his Facebook presence was tangible with updates and a significant amount of followers. While this riding did not prove the same result, however it did show us that this rural riding (and potentially others like it) may be less likely to be influenced by social media.
