12. August 2010: approx. 2.64
billion Tweets per month
These images are to scale and represent
the difference in volume of Tweets
between the two dates.
13. “It is dangerous to underestimate the huge
changes this revolution will bring to build
and destroy - not just companies but
whole countries."
17. So Murdoch was right and he clearly cares.
But why should I?
18. % of British Population reading daily newspaper
39% of British population
don’t read a daily paper
Source: Metrica / Gorkana UKPulse survey – base 13,000
www.metrica.net/ukpulse
19. % of 16–23 year olds reading daily paper
40% of 16-23 year olds
don’t read a daily paper
Source: Metrica / Gorkana UKPulse survey – base 13,000
www.metrica.net/ukpulse
20. % of 36–44 year olds reading daily paper
45% of 36-44 year olds
don’t read a daily paper
Source: Metrica / Gorkana UKPulse survey – base 13,000
www.metrica.net/ukpulse
21. % of 65+ year olds reading daily paper
27% of people aged 65+
don’t read a daily paper
Source: Metrica / Gorkana UKPulse survey – base 13,000
www.metrica.net/ukpulse
22. % of British population getting news online
Only 25% of British
population don’t read their
news online
Over 51% do – and that’s
just on the BBC
Source: Metrica / Gorkana UKPulse survey – base 13,000
www.metrica.net/ukpulse
23. % of 65+ years old getting news online
It’s not just the young
reading news online
Source: Metrica / Gorkana UKPulse survey – base 13,000
www.metrica.net/ukpulse
46. Volume - Forget absolute numbers
Beware scoring systems
Who matters? Influence v relevance.
Treat automated metrics with caution
Private conversations
Query string is crucial
Measure appropriately
Summary of the challenges
First a step back – not just in space, but in time
Although this looks like the Universe. It is of course… the famous representation of the internet.
Demonstrates graphically the interlinking of information, ideas, transactions, thoughts and conversations
So how did we get here?
Many of us will remember the first days of the internet at work.
Websites from the Mid 90s – mid 2000s – largely Brochure ware
2000 - False dawn of dot com bust – hindered by lack of ease of use –
software was weak, connection speeds were slow, user experience was poor
Until here we are today where people are talking about Web 2.0 – and even Web 3.0 – Ontoloogy, the internet of ‘things’
The conversation is about… the conversation taking place online.
This has largely happened in just the last 5 years as social media has taken off
Social media is rapidly expanding and fast moving – like tectonic plates shifting
Here we are in 2007
Empires come (Twitter, Foursquare) and Empires fall (MySpace, AOL)
This rise has been driven predominantly by ease of use
Driven by ease of use
Ease of use in content creation,
Finding content
Gathering the content
sharing the content
Driven by ease of use
Ease of use in content creation,
Finding content
Gathering the content
sharing the content
Meaning that we don’t need the editors or the newspapers as much as we did before.
We’re all editors now grouping the information into relevant categories that ourselves, our colleagues and our friends are interested in
No wonder social sites have grown so fast
A lot of talk about Facebooks success so interesting to compare Facebook and Twitter adoption
These two charts show number of users and rate of adoption for Facebook and Twitter in their 1st 55 months of existence (4.5 years)
January 2009: approx. 75 million Tweets per month
August 2010: approx. 2.64 billion Tweets per month
No wonder the old world of media and Mr Murdoch look glum
Murdoch speaking in 2006 – and he was right
It’s a dangerous cocktail to brands and companies
Some of the famous case studies of brands suffering issues at the hands of social media
And countries too - not quite revolution yet… but it’s not a million miles away
Iranian election
Why should PR communicators care?
Results of Metrica and Gorkana’s survey UKPulse make startling reading
39% of UK population don’t read a daily newspaper
40% of 16 – 23 year olds don’t read a daily newspaper
45% of 36-44 year old don’t read a daily newspaper
It’s not just the young!
27% of people aged 65+ don’t read a daily newspaper
Where are they getting their news? Online!
Again it’s not just the young
– the concept of the silver surfer is alive and well..
So when the Economist asked Who killed the newspaper
The answer was…. We all did.
No wonder marketing departments aren’t happy
Mass media is in steep decline.
Audiences are fragmenting, the media is diversifying
The days of ‘easy’ mass target audiences are gone
We are all our own editors now
Everyone is or can be a publisher
It’s the age of Permission based marketing.
It’s unstructured and brands are no longer in control
Some things have changed and we have to learn to deal with it.
This is a major challenge
Some conversations online are private – deal with it!
The fact that they always have been doesn’t deter some from wanting to listen in.
Where as others are loud, two way, and permanent.
Suddenly the audience is mobilised, well grouped and in control.
After years of limited say, now they want their voice to be heard.
Who has heard of Bob Garfield?
He’s actually an incredibly smart guy – US journalist / broadcaster – Advertising Age, USA Today, ABC News etc
Also an author
Having written The Chaos Scenario which I highly recommend.
Bob likes to summarise the challenge as
“the herd will be heard”
On the positive side – isn’t online media much easier to monitor, control and measure? Well yes… and no.
Social media marks a fundamental shift for communicators, but also for the measurement profession
It takes us from measuring out puts – news content – to measuring what the end user is actually saying – the out take – and in some cases doing – the outcome.
The opportunity is great for PRs
It’s a discipline that PR should rightfully own
It’s about communication
Target audiences
Reputation
And now we can see and hear what our audience think
So great, lets jump in!
But first, where to start
Clear the business obstacles if there are some:
Get the buy in of:
Legal
IT
Your bosses
Write guidelines and policies
Establish the structure of the team you are going to use
Then listen
Listen to understand what’s been said
Use some free tools or some platforms but use them to listen
Like being at a party you listen before speaking.
While you’re listening think about how you’re going to speak, to whom and to say what?
Think about who you are trying to influence and what success would look like
Then plan
David Phillips on Gorkana just a few weeks ago
So you want to listen in, measure and engage, how should you do it?
Beware of platforms and free tools
To illustrate this for you I wanted to share the results of a recent trial we have undertaken of the three leading platforms
Our findings were startling.
Two week trial, one detailed search string
On average 40% of coverage is irrelevant
Overlap between any two aggregators is around 20%
Aggregator volumes differ across channels
No aggregator is comprehensive
Only one company was finding most content in acceptable time frame.
Two were taking about 24 hours to find some content – on average!
Two of the companies suffered outages during our trial!
Automated sentiment analysis was not very good
One company performed worse than random base line!
The others didn’t perform much better than 50:50.
Recent project work:
Aggregator supplied 94,910
After removing irrelevant pubs & dupes = 70,000After our own Boolean searches = 40,000
After human analysis of all clips = 33,662
There’s masses of content, growing all the time - Forget Absolute numbers – they don’t exist in social media (think of the rising number of users)
Beware scoring systems – they’re always flawed
Who matters? Influence v relevance. – Your target audience is what matters! Influencers come and go – and its about the ‘now’.
Next Who is this?
Janis Krums
Anyone know who he is or think he is influential?
Automated sentiment analysis is not there …yet
Closed conversations - Some content is private – deal with it
Query string is crucial – get help with it
Measure what Matters – not just what’s easy
Focus on the language of your business, ask yourself at the outset what success looks like and measure v your objectives.
PR has spent years arguing about how to measure itself.
Huge swathes of the PR profession have been content for too long with metrics that don’t mean anything – like AVE’s
AMEC and the Barcelona principles are doing a lot to change this – it has global support from PRCA, CIPR, PRSA and many others
Don’t let social media bomb us back to the dark ages
We’re on the cusp of a new era in measurable communications
A channel that should be rightfully owned by PR
Anything on the sort of thing that can / should be measured..
Let’s take the oportunity
