Logic+Emotion

Seven Indicators of Twitter Influence

Originally posted at Social Fresh

The NY Times recently reported what regular users of Twitter already know. Follower counts are an indicator of influence but not a very good one. And yes, followers can be and are gamed frequently with the assistance of shady web services. Here are a few more critical Twitter influence indicators:

1. Lists
Being included on lists gives us two clues. One: Being included on thousands or more signals that you are visible. Two: The categories people use to classify you tells you something about the topics you have influence in: This is known as “topical influence” and it’s really what counts in influence.

2. Retweets
These tell you something about how willing people are to amplify your messages and help them spread. A retweet essentially says “this is something I want my network to see”. It’s Twitter’s version of viral loops.

3. @Replies
These signal how much others want to talk to you or intentionally tag you, and also serves as an indicator for how willing you are to engage and tag others. Less replies signals less social interactions and more broadcast.

4. Follower Ratio
Generally, if a user on Twitter follows a disproportionate amount of users than follow them, it signals their desire to accumulate followers. Not always, but often. A 50/50 ratio translates to someone following back anyone who follows them, which includes spammers. Twitter users who follow significantly less than are followed indicate some selection process.

5. Tweet volume
This simply indicates how prolific a user is. Those with high volumes who retain high levels of engagement, list counts, retweets, and a healthy ratio are likely providing some type of value. High volume Twitter accounts with suspect ratios, low engagement, etc may have a high noise to signal ratio

6. Favorites
Getting favorited frequently does mean something, though because Twitter users leverage Favorites so differently, it’s nearly impossible to discern exactly what, other than you triggered a behavior (the action to Favorite) for some reason.

7. Quality of connections
The most difficult to quantify and probably THE most important indicator is the quality and RELEVANCE of who follows you on Twitter and who you follow back. Targeting the right audience and earning their attention (and Trust) is ultimately the best (and softest metric). Follower counts (and ratios) are an indicator, but only one of several and one of the easiest to game.

The Proposition of Automation

I don't follow everyone back on Twitter. This is an intentional act. I don't follow everyone back because there are too many spammers to deal with and frankly, If I do follow you back, it's a very intentional act—I follow you for a reason. Tomorrow, somebody can send me an e-mail and say—"we've solved your problem by inventing a service which only follows back real people, no spammers".

That would be useful.

But I still wouldn't use the service. Because it's my opinion that being selective about who I follow makes it more valuable to the people I do follow, and that means something. And as an added benefit, while it's still unrealistic to follow back thousands of people watching their every move, it's not unrealistic to jump into the general stream now and then and spark up a conversation with the people I chose to follow.

I followed someone recently who I met in person. In response, I got a generic direct message back—the same one that gets sent to no doubt hundreds and thousands of other followers. I got a chance to talk to the individual after getting the automated message and asked him why he does it. He explained that he used to thank people for a follow manually and as he gets hundreds of followers back, this became unsustainable. So he decided to scale. And the result was an automated message.

To be fair, he says that this generates many follow up conversations which he engages in. Maybe he's on to something. But for me, I felt like a number. I expect automated messages from the electric and gas company, but not someone I've met in the flesh.

The choice to automate is ours to make. Perhaps, it's better for efficiency and makes scaling a human being possible. Perhaps, a single human being seems less human when they scale this way. I haven't scaled well. I don't respond to every e-mail, or direct message. I don't reply to every tweet. My human limitations are extremely visible. But somehow, I think the imperfection is understood. The deal is this: If I provide enough value, you will accept my inability to scale and respect the choice to take a pass on automation. In other words, automation is a choice—and with it, we gain something, and we lose something else.

Can There Be Innovation Without Competition?

On my flight to Paris I finally got to watch the documentary "Waiting for Superman". The film documents the plight of education in the United States and underscores the dysfunctions within an educational system which risks being able to compete globally. A complex problem no doubt, but it got me thinking about the notion of competition.

Competition makes us better. It drives us to innovate, even when we don't particularly feel like it. The design school I graduated from (Pratt) was particularly competitive. Primarily, the students were in competition with other students. The school was in competition with other schools (attempting to attract the best raw talent) and the instructors were in competition with other instructors leveraging the work of their students to demonstrate that they were doing the best work in the school.

When I entered a studio and put my work up on the wall, often after an all night session of working on it, I was in direct competition with everyone else on that wall. And we respected each other for it. Those who didn't put in the effort stood out like sore thumbs. The unspoken code was that they didn't deserve a place on the wall next to those who obviously put in the effort. But those scenarios were rare, because most of us brought our A game every time. Competition was universally understood. It was like breathing oxygen.

Can there be innovation without competition? I seriously doubt it's possible. If there's no incentive to do what you do better--if we remove all risk and rewards and substitute them for complete and total security, then the potential to innovate dies, along with our own dreams for making something better.

Search + Social = Authority x Influence

Search Is Information Based
There are two primary ways a digital participant finds content across the digital cloverleaf (paid, owned, earned, social properties). One scenario is to initiate a search using a popular search engine such as Google. Most recently Google has tweaked their algorithm to reward authority and quality of content as opposed to what is considered to be of lesser quality such as link farms. This move presents an opportunity to communications professionals and who can provide quality content which can land in a respected earned media property which wields authority. Search activities are usually information driven meaning a digital participant is seeking specific information. The results of their targeted searches which are increasingly ranked by authority and quality dictates what they will amplify to their own networks using either e-mail or a variety of social platforms to spread the information.

Social Is Influence Based
Media is also found (and talked about) on a variety of social platforms ranging from blogs, message boards, Twitter, Facebook etc. The attention of a participant is obtained typically through a “stream” or “friend” of a connection. Media is then digested and shared generating conversations. If enough conversations are generated, these result in the formation of signals which register across the digital media cloverleaf. In this scenario, digital participants are influenced by their connections to digest, amplify and discuss media.

Search & Social Intersect
Search & social do not exist independently, but co-exist in a dependent fashion. For example, it’s common practice for journalists of respected media outlets to monitor and even source conversations which occur on social properties. An article on an influential media outlet citing the source of the conversation can in turn can affect the search results of a specific phrase. The opportunity exists through targeting what participants are searching for and pursuing strategies which generate the right kind of conversations around these topics. In addition to conversations, the right kind of content can also be picked up. Every initiative in digital needs to integrate how search and social relate to each other around a specific topic and category which you wish to influence.

Aggregate, Curate & Syndicate
A sample scenario: A competitor launches their competing product generating targeted signals which register on the Web. Digital participants search specific phrases to find information and news articles on the launch while simultaneously conversations across social and digital media properties erupt. Results in search and social begin to influence what a participant thinks (the consideration loop begins). Analysis of search engine rankings targeting specific search queries is initiated. Insights and data are converted into a communications and engagement plan designed to create a set of new signals. Communications and engagement initiatives are launched across the entire digital cloverleaf (paid, owned, earned etc.) and syndicated leveraging partnerships. If communications and engagement initiatives take hold, increased activity across networks resonate and search rankings become positively affected. The combined results in search and social can now influence what a digital participant pays attention to and takes action against. The process is repeated as new signals are monitored.

This is how search and social can and will work together.

A Construct of Connectedness: The State of Community Management

The 2011 State of Community Management

View more documents from The Community Roundtable

Our friends over at the Community Roundtable have done a wonderful job of summarizing key insights on the state of community management as it relates to the emerging development of social business. I was tapped to write this years Introduction to the report which is full of both breadth and depth of insights and information on the maturation of digital community building as a business strategy.

The report is comprehensive and will take a while to absorb, but it also puts forth a tangible framework which outlines the maturation of managing communities:

There are a ton of great takeaway from the report, but I found that a constant theme was the combination of both content (in the forms of aggregation, curation, and amplification) and engagement between community members and ambassadors for the organizations who help grow them as a constant storyline which re-emerged in different scenarios.

When you have a moment, download the report, grab a highlighter and spend some time with it.

A Few of My Favorite Things: SXSW Edition

The interactive portion of the infamous SXSW event in Austin is finished and I'm still processing everything that went down. This year, there was no clear emerging platform winner, though the group texting service GroupMe did get a fair amount of buzz. I used the service with a small group of friends frequently while down there and it did come in handy at times. Tech Crunch reported that the big winners were advertising itself, and the iPad 2. But winners and losers aside, I had a productive and action packed time down in Austin these past few days. Here are a few of my favorite highlights:

Favorite Event: Allhat

Yes, I'm going to be biased on many of these—however this year's Allhat was our biggest and best so far. It was the first year that we had a SXSW exclusive sponsor (Chevrolet) which allowed us to do things like have drink tickets in addition to the live music and breakfast tacos and we were still able to retain the chill vibe of the event. Everyone seemed to have a good time.

Favorite Act of Compassion: #SXSWCares

I was informed of the SXSWCares initiative in the blogger lounge at the conference center. The initiative was set up in real time to help raise funds for the disaster in Japan. The effort was partially powered by the CauseVox platform (I interviewed the founder) but even more significantly it was fueled by volunteers such as Leigh Durst who passed on many of the parties in order to get this initiative launched and maintained.

Favorite Panel: Lessons Learned From The Arab Spring Revolutions

I caught a handful of panels and found the most interesting and refreshing to be the one on the Arab revolutions moderated by Edelman colleague Russel Dubner. For starters, it included an interesting and well rounded linup featuring Azmat Khan; Habib Haddad, Founder of YallaStartup; Katherine Maher, a technology and international development specialist from the National Democratic Institute; Susannah Vila, Director of Content and Outreach for Movements.org (client); and Mashable’s Community Manager Vadim Lavrusik. The discussion was lively and put forth some interesting insights such as the role emotion played in the distribution of content across the social Web. The panelists also underscored the importance of all digital forms of communication, not just social—such as the use of Google maps and SMS.

Favorite Non SXSW Activity: Riding A Harley


This year I decided to rent a Harley-Davidson Road King for a few days as a way of getting around and also getting away from the crowds. I managed to get out of the downtown Austin area with Geoff Livingston who also rented a bike and we rode through the hill country stopping at a local establishment with over one hundred bikes parked outside. We thought we were dead meat after walking into the place with a bunch of REAL hard core bikers, but they ended up being very nice.

Favorite Conversation: The Future of PR

I teamed up with eBay's Richard Brewer-Hay (Edelman client), to host an interesting conversation on the future of Public Relations. The conversations were informative and vast as we covered ground from traditional versions of PR where agents work behind the scenes to a more integrated model of strategic communications where anyone can act as a spokesperson. The room was packed and we debated the merits between campaigns vs. connections and the realization that with social media we are all just one tweet away from getting fired at worst—and at best, the industry is in a position to lead based on its understanding of relationships.

Favorite BBQ Joint: Iron Works


Sure you can go to fancier places such as Lamberts, but Iron Works is tasty and gives you just the right mix of the basics. Smoked meats, a slice of bread and an ice cold Shiner.


Favorite Band: JT Coldfire

I've seen these guys play in Austin once before and to say they rock would be an understatement. If you like the blues, Stevie Ray, and dudes that play the guitar with their teeth, then you will like JT Coldfire.

Favorite Celebrity Run-In: Danny DeVito


Mr. DeVito was staying at the Four Seasons too and we shared an elevator with him. We then struck up a conversation and chatted a bit about his new YouTube project, then he offered to take pictures. Nice guy.
 
So, those were a few of my favorite things from SXSW. Did you go? What where yours?

Your Social Business Problem Isn't Technical

At first glance, this looks like a technical issue. The person managing the Chrysler account probably meant to send the tweet from their personal account. This is an assumption—I have no knowledge if that's the case or not. But, the individual responsible worked for a firm which serviced Chrysler and was terminated as a result of the communication, so that lends credibility to the theory.

So let's say the tweet was meant to be sent from a personal account. The firm's client—Chrysler is based in Detroit and it's probably not good etiquette to be insulting your client's city given the partnership. So the issue may not be as technical as we think.

The example underscores a fundamental truth in doing business in a connected age. Your employees and partners must understand how to appropriately engage in public (social) spaces. Mistakes will continue to happen because you can't have real time communications in social spaces without human beings doing them. But it underscores the importance in all public communications whether they be personal or corporate. This in particular isn't a technical issue. It's a people (and process) issue.

How to Craft the Perfect Quora Answer

The following is a guest post from Joe Chernov. Joe is the Director of Content for Eloqua. Co-chair of WOMMA member ethics panel. You can read more about Joe here: http://www.jchernov.com

Q&A sites, whether they be Quora, Focus, Namesake, ChaCha, Aardvark or good “old fashioned” LinkedIn Answers, are all the rage.  In fact, Matt Creamer of AdvertisingAge recently pointed out that Quora has received as much press in six months as Answers.com – the 18^th biggest site in the US – earned in six years.  Given the rise in attention paid to this category, participants are left with one question: How can I contribute answers that are disproportionately influential? 

Inspired by Sebastian Wernicke’s hilarious and provocative “Lies, damned lies and statistics” TEDTalk, my colleague Andrew Moravick and I decided reverse engineer exactly what you need to do to craft the perfect Quora comment.  We studied nearly 500 answers spanning 50 Quora questions on topics related to marketing, advertising, demand generation and social media, then identified three sure-fire ways to ensure your answer ranks among the most discussed and “voted” posts.  They are:

1.     Answer first,

2.     Include links or (better still) graphics in your answer,

3.     Stick to a word count of 100 to 200 words.

Let’s have a look at each.

Answer First
Speed is becoming the great equalizer when it comes to social business.  Anyone unconvinced of this fact should read David Meerman’s Scott’s Real-Time Marketing and PR.  (You won’t remain unconvinced for long.)  Quora is no different.

Social currency was assigned asymmetrically to the first answer.  Take “mentions” for example.  People who answer questions on Quora often reference answers posted by others.  (This is social media, after all.)  Well, a whopping 60% of all references point to the first answer posted.  Similarly, “votes” – Quora’s answer to Facebook “Likes” – are disproportionately awarded to the first answer posted.  In fact, our study found that 41% of all votes are cast for the first post.

 

You Don’t Know Everything
Social media – especially when it comes to Q&A sites – is a credibility game.  Bombastic consultants who claim to know everything are ignored.  Sales-thirsty vendors who rush to the close are panned.  But the Quora community will embrace both consultants and vendors, provided the person has value to add.  Without question, the best way to value is to incorporate supplemental content into your response.  In fact, answers that contained links or graphics were mentioned in subsequent posts more than twice as often as those that didn’t include additional resources.  They also received three times as many votes as their link-less counterparts. 

As an aside, incorporating graphics into an answer might be the secret to Quora.  Although the sample size was relatively small, answers that included a graphic were nine times more likely to be referenced by someone else and five times more likely to earn a vote.

The Magic Number
Who would have thought that there would be a “magic” word count for voluntarily answering questions online?  But there is.  It’s 145.  Or, more specifically, 160 words if you want others to reference your answer; 130 words if you are hunting for votes.

Of course, that level of precision is absurd.  But without a doubt there is a correlation between word count and popularity.  Short posts add little value (they tend to applaud more established community members), whereas long posts run counter to the short-attention-span theater that is social media.  The graphics below suggest Quora members strongly prefer answers in the 100 to 200-word range.

Of these three tips, which is most important?  Generally speaking, being first is the most reliable way to ensure your answer echoes throughout the digital halls of the thread.  But what if you aren’t tethered to your computer?  Is it possible to play “catch up”?  Absolutely.  Embed a graphic in your answer and keep it to about 150 words and your contribution is likely to be as popular as the first in the thread.

Social Media Milestones: The Visual

  
Over at Edelmandigital.com, we're celebrating the year anniversary of our re-launch as we gear up to work on the next iteration. Rather than brag about what we've managed to accomplish—we decided to put out something that might be useful. The "social media milestones" visualization highlights a few major events which unfolded over time. We couldn't fit everything—but included some biggies. You can download a full size version here.

SocMetrics Combines Influence, Events & Expertise

Every year at SXSW, there is activity in the startup communities and new services pop up which attempt to catch the SXSWave and benefit from the attention. This year, SocMetrics has caught my attention. What it does is deceptively simple. It takes data from social event planning platform Plancast (one of my favorites) and ranks attendees by influence.



The influence ranking is imperfect as you'd expect. As of now—it's relying primarily on Twitter footprints and "shares" via Blogger. However where it gets really interesting is in the categorization of influentials. It assigns labels such as "fitness" "food" "moms" "wedding" "design" "tech" "social media" to indicate what category an individual has influence, interest or expertise in. What surprised me about it that as I reviewed some of the labels for several attendees, the categories were in many cases pretty accurate. Not all, but in many and this is significant.


I think there's something here. Events are where social, digital and physical merge and relationships are often forged or reinforced. Having a way to understand the influence levels of attendees and how they break down in terms of the topics they "cover" can be especially useful in identification activities and engagement programs. It's worth watching.

Does PR Have a Future?

Two years ago, if you told me that I'd be working in the "public relations" industry—I would have looked at you as if you were insane. My impression of PR was that of an industry with a narrow focus and goals which included spinning stories so that the clients a firm worked with would appear better than they really were. I didn't know a lot about public relations from an industry perspective, but for whatever reason that was my impression. The cartoon above showing a "flack" shamelessly networking wasn't far off from what what I had imagined.

However, as I began to investigate and meet some of the practitioners in this broad mixed bag we call the "social" space—I began detecting a pattern. Many of the first movers were either working in the communications group of an organization or had communications (PR) training in their background somehow. Not all but many.

On top of that, there were a few firms that seemed to be going deep in this emerging area—offering training and working with businesses in a way which integrated communications in a more social fashion. Edelman (my employer) was one of these firms. And these indicators got me thinking differently about the field and where it might be heading in the years to come. Below is the last slide of a presentation I gave nearly a year ago:



The thinking is that over time as a business becomes more "social"—it begins to gradually move away from totally rigid job descriptions to allow for more flexibility in the things people do as part of their jobs. Instead of a handful of people who officially represent an organization, each employee becomes a representative every time they engage in public (social networks) especially when that engagement is related to what they do for the organization.

It's an extreme vision to some degree—though one can make the argument that we are already seeing the early signs of this now. So what happens to PR? Possibly the same thing that happens to marketing, customer service, and other business functions. It could possibly become "integrated" into the jobs of more people both in and outside of the organization.

If "everyone" is a spokesperson to some degree—does public relations cease to exist? It's probably not that simple since the reality is that "communications" will not end up as a free for all activity, but as something which evolves into more than just communicating but also interacting. In my mind—the key is relationships. Manage the relationships between all critical stakeholders who can make or break your business, and you hold the key to a more sustainable way of doing business. Sound like PR?

If you think this is something you'd like to discuss more—I'm teaming up with Richard Brewer-Hay of eBay (Edelman client), to facilitate a lively core conversation on this topic at SXSW. Hope to see you there.

How Charlie Sheen Is "Winning" The Web

On a Saturday evening, through my Facebook feed—I heard about Charlie Sheen's next move on the internet. I clicked on the link and waited for about 10 minutes as the crew of "Sheen's Korner" grappled with technical difficulties and then a few minutes after it's "advertised" air time, the show came on. Welcome to the new prime time. Sort of.

Sheen's Korner, a live broadcast leveraging the Ustream platform and integrating several social networks including Facebook and Twitter just might have created a new category of entertainment—the extreme reality stream. The stream, while bizarre at most times was what you'd expect from something like this—a low production and unscripted combination of Sheen's notorious catch phrases ("winning" etc) combined with some sporadic efforts from Sheen and his "co-hosts" to respond to viewer comments. Compared to Charlie's Twitter account which soared to over a million followers in record time—his "reality stream" paled in comparison, only attracting just over a hundred thousand viewers during the broadcast.

What will become of "Sheen's Korner"? I'd be curious to see if a sponsor comes forward, but even if the experiment "fails"—it's a win for digital media as more people will know what video streaming is after Charlie makes a few more headlines thanks to his latest exploits on the social web.

The Future of Facebook: A Crowdfunded Project

Stop what you're doing and take a look at this new project from Vanessa Miemis and company. It's a deep dive projecting the impact on Facebook from a societal, economical, technology, environmental, and political perspective. The project features commentary from a diverse set of minds including:

• Stowe Boyd – futurist, social technologies blogger
• Jamais Cascio – ethical futurist, Senior Fellow of the IEET
• Amber Case – co-founder Geoloqi
• Suzanne Fischer – Curator of Technology, The Henry Ford Foundation
• Garry Golden – energy and emerging markets futurist
• Alex Howard – Government 2.0 Correspondent for O’Reilly Media
• Kevin Kelly – author, What Technology Wants; founding editor, Wired Magazine
• Brett King – author, BANK 2.0
• Rita J King – Innovator-in-Residence IBM Analytics Virtual Center
• David Kirkpatrick – author, The Facebook Effect
• Valdis Krebs – founder, Orgnet; network analysis expert
• Richard MacManus – founder, Read/Write Web
• Om Malik – founder, Giga Omni Media
• Eghosa Omoigui – Venture Capital & Private Equite
• Howard Rheingold – author, Smart Mobs
• Douglas Rushkoff – author, Program or Be Programmed
• Doc Searls – author, Cluetrain Manifesto
• David Siegel – author, Pull
• John Smart – President, Accelerating Studies Foundation
• Scott Smith – founder, Changeist
• Nova Spivack – founder, Lucid Ventures
• Sibley Verbeck – founder, The Electric Sheep Company

 

....and myself. But this heads up isn't self promotion. This is a topic worth exploring and these are some of the most interestng minds curated together in one place. I really think this initiative will yield some interesting insights as to how Facebook is influencing our daily lives and what it may look like in five years. I have some definititive opinions on the subject. Facebook's growth is exponential and it's future is depentant on how that growth can be sustained. The project itself is an interesting experiment. It's being crowd-funded on Kickstarter which allows anyone to micro-finance projects such as this.

I'd keep an eye on this one if I were you. Venessa and team are some of the smartest folks emerging on the scene and this project has legs. Have questions or opinions on the future of facebook? Ironically you can express those on Quora.