Jobs: 2 digital peeps @ RedJelly

A mate from Hobart agency Red Jelly just sent this through - they're looking for a Digital Account Manager and a Front-End Web Developer.

Great people. Great clients. Great work. I'd get your app in asap if you're into it.

#ashcloud

5 people in my house have been screwed round by volcanic ash this week - yes I live with a lot of people (who all seem desperate to get out of Tasmania).

Two of my housemates were meant to go to Thailand today and I expected them to be devvo. But they seem to be handling it pretty well. Same goes with Australians at large - guess we're pretty easy going folk (though sentiment is no doubt being swayed by heavy social media efforts from airlines).

@jetstarnews are all over it - which is kinda cool to see. Right now #refund, #resume, #cancelled, #ashcloud etc are big trending topics. I guess that's how you hold it down on the edge of a PR crisis.

Who's holding it down?

Based on a quick social search on 'brand + ash', Jetstar and Qantas appear to be going pretty hard - and on the surface, it seems to be paying off... Easy to see who's using social media for the right reasons, and who isn't.

Sentiment 4:1

Strength 24%

Reach 23%

Sentiment 3:1

Strength 32%

Reach 25%

Sentiment 2:1

Strength 4%

Reach 10%

Look at this fucking influencer

Look at this fucking hipster has got to be one of my favourite blogs ever. Not sure about these knob-ends, but true influencers are golden. And every marketer is after them on the web. So what's the best way to measure influence? As a planner, finding out this kind of stuff is getting really important - though sometimes we already know the answer, but feel pressured to reverse engineer it through decks of data... David Armando wrote a nice little article on this, and I think his points make a sweet pt 1 for this unplanned trip into unearthing and measuring online influence.

Twitter influence

I see a lot of marketers farming as many followers as they can, and going after others with lots of followers - assuming that they're 'influencers'. But just like a FB like, a follower count is a pretty flawed indicator. Plus it can pretty easily be gamed. So, as a starting point, here's a more complete view:

• Lists - This is good indicator for a couple of things a) visibility and b) what kind of 'topical influence' you have, based on list categories
• Retweets - A RT says "this is good enough for me to spread"
• @Replies - This says: a) how much people want to engage with you and b) how conversational vs broadcast-focused you are
• Follower ratio - Common rules of thumb: a) a 50/50 ratio suggests someone who follows back anyone that follows them (including spammers and crackheads) and b) users with significantly more followers than they follow signals a selection process - and maybe quality
• Tweet volume - Consider this: a) high volume users with healthy engagement, list counts, retweets etc are likely to be offering value, while b) high volume users with low scores are just making noise
• Favourites - This is a good indicator of something...but Twitter users use this feature for lots of different reasons, so it's difficult to discern exactly what that is
• Quality and relevance of followers - While being the most difficult to quantify, this has got to be where it's at - targeting the right audience and earning their trust

More on quality and relevance

'Influence' is meaningless unless its attached to a category. Tools like Klout and Sulia attempt to do this kind of analysis - and this is where I think I'll take the next installment. 

How do you measure Twitter influence?

Like is not a KPI

I get the feeling lots of people haven't realised this yet, so at the risk of living in the past, here goes...collecting 'likes' on your Facebook page doesn't mean you're doing your job.

In an attempt to serve up stuff that's relevant in users' newsfeeds, Facebook uses an algorithm called 'EdgeRank'. Basically, every item that shows up in your newsfeed is considered an Object. Whenever a user interacts with that Object they’re creating what Facebook calls an Edge - examples being likes, tags, comments etc.

An object's EdgeRank (and hence its rank in a user's newsfeed) is the product of the factors Affinity, Weight and Time (see explanation above).

The net result for marketers: if you want your content to show up in the newsfeed, think about EdgeRank - and this means posting stuff that people will actually want to interact with.

AMI Smart Marketer thingo

Thanks everyone that turned up for my strategy thing at the Hobart Convention Centre last night - was good fun. If you're interested, here's the deck.

Strategy Plus Execution - AMI Smart Marketer Series, 16/6/2011

View more presentations from scottywoodhouse

Get out of your comfort zone...culturally.

Profound advice from John Jay, ECD at W&K. Understand your client's soul, and make that relevant to a greater number of people. Very cool video.

Stuff I'm working on

Just launched another ep in Tasplan's Super - straight up series.



Follow the campaign

• Facebook - facebook.com/superstraightup
• YouTube - youtube.com/superstraightup
• Web - tasplan.com.au/superstraightup